Border Stories—Looking Beyond the Wall That Separates
By Shaun T. Griffin
In the fall of 2019 my wife and I volunteered at Al Otro Lado in Tijuana. This non-profit is run by a group of fiery Latina lawyers, and their purpose is to help asylum seekers navigate the almost impenetrable immigration process. While they work in the courts as advocates the volunteers work with the families who come to the agency seeking help. For a week my wife and two other women ran the “childcare corner” in the large room where the interviews with the asylum seekers took place. I stood at the door trying to ascertain if the families would have a prayer of meeting the very high bar of US Customs and Border Inspection consideration. After several days I felt like I was standing at the door of heaven but had no access or could provide none to the dozens lined up every morning when I arrived. My wife was similarly turned inside out by the experience. A lifelong child advocate, how could she say refuge to a child who has traveled thousands of miles to find sanctuary in the country just one mile from there?
At night we ate in the hotel, staring at our plates knowing there was more on them than the asylum seekers had seen in a day. At week’s end we walked parallel to the border of steel bollards and then turned to cross in the tunnel between the countries. Beneath us was “La Heilera,” the cement cell kept at 45° through which all asylum seekers must pass. Some stayed for up to three days with only the clothes they were wearing. This practice continues to this day. We drove home trying to reconcile the public and private vision of what is euphemistically referred to as the border, the wall, the Frontera, the line between us and us.
Having no good answer I turned to paint and began a series of watercolors to record the eyes that besieged my wife and I. Most of the images I painted were of women and children, those who were most vulnerable on the journey. I tried in vain to give them a face, a place to belong in the absence of what was once home or community. And finally, I gave in—I had to find a way back to hope even if it seemed an impossible outcome. I started to imagine a border of children and mothers who were lifted up as icons of sanctuary and beauty, not disdain and doubt. So often their stories disappeared. I had to refute this belief—that people could be disappeared. The border became diffuse in the final paintings—a border of hands, of stained glass, of bars bending to mountain valleys. It was the razor wire that disappeared from view. And I kept writing poems to record this experience of walking out of the desert.
A Border of Hands, Watercolor.
Border of Windows and Doors, Watercolor.
At the Border, Watercolor.
Thousands of words have been written to stop this unbearable migration, but it will take more than words or images. We will have to see each other as people first. When we need each other, this conversation will be moot. Just last night I watched a TV ad by a Nevada Gubernatorial candidate demonize the Latino immigrants at the border. It will take courage to stop this corrosive dialogue. We will have to be stronger than the hate that makes such division possible.
I want to close with a poem written upon our return from Al Otro Lado.
La Heilera
Limbed by our losses
we stumble on to the next
border of safe and certain
choices, all burden of being
stowed neatly in the ice
below. What the mind begins,
the body cannot know.
And in the blue forest
of regret, some portent
of another will emerge—
no story but the self it seems,
bound to the rope of isolation.
If we touch the fine
cloth of reason, if we dive
down low to listen, some
rubble of definition begins—
how little we are without others—
even as we’re told to live
without them, this strain
of solitude and worry.
And rely on lesser things—
a last piece of color
in the Rose of Sharon
before winter craters in.
Border Stories: Paintings and Poems by Shaun T. Griffin is on display at the Nevada Humanities Program Gallery through January 21, 2022 and always viewable online. The exhibition discussion and artist talk are also available online.
Shaun T. Griffin.
Shaun T. Griffin is a poet and artist who also serves on the Nevada Humanities Board of Trustees. He co-founded and directed Community Chest, a rural social justice agency, for 27 years. Because the Light Will Not Forgive Me—Essays from a Poet was released by the University of Nevada Press in 2019. His most recent book of poems is The Monastery of Stars (Kelsay Books, 2020).