An Otherwise Pleasant Saturday Afternoon It took a moment to realize what we were looking at. “That’s a dead body,” one of us said. We had been out for hours, scouting south of Tucson, Arizona; three friends enjoying the autumn day. By late afternoon we wanted to continue but daylight would soon be gone; so we decided to take a stumbled-upon ranch road out to the highway. We were making good time and already talking about evening plans back in town when we stopped short. There was a body in the road. Off to one side, face down, legs sprawled. We got out of the truck, scanned the area, approached slowly and uncertainly. Indeed, it was a dead body. Arms under his head like he might have been sleeping; but there was a large wet stain on the ground, and flies—he’d been here awhile. He was maybe mid-20s, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and plain white sneakers. The soles of his sneakers were shredded from miles of hard use. There were no obvious signs of trauma, no items with him, no tracks that we could follow in either direction on the rocky ground. We called 911 from a cellphone and a Sheriff’s Deputy called back to ask where we were. We had coordinates from our GPS unit, but this back road had no name, no number, no address. The Deputy asked if we could meet him at the nearest pavement to guide him in and we agreed. On the drive out, the road passed the ranch house. As we approached, we saw the rancher tending his horses and equipment. He was in his 60s maybe, with white hair, a flannel snap shirt and jeans—working clothes—with a big gold belt buckle recalling past rodeo roping glory. As is polite custom, we stopped to say hello; and to give him a heads-up on the situation. We said, “We’re going to be coming back through in a few minutes with some Deputies; we found a dead body up the road.” The look of horror on the rancher’s face was as you might expect from hearing shocking news on an otherwise pleasant Saturday afternoon. This was no longer a “hi, nice day, where ya headed?” conversation. But then, “White guy?” he asked with obvious concern. “No. Probably an illegal immigrant,” my friend told him. And that’s when I saw the alarm, concern, and humanity drain from his face in a second and be replaced by callous disregard and bigotry. “I’d just roll ’em into the canyon,” he said back to us. “I’d just roll ’em into the canyon.” He went on to tell us about an event a month or so before when the Sheriff needed a helicopter to reach a rugged location nearby to retrieve a body or rescue a border crosser. He mentioned to us “that must’ve cost a hundred thousand dollars of taxpayer money.” And then, again, to reinforce his no-nonsense, no-sympathy solution: “I’d just roll ’em into the canyon.” Later, we wished we’d said “a man died; show some respect.” But to be face-to-face with both death and bigotry in the span of half-an-hour was shocking; and we simply and quietly drove on to meet the Deputy. I try to summon kindness and understanding for that rancher. Perhaps he’s had run-in after run-in with border crossers; perhaps they’ve damaged his equipment or hurt his animals, frightened him and his family. Not all desert crossers are looking for work, there are evil-doers crossing too; and, sadly, it would not be the first time a borderlands rancher found himself in danger. Perhaps he’s so frustrated with the ongoing situation that he’s had to compartmentalize and emotionally distance himself from it. But how he casually dismissed others’ suffering; seeing, let’s be blunt, brown people as lower than human, less valuable than his horse or dog or cattle; not worth trying to notify kin, determine cause of death, or give the remains respectful rest; that makes summoning kindness and understanding difficult. I know a few Arizona ranchers; closer to the border than this one. They’re self-reliant, pragmatic, opinionated yes; and kind-hearted decent human beings. They see the border situation clear-eyed and every day—and they would go out of their way to help someone in need, even someone beyond need. We returned with the Deputy. The body was still there, unmoved, as we’d found him; as if we’d never been by. Our civic duty done, and suddenly feeling a little like intruders, we started for home again. Passing by the ranch house we saw the rancher still puttering about; his family, wife and kids, three generations by the looks of it, sitting down to an evening meal outside. They waved and we waved back. And driving out I thought about bigotry and racism, about how it might be contagious, handed-down; about how that attitude of us-and-them-and-they-are-valueless might be spreading across our land like that pool of fluid under the body. To live in southern Arizona is to be aware of the problems along America’s southwest border. Every year hundreds die and many suffer crossing our Arizona deserts in an attempt to walk north. One may intellectually understand this even as one’s distanced from it by miles and the filter of news reports. To see it sprawled on the ground in front of you makes it real. I wonder what happened to that person, who he was. If he was here to do Americans harm, to deliver drugs or commit crimes, and he met street justice on that dirt road, then that’s one thing perhaps. But there was no evidence of that at his body, at his death site; and we should not make that our default assumption. More likely he was a young man hoping to find work, a vocation, a means of supporting his loved ones, and he felt compelled to look for that opportunity here. He was miles north of the border, within sight of Interstate 10; he would have crossed paved roads and passed by houses on the way, so why die where he did? Was he afraid to ask Americans for help? Did he know, when he lay down, “this is the end”? Or did he think, curling his arms under his head like a pillow, “one short rest before I reach safety”? Were others with him then? Who was he going to meet, who did he leave behind? Do they wonder where he is, why he never arrived, why he’s not called? We have a problem with our border problem, with how we are—or are not—dealing with it. We build walls and fences that are at best marginally effective; and which come at great cost economically, environmentally, and in what it says about us as a nation. We are walling in the American beacon of hope. Walls and fences do not fix problems of supply and demand—and that’s what we have: our demand for cheap labor and for drugs, a supply of both to our south; desperation and strong profit motives driving them together through our southwest border. We ignore the real issues. We do not examine why many Americans feel the need to self-medicate or check out. We do not have a national discussion about why Americans won’t do the jobs we apparently won’t do; whether we want a second-class workforce in our country to do those jobs, and whether that should be the price-of-entry to the chance of a better life for one and one’s children. We do not question how our policies affect people from the south who cannot find work at home—in countries where corruption and other structural problems push their citizens north. Our neighbors need to get it together, yes; and we should help—it would make the entire neighborhood better if we did. Instead, we build more walls, delay real solutions, and watch our communities and our national character suffer. There is a saying in this part of our country: “no more deaths, no mas muertos.” Ignoring the causes, forgoing real discussion, militarizing the border and border communities, and demonizing groups of people is not the way forward and it is not a solution. What it is, is a national disgrace. Until we change that, there will be more deaths, mas muertos—deaths of people, deaths of community and culture, and deaths of American ideals. It doesn’t need to be this way. This is not a problem to roll into the canyon; this is a problem we must solve. Take a moment; realize what we are looking at.
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