Recently I was invited to Chiapas, Mexico to assist the Chiapas Education Project in creating a computer lab in the impoverished town of Azteca. The founder, Chris Esponda, has previously been restricted from traveling by his DACA status, so journey marked the culmination of two lifelong dreams—to return to his hometown for the first time since coming to the US as a child, and to bring technology to youth there so that migration won’t be their only option.
We were about 3 hours from the southern border but right on the border between town and country—marked by a shallow river I’d visit daily to watch the locals fishing with nets or grazing their sheep, to marvel at the fireflies dancing at dusk, or to converse with one of the migrant families who’d stopped to rest their feet in its cool waters.
The shelter in town was full of them, as were the park benches and streets. So some came to sleep in the bushes on their journeys from Nicaragua, Venezuela, Haiti, and beyond. We’d see them walking by the hundreds along the steep mountain highways for miles, many with children on their backs. Offering rides to migrants is punishable as human trafficking, buses require documents, and the government recently shut down the Death Train—so now they walk.
The people of Chris’s town, Malpaso, know all about migrant life. For generations, most families have watched at least one of their young ones pack for a better life in El Norte. Before, many went back and forth for seasonal work, intending to return for good one day. Now that it’s so difficult to cross, the elders watch the next generation head off knowing they may never return.
When a southern migrant passes by their doorways, they tell me, they offer them food if they have it, and pray that someone else will do the same for their loved ones. Already an exodus point with few resources, the area has become a full-blown transit station, with even more demand for the little that is left.
Sometimes I’d walk the streets of the largest town within an hour’s drive, Arriaga— a ramshackle collection of aging buildings, railroad tracks, an always busy Western Union, and a growing number of tents set up in the shadows—and imagine what it was like to grow up in a place where most of your classmates left for good, the streets were full of foreigners passing through on their way to somewhere else, and the only way to survive is to go work in a tourist town for the Digital Nomads who’ve driven up rents so high that fewer locals can afford to remain.
I’d regularly see “Missing” posters for teenagers and wonder if they were amongst those who’ve been disappeared by narcos, or if they’d joined a caravan to the Land of Dreams.
Part of me worried that by bringing computers, we’d be contributing to our students becoming even more influenced by social media to risk the trek too, but that message is already everywhere. But by being able to access and influence that media and technology themselves, it’s our hope that they will have the skills and the voice to be able to thrive in this new digital landscape wherever they end up.
And maybe enough of them will be able to stay that one day, Malpaso will become again a place to call Home.
To learn more about the Chiapas Education Project (and how you can donate funds or donate used computers and accessories) visit https://chiapaseducation.org. It’s truly a beautiful and inspiring program that is greatly needed.
Reflections on the Wild beneath our skies and skin: the understory, the mulch, and the wild grief and bliss of living in these times.