Border Issues Fair attracts 300

Three speakers presented different perspectives on border issues, illegal crossings and drug-smuggling and attracted an attentive audience of about 300 to Saturday’s Fourth Annual Border Issues Fair.

Held at Desert Hills Lutheran Church, there were educational and fundraising exhibits by humanitarian groups.

Featured speakers included Tohono O’Odham Nation member Mike Wilson, border reporter Mike Marizco and University of Arizona adjunct lecturer of Mexican American Studies Dr. Anna Ochoa O’Leary.

As first speaker, Wilson said 1,000 to 2,000 Mexicans come across the Tohono O’Odham Tribal land every day where there isn’t the ability to supply food, water and medical services.

Holding the audience virtually spellbound, he spoke gently and compared treatment of Native Americans to Mexican migrants while also comparing Mexicans now coming to the U.S. out of economic desperation to 70 percent of American’s ancestors who came through Ellis Island for the same reason.

“Native Americans aren’t seen the same as Judeo-Christians… People think, ‘After all, they’re only Indians’ and he spoke about the feeling of being “on the outside looking in.”

“How long ago were your ancestors tribal people? They came with hope in their hearts that they would not perish,” Wilson said to a hushed audience.

He told of one migrant who was encouraged to return to Mexico but refused to and said, “If I die at least I will die trying to feed my children instead of going back to Mexico and watching my three children starve.”

As reporter on organized crime at the border for five years, Marizco spoke about the under-reporting of migrant deaths while the audience viewed an ongoing slideshow of graphic mob-like photos.

Speaking of the border, he said, “It’s horrible and beautiful… human smuggling is a $10 billion yearly business,” the former Arizona Daily Star reporter and founder of www.BorderReporter.com. said.

Summarizing how the 20-year organized crime cartel started, he spoke of violent Al Capone-type people and one family in Tijuana largely responsible for making Tijuana the No, 1 port of entry for cocaine.

Marizco spoke about the dangerous work of journalists and reporters and said the publisher of a Tijuana weekly newspaper survived six bullets but his driver didn’t. “Mexico is second to Iraq for attacks on reporters... the media is an intensely important issue; reporters doing their job disappear.

“It’s an outlaw culture and it hasn’t gotten better; it’s gotten worse… narcotics and people smuggling have become more sophisticated… a lot more people are afraid now.”

He showed an Immigration and Naturalization Service chart highlighting assumptions from 1994, which the INS believed would control drug smuggling and said, “Thirteen years later, there’s been no change.

“The U.S. government has been increasingly slow in bringing order to the border. The fatal flaw in border patrol is lack of intelligence… the violence continues and organized crime has become a monster,” Marizco said in closing.

Presenting a third perspective on border issues, O’Leary spoke about her research regarding the effect of border enforcement on women.

Interviewing some who have attempted to enter the U.S., O’Leary spoke to women at a shelter in Nogales, Sonora, and said, “Women are three times more likely to die in the desert than men and they’re increasingly falling victim to violence… they’ve become dehumanized victims who are seeking a better life for their families.”

She spoke of the Sonoran Desert as “nature’s gift and a killing field,” and said, “It now takes more time and greater distance to cross the desert; it’s harder to outmaneuver the system. There’s the challenge of the physical terrain… People who are hungry don’t have time to wait; they’re living hand-to-mouth.”

Ellen Sussman is a Green Valley freelance writer. Contact her at ellen2414@cox.net. Comment online at www.gvnews.com.