They Keep Dying

Victor Nicolas Sanchez, age 30, Oaxaca, drowning . . .

Santos Orosco Aguilar, 1, Michoacan, drowning . . .

Francisco Segura Saldana, 15, Guanajuato, heat stress . . .

Eliseo Santos Carmona, 24, Oaxaca, fell off cliff . . .

--From a list of migrant deaths that have occurred since 1995 at the California-Mexico border.

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The list runs for 10 pages, single-spaced, one line for each entry. It begins with David Hernandez Zuniga and ends, at least for now, with entry No. 613: Sonia Martin Lopez, a 29-year-old from Michoacan state whose cause of death is noted as “car accident.”

As documents go, this list, circulated by human rights activists who keep watch on the border, is an understated piece of work. It provides only a few, unadorned bits of information--name, when available, age, home state, cause of death, that sort of thing.

The sparse details, though, suggest fuller narratives. The imagination works to fill in the blanks. It’s possible in this way to see the 1-year-old from Michoacan sliding away from his mother as she paddles awkwardly across the All-American Canal. It is possible to hear the 24-year-old man from Oaxaca scream as he tumbles in the night over the cliff.

Jose Guadalupe Martinez, 25, Michoacan, burned . . .

Modesta Lopez, 27, Morelos, dehydration . . .

Juan Ochoa Valencia, 78, Michoacan, stroke . . .

Irma Estrada Gutierrez, 17, Morelos, heat stress . . .

The list can raise questions: What drove the 78-year-old to attempt the crossing one more time? Did Irma Estrada go mad at the end like so many others who die in the desert, ripping off clothes, running in circles? Or did she succumb, as they sometimes will do, in the quiet way, leaving a note in a shoe, perhaps, making a pillow of her belongings, curling up on the desert floor in surrender?

The list does not tell.

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There was a time when crossing the border was not difficult. Those who lacked documentation would mass at the border south of here at San Ysidro and surge across. If they were caught, they simply came back again the next night. Yes, there were hazards, but the feel of the border was that of a surreal playground, of one big game of tag.

The game ended in the mid-1990s. A recession was on, and immigrants in general, and illegal immigrants in particular, came to be seen as an economic drain. Politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, rushed south for photo ops and full-throated sound bites about “invaders.” In this climate, Operation Gatekeeper was born.

A high, steel fence was erected from the sea to the canyons. The number of federal agents almost doubled. The idea was to drive the action east into rugged desert and hill country. This would make migrants easier to spot and catch. It also would make the crossing more treacherous and thus, in theory, less inviting.

Of course the fence would do nothing to change the larger social dynamics caused by a poor country neighboring a rich one. Nor would the fence pick a single peach, park a car or perform any of the other low-paying jobs that do not seem to get done in California unless people come from the south to do them.

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When it comes to border policy, reliable statistics can be difficult to come by. Whether Operation Gatekeeper has stemmed the flow of illegal immigration at all remains a debatable point. What cannot be disputed is the rising body count. Prior to Gatekeeper, said Roberto Martinez, a human rights activist who monitors the border, “we documented probably no more than 23 deaths in one year. Now we are documenting 120 to 140 deaths a year.”

There is, though, some cause for hope. As the economy has turned, so, too, might the politics. A week ago, the new president of the United States went south to meet with the new president of Mexico. George W. Bush and Vicente Fox emerged from their session with a joint statement that described migration as “one of the major ties that bind our societies.” They called for “an orderly framework for migration, which ensures humane treatment, legal security and dignified labor conditions,” and they spoke of a need for a “mature dialogue,” for “respect.”

Yes, these were only words, but so, too, were “they keep coming” and “we’ve lost control of our borders,” and all the other snarling battle cries of the anti-immigration 1990s. Maybe the softer language of the new presidents marks the beginning of something. In the meantime. . . .

Pedro Perez Pedroza, 32, Tlaxcala, drowning . . .

Margarit Jarquin Perez, 17, Oaxaca, hypothermia . . .

Ruben Mendoza Sanchez, 48, Michoacan, dehydration . . .

Jose Espinoza, 21, Nayarit, fell off the fence. . . .