Barbara Sparks – Family Farm, Carolyn Lindsey

Inspired by Family Farm by Carolyn Lindsey

Barbara Sparks

Lives in the Balance

Dust swirls across the dirt compound and decaying adobe buildings of the family farm. Joe’s horses amble the parched yard. The morning sun heats up this southwest border town.

You sure this is all right to be walking through Joe’s farm? She asked.

Oh yeah, Joe doesn’t mind. How else we going to get where we’re going. Ed, a Nogales resident, replied.

We walked past the horse corral, odd pieces of discarded equipment, a rusted car. A handful of cattle corralled in a dirt lot looked forlorn and forgotten.

As we passed the wire fenced lot a white cow, with what looked like a black shawl over her shoulders, dropped a calf. Spellbound, we halted, grew silent; we watched the beginning of a life.

Oh, wow! I’ve never seen a birth out in a feed lot like this. She exclaimed.

I’m afraid those cows don’t get much attention. They always look so destitute. That cow did a good job. Faith, Ed’s wife, said.

The newborn, all spindly legged, struggled to get a footing. She flopped from one side to another, each leg independent, uncoordinated until synchronized into a pattern of stability to hoist herself up. She latched on to her lifeline of support, gulping deeply with each swallow. She will survive, it’s time to move on.

Our group crosses the yard into a rambling grove of mesquite and juniper sidestepping rocks, cowpies, ruts of standing water, plastic water bottles.

A two-track headed out through the farmland into open fields of rocks and catclaw. Ed and Faith lead us through the farm to a view of the fence that divides the border towns of Nogales, in Arizona and Nogales, Sonora in Mexico.

An abandoned backpack lies under a juniper, further along a used baby diaper and filthy blanket tossed off the road. More plastic water bottles. People shed what they no longer need or can carry. Chatter about the newborn calf halted.

In the distance we begin to see what we came to see. An undulating brown steel fence flows like a gigantic snake through the hills to the horizon. Its massive shadow spreads across the dirt road running parallel to the border fence.

The shocking presence it has, like a wound exposed, bled dry; its hardness, its massiveness, 20-foot-plus-hight intruding on the landscape. A double row of rolled razor wire secured to the top of the entire fence line. This area is marked E15.

Did they have to put up two rows of razor wire? One wasn’t enough?

People will throw carpets over the top to slide down from Mexico into the U.S. That’s why the second row. Another deterrent. Remember? We saw five rows of that damn wire in Nogales neighborhoods, Ed stated.

She remembers the couple in Nogales talking through the fence. A young woman with a baby stroller, an elderly woman on the other side; the two holding hands.

Faith points to a tall white tower looming overhead with surveillance equipment. A portable generator with directional lights stands alert. Two uniformed men in a parked white Ford truck with the easily recognized green emblem of the Border Patrol. One scowls at us, the other waves so Ed waves back.

She wanders over to a slender metal obelisk. What is this?

Ed told her she might as well have a good look.

It’s a camera and it’s watching you! They were installed along the border after the Mexican American war. Over 200 if I remember right.

Only later did she learn drug cartels utilize surveillance drones to track packages and use underground tunnels for drug runners. She finally understood why Ed accepted, or at least tolerated, the Border patrol.

The small group walks along the fence stopping to peer through giant bars into Mexico. Among the cacti, mesquite and juniper discarded water bottles, clothes, empty food containers of all sorts litter the ground; the only remnants of people in transition hoping for a new life.

A quilt exhibit constructed with objects found along the Tucson border sector documents travelers who didn’t make it. The names of migrant deaths are printed on pieces of denim or shirt fabric. One quilt lists the ages, causes of death, of unknown skeletal remains. Other quilts display beautiful scenes of mountains constructed with found blankets, baby clothes, hats, shoes, rosaries. It’s a painful somber exhibit.

Migrants bet their lives for a chance to begin anew, searching for the lifeline of support. While the newborn calf found hers, many migrants are not so fortunate. u