So what are you going to do now?
I don’t know. If I stay here, well, that would be better, but it would be turning my back on my kids. And I cannot do that, because they’re my life. But if I try to go back and they catch me and they keep me in detention for a year, well, I don’t want that either, because then I won’t be able to be with my kids either. So I don’t know, I don’t know what I’m going to do.
These are my friends. Since we are all Mexicans we support each other, even though we don’t know each other well. We know we are in the same boat, we have the same goals. This one I know has her children in the US and she’s trying to cross because of them. We are women and we are mothers and we are Mexican, and that unites us. I was really happy to be able to take a picture for them and to see their smile, after all these terrible things that we’ve been going through.
This bus has a superhero drawn on it. When I saw it, I thought of my son. When you are a kid, you believe in superheroes and everything they do. I was thinking that we have to be strong, because superheroes don’t exist. They don’t exist. We are on our own. We have to have our own goals.
My own goal is to be with my kids. If I were a superhero, I would go flying all the way to my kids, but I can’t. That’s why I took the picture, because of that super hero.
How did it feel to have a camera and to take pictures of your daily life here?
These are the daughters of this woman from Honduras. She came to the shelter yesterday. The girls are the same age as my daughters. This one is six and the other one is ten. They remind me of my daughters. I’m just thinking of my daughters.
Éstas son las hijas de una mujer de Honduras. Llegó al albergue ayer. Las niñas tienen la misma edad de mis hijas. Ésta tiene seis y la otra diez. Me recuerdan de mis hijas. Sólo estoy pensando en mis hijas.
And so this one, what are you doing here?
Oh, here we’re peeling the nopales and I don’t know how to do that and she knows how to do it and she said she does like a hundred of these back in her place and she was teaching me how to do it. So, they’re my friends and they were... I met them here as I was leaving and then the next picture is of the detail of peeling of the nopal. Taking off all the thorns. So I tell them, “If I’m going to make a living out of that I’ll die” because I could just peel one in the time that it took her to peel five.
I’m between a rock and a hard place, between the sword and the wall. If I stay here, well, that would be better, but it would be turning my back on my kids. And I cannot do that, because they’re my life. But if I try to go back and they catch me and they keep me in detention for a year, well, I don’t want that either, because then I won’t be able to be with my kids either. So I don’t know, I don’t know what I’m going to do. And to my village, I don’t want to go back there. There’s no work there. It’s only agriculture and there’s no work. So I don’t want to go back there. So I don’t know.
There are too many deaths, too many people dying, women being raped, both by the coyotes and by the mafia. Some border patrol officers are good and some not so good. But this I can understand, we are coming into the country illegally. But all we want is to work. I want to work for my kids, to give my
children a better life. Mexico is too difficult.
I left Mexico when I was 16. In the US I met my husband, I had my kids. I was there for almost 12 years. When I was pregnant with my last kid, the border patrol picked me up. My husband had been deported so I let them deport me, thinking that back in Mexico I would do okay. I was here for four years. Then my husband crossed back, and I sent my kids. Then I tried to cross as well, and couldn’t. They picked me up. I was detained for three months. I was just released, just now.