"I Am" Muteado

by Mission Resistors

When I was six, I remember the smell of fried oil in the air and the smog that surrounded my young lungs. We had arrived in Tijuana, where I saw people selling, dealing and stealing all kinds of stuff. It was my two sisters, my mother and me waiting anxiously in a busy intersection where people were running and rushing up and down like the migra had arrived.

I overheard my mother talking on the public pay phone where we were waiting for the coyote or smuggler. I could hear the coyote on the phone ask my mother: “Bueno, ¿donde estan señora?”

She responded with a broken voice: “Estamos en la avenida primera y la central.” The coyote was the area and was going to pick us up. My mother asked: “¿Vino la muchacha con usted?” She wanted the coyote to bring a female smuggler, because she heard of incidents where the male coyotes were molesting women going to the United States and she was afraid it would happen to her and my sisters.

Here in Amerikkka, it seems that fear is a part of life for migrant Raza. When it is not ICE raids, it is sobriety checkpoints set up by the Police in migrant communities like my own to criminalize us when they are supposed to protect and serve us. I remember before the last May 1st march in 2008, an ICE van was parked in front of La Clinica de la Raza in Oakland and a lot of people from the community did not show up for their medical appointments, afraid that they would get deported. This reminded me of the fear and anxiety that I felt as a young boy when we were waiting for the coyote in Tijuana.

Now, the U.S. Government is trying to put a new law in place that would not only deny basic healthcare for migrant Raza, but also make it impossible for my community to access basic human rights to healthcare for their families. I can see the fear and anxiety that my community is going through by being targeted and crimalized by the authorities more and more each day. As a migrant scholar, I feel it myself and every time I leave my apartment.

I hope I make it back…