{"id":136418,"date":"2019-07-01T12:01:13","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T11:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=136418"},"modified":"2019-11-19T10:56:16","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T10:56:16","slug":"this-photo-is-about-bodies-migrant-bodies-and-our-body-politic-dont-look-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/07\/this-photo-is-about-bodies-migrant-bodies-and-our-body-politic-dont-look-away\/","title":{"rendered":"This Photo Is about Bodies \u2013 Migrant Bodies, and Our Body Politic. Don’t Look Away"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday\u2019s [24 Jun] image of a drowned two-year-old and her father will haunt us. I hope it changes us, too.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read: Shocking photo of drowned father and daughter highlights migrants\u2019 border peril<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

\u2018You cannot step into the same river twice, but you can step into the same story again and again and again. A story of desperate need and desperate hope that drives people to risk everything in uncertain and unfamiliar waters.\u2019 Photograph: Julia Le Duc\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n

26 Jun 2019 – <\/em>This is a story about bodies.<\/p>\n

A body of water. A river running through mountain, bosque, desert and city; along two pueblos, between two states and separating two countries.<\/p>\n

I lived beside a running body of water for a time \u2013 this is what I learned: it is impossible to ignore its power. It whispers its summons: cross here. Ford the still points. Wade. Float. Swim. Drown.<\/p>\n

Once, many years ago, I heard that after a prolonged torrential rainfall the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo del Norte, to Mexicans) had reached unprecedented levels. Its floodwaters swept through a riverfront church, pulled a large wooden cross from the wall and carried it on its current. A woman who had camped out on the Mexican side of the river with her two children, waiting to cross into the US, saw the dark shape in the water. Before it surged past her, she pushed her children into the river, toward it. \u201cHold on,\u201d she said. \u201cHold on to it until you reach the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Oscar Alberto Mart\u00ednez Ram\u00edrez, Tania Vanessa \u00c1valos and their daughter, Valeria, on Valeria’s first birthday. (Mar\u00eda Estela \u00c1valos)<\/p><\/div>\n

Maybe she believed they would be borne above the waters by faith. Maybe she so despaired of their survival on her side of the river she was willing to chance it. Maybe someday she might stop replaying the exact moment when she let go of their hands in the water.<\/p>\n

You cannot step into the same river twice, but you can step into the same story again and again and again. A story of desperate need and desperate hope that drives people to risk everything in uncertain and unfamiliar waters.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Valeria Mart\u00ednez, a two-year-old Salvadoran child, was found drowned<\/a> in the shallows of the Rio Grande; her father, \u00d3scar Alberto Mart\u00ednez, 26, by her side. The photo that circulated is as haunting, in its way, as the 2015 photograph of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian child whose image \u2013 tiny, lifeless, lying face down in the surf in Greece \u2013 moved European leaders to re-examine their policies toward migrants.<\/p>\n

In this photo, Valeria wears little black sneakers and her red pants show the padded bottom that indicates a diaper beneath. Mart\u00ednez, face down in the water, has tucked his daughter under his shirt so she won\u2019t be torn away from him in the river. And then there\u2019s this: she clung to him \u2013 as I remember my own daughter at that age, clinging to me when I carried her into a hospital, and we were both terrified to death but together, together \u2013 because Valeria\u2019s arm is still flung around his neck when they are found.<\/p>\n

This is a story about bodies \u2013 but not just Valeria\u2019s body, and Mart\u00ednez\u2019s.<\/p>\n

It is a story about the body politic. About how we, the people of this nation, react to a photo that illuminates the lethal consequences of the manipulation and damage that has been done to the asylum process.<\/p>\n

By some accounts Valeria\u2019s family had spent months in Mexico waiting to get on a list that might \u2013 no guarantees \u2013 enable them to lodge their asylum request at a port of entry. The \u201cmetering\u201d and \u201cremain in Mexico\u201d policies that Donald Trump has instituted during his tenure have forced some asylum-seeking families \u2013 displaced by the climate crisis or grinding poverty or devastating violence \u2013 to try and find another way to have their asylum claim heard in the US, even if it is a risky way, even if it means battling a body of water.<\/p>\n

Likewise, the administration\u2019s use of the border patrol \u2013 and even active-duty military troops \u2013 to physically prevent asylum seekers from reaching ports of entry has had a chilling effect on established asylum processes.<\/p>\n

Organizations like Human Rights First<\/a> have proposed a \u201cgenuine humanitarian response<\/a>\u201d to the asylum crisis the administration has created: deploying Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers to ports of entry to assist in asylum processing, appointing more immigration judges and interpreters, along with making immigration courts independent, among other solutions. Other NGOs and agencies used to dealing with refugee and asylee needs from a trauma-informed and humanitarian perspective probably have suggestions and potential solutions, too. And from these we may be able to establish a roadmap that is less oppressive than the one proposed by this administration.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Oscar Alberto Mart\u00ednez Ram\u00edrez and his 2-year-old daughter.<\/p><\/div>\n

Years ago, when I was envisioning the immigration dystopia that would become my novel Ink<\/a>, I needed to create a \u201ccatalyst\u201d moment, when the public at large became aware of what was happening in the novel\u2019s universe in the same sort of way my protagonists were experiencing it. After a lot of dithering, I finally settled on a photograph of a child as that catalyst, and as it was shared and reshared by news sites and individuals alike, it became a proof and test of my proxy world\u2019s humanity.<\/p>\n

I have thought about that a lot<\/a> in the past two years, as I\u2019ve seen people stirred to action by the photographs of immigrant children separated from their parents by CBP and ICE. And now too, with this photo of Valeria and her dad.<\/p>\n

What will the body politic do with the evidence before it?<\/p>\n

I hope the answer is that we, as the recently coined hashtag says, will not look away. Because if we do, we will be haunted by more than just a photograph.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Sabrina Vourvoulias is the author of<\/em> Ink (Rosarium Publishing, 2018), a near-future immigration dystopia, and is the editor of<\/em> Generocity.org<\/a>, a Philadelphia social impact news and event group<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

26 Jun 2019 – This is a story about bodies. Monday\u2019s [24 Jun] image of a drowned two-year-old and her father will haunt us. I hope it changes us, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":136419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[224,65,53],"tags":[120,354,267,260,487,866,504,541,883,291,287,103,821,985,249,70,126],"class_list":["post-136418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-human-rights","category-anglo-america","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean","tag-conflict","tag-economics","tag-geopolitics","tag-history","tag-human-rights","tag-indigenous-rights","tag-international-relations","tag-latin-america-caribbean","tag-migrants","tag-military","tag-power","tag-racism","tag-refugees","tag-social-justice","tag-trump","tag-usa","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}