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| Rachel M. alumni, Global Citizens Camp 2007 |
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Rachel M., (Alumni of Legacy’s 2007 Iraqi American Global Citizens Camp) shares her recent powerful service trip experience. (4.16.2008)
I just got back from our service trip to Mexico and Los Angeles, and it was a very impactful experience.
We dove to San Diego and then visited the US-Mexico border at the beach the next day. This was definitely the most emotional day of the trip for us all, because we witnessed first hand some of the negative effects of US border and economic policies. NAFTA has been a huge success for the United States, but it has had horrific effects on Mexico's economy. Transnational corporations have completely taken over the border region, and as one Mexican put it "all we produce anymore is cheap labor." Environmental and human rights violations run rampant in these companies and give their workers barely enough to survive. In the year after NAFTA was signed illegal immigration to the United States doubled, and has continued to grow ever since with more illegal crossings on the US-Mexico border than any other border in the world as poor families try to flee to anywhere they can survive. To fight this, the US has constructed large fences that funnel many crossings into the deadly desert. It is, of course, very important that every country maintain its boundaries, but the border fence to all of us seemed designed to keep them inside a cage of poverty.
Walls anywhere in the world give a very loud message to people, and I hated the fact that it kept people from each other, like they were untouchables. Everywhere we saw that had been broken apart meeting on both sides of the fence, reaching through the bars to one another. We saw a little boy toddle through them in order to hug his mother on the US side while she hung onto him for dear life and cried. Then I started talking to a man on the Mexico side who said that he had lived in the US for 7 years and had just been deported three days before, leaving his 7 year old daughter all alone on the other side. He is now trying to go through the long process of getting her a passport so they can be together, and he was very emotional about being separated from her. We walked a little ways from the border to talk just in time to see two teenage girls climb across the border. Within a few minutes a border patrol car zoomed up to them, and the next thing we knew they had been put in a tiny cage in the back of the car and taken away. A few minutes later two cars stopped near us and the policemen were herding two men in handcuffs from one cage to another and saying that their comrade further down the border had "got another one" as if they weren't people. Most of us started crying at this point, because we were so angry and ashamed at the way these people were treated.
The next day we went to Maclovio Rojas, a little community struggling to survive because the government wants to bulldoze them to build another Hyundai Company. We stayed there for three days building a medical clinic. I helped build an entire roof start to finish, and we had a wonderful time connecting to the people and hearing their stories. They all worked so hard, mainly at the transnationals, yet the poverty they lived in was extreme. It was inspiring to see people with so little give so much to their community, as they received no resources from the government. We also had the opportunity to speak to a group of factory workers fighting for their human rights, some native indians struggling to hold on to their culture, many people who had been deported, and experts about the border situation.
On the last day we toured a village that from a distance appeared to be built into a mountain. Unfortunately, what we thought was a mountain was in reality a giant pile of garbage. The Tijuana dump used to receive 20,000 tons of trash a day, and people who can't survive on pay from factories have tried to make a living by collecting recyclables and selling them. On average they make 0-5 dollars a day. It was one of the poorest places I've ever been, the shacks were made out of anything that could be scavenged from the dump, and the smell was so powerful that some people almost vomited. It was a surreal experience to be hiking up a mountain and see plastic bags, old shirts, car parts, broken cell phones, and dolls heads under your feet. We went to the school (built out of donations from other countries) and played with the kids there. They were so beautiful and sweet, and it broke my heart. They were all born into a world of trash. When they reach the ages of around 7-8 they will start working in the dump and struggle to survive until they die and are buried in the garbage. I know I will remember them until I die.
We then traveled to Los Angeles (there was severe culture shock for all of us to see so many rich people who were spending more on accessories than the people in the dump could make in years!) and help build houses for Hmong and Mexican farm laborers for several days. It was a good experience, especially because we were working with the families that would live in the homes. |
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