9/6/20

By Josh Rubin

In about two weeks’ time, seven bodies have turned up floating on the river known on the south bank as the Río Bravo and on the north bank as the Río Grande.

The deaths were not accidental. All of those bodies turned up within sight of the now-fenced encampment for asylum seekers, those who came to cross that river into the United States, in a quest for relief from the desperation of their lives. They fled violence and starvation.

Witnesses, many in this group, spent time there, crossing the river over the bridge, visiting the encampment. We met some of the souls that once inhabited those bodies. And we are haunted.

As we are haunted by those whose voices still carry to us, pleading with anyone who will listen to let them finally cross that river, to free them from what now is a prison, into what, for them, is the Promised Land.

No new pilgrim is allowed entry into the fenced camp on the muddy banks in Matamoros, Mexico. There are those who leave, some one way, some another. Once 3000 people lived there in hope, now down below 700. Covid threatens in the heat which rises over 100, and the rain that collapses tents.

And bodies that once had names turn up in the river.