About DukeEngage Tucson 2010

Immigration is perhaps the single largest domestic challenge facing both the United States and Mexico today. People die nearly every week attempting to cross the border. Hostilities against immigrants in the U.S. rise daily. Local, state, and international relations are increasingly strained.

For eight weeks this summer, seven students have been given the opportunity to travel to Tucson, Arizona and Nogales, Mexico to study the many faces of immigration. Following two weeks of meetings with local activists, a Border Patrol agent, a federal public defender, lawyers, members of the Tohono O’odham Nation, maquiladora owners, Grupos Beta employees, migrants, and local farmers, we will spend six weeks partnered with Southside Day Labor Camp, BorderLinks, or Humane Borders in order to further immerse ourselves in the issues of immigration.

This blog chronicles our experiences and our perspectives on what we learn while here in Arizona. We hope our stories are interesting and informative.


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Saturday, June 12, 2010

“For the Right to Live in Peace”

After our visit to Altar, Mexico I wanted to share a Prayer for the Migrant engraved on the wall outside of a Catholic Mission which provides food, clothing and a safe place to sleep for migrants.

To Those Who Have Fallen in the Desert to Death

In memory of those who in search of a better life, only found death.
In memory of those who risked and lost everything.
They went with hope in their eyes and defiance in their souls.
The sun scorched them, the desert devoured them,
And the dust erased their names and their faces.

In memory of those who never returned,
We offer these flowers and say with deepest respect:
Your thirst is our thirst,
Your hunger is our hunger,
Your pain is our pain,
Your anguish, bitterness, and agony
Are also ours.

We are a cry for justice
That no one would ever have to leave their land
Their beliefs, their dead, their children, their parents, their family,
Their roots, their culture, their identity…
We are silence that speaks…
So that no one will have to go in search of a destiny in other lands,
So that no one would ever have to go to the desert
And be consumed by loneliness.
We are a voice in the desert that cries out:
Education for all!
Opportunity for all!
Work for all!
Bread for all!

Liberty for all!
Justice for all!

We are a voice that the desert can’t drown…
That insists that the nation give equally to all of its children
The opportunity to a dignified and fruitful life.

-Orthón Perez

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