Megan Wenzl
News Reporter
In an effort to end death and suffering on the U.S./Mexico border, a representative from the Tuscon based humanitarian organization, No More Deaths, spoke at Western Michigan University on Wednesday.
Courtesy Photo
?It?s impossible to say that a border is secure when there?s people dying,? said Ayala Rahm, a volunteer for No More Deaths. ?[The government] wants to secure the border before they allow for any legalization for the 11 million people that are already here undocumented.?
Not only raising awareness of U.S./Mexico border deaths, Rahm answered the question of why death and suffering happen so often at the border.
?For us what that means and what we?ve seen over the last fifteen years is that when you secure the border, when you put more enforcement there and more cameras and more drones and all these things, it has meant a direct correlation to the number of deaths on the border,? said Rahm.
People with colored skin that have papers are harassed, according to Rahm. Therefore, No More Deaths knows that being white is a privilege on the US/Mexico border so this primarily white organization recognizes that privilege and does something about it, said Rahm.
Rahm reinforced the idea that fighting for a cause is something that can be done in any community.
?No More Deaths was founded from a faith-based coalition, but it has developed a changed a lot,? said Rahm. It?s simply just people that are coming together because they want to see less deaths on the border.?
What are the motivations for coming to the United States?
?What the flooding of corn did to Mexico was make it so that the people in Mexico were absolutely at the Mercy of the U.S. economy. If anything happened to the corn, they were completely reliant on it. For example, in 2006 and 2007 when biofuels became big, 25% of the corn market in the U.S. started being diverted to make fuel. The corn prices flew up. It actually caused what was later known as the Tortilla Crisis, an immense food shortage in Mexico because corn is their #1 staple food. Now people couldn?t afford food and they had lost their safety net, which was growing a diversity of food on their own land in order to feed themselves. It really drove people out of their traditional lifestyles and off of their farms,? said Rahm. ?Basically what we?re seeing throughout the 90s are economic refugees to the United States. What they found was a very militarized border.?
According to Rahm, in 2006, the U.S. government put in more permanent checkpoints, towers and senors. They were putting them not just in the cities, but in places where it was easiest to cross.
?What this effectively did was drive people into the most rugged parts of the desert,? said Rahm.
Before the militarization of the border, people migrated to the United States during the summer and then went back to Mexico, according to Rahm.
?This militarization actually made it so people stayed in the United States and brought their families,? said Rahm. ?We?re seeing a lot more women and a lot more children and because of the difficulties, a lot more deaths and a lot more suffering.?
For students interested in volunteering for No More Deaths and exploring the organization?s volunteer programs, visit www.nomoredeathsvolunteers.org or send an email to volunteer@nomoredeaths.org.
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