Spaces of Resistance

The migrant center in Naco is small and often crowded, yet it has already found a special place in my heart. I want to say that it’s the people that I meet that make me love to be there, but reality is that it’s the place itself. I have always found that places, spaces, are juxtaposed in such ways as to bring about the most interesting lessons about life and living. Your position within the space, teaches you so much about who you are and who you want to be. I suppose it becomes another symbolic reminder that learning is always taking place, both in and out of the classroom.

It is there where I am learning over and over that life itself is so very random. It is a paradox that we struggle daily to embrace. The situation of so many migrants is no different or is drastically different than the situation I once knew or didn’t know. What I mean is that there is not a day that I don’t say to myself I’m glad that isn’t me or that the person I just met is just like me. There is nothing intrinsically different from the communities that live on either side of the border.  But the border is there, and with it are the many unheard stories and reasons for crossing it.

Se van a regresar? O van intentar de Nuevo? (Are you returning home or trying again?) These are some of the questions, among others, that we ask at the migrant center. The answer is irrelevant from our perspective. Our only concern is of how to help. If they are going back, we try to inform them of their resources for return. If they are trying again, we give them food, water, a phone call. It’s not much. But it is. I think that perhaps the greatest resource is simply welcoming them into the center. As I said, it is a space where learning happens. Where for an hour or two, people get to feel human once again. The outside contains not one border, but many. The police, the polleros, the financial borders, the wall, the dessert, border patrol. So many barriers to cross and overcome. Identities constantly challenged against the many institutions of power and control. Dominance and submission; and from all of it, resistance continues to be born.