S4E21: Give us a Desert Without Borders

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT

0:00:00 - (Chris Clarke): 90 miles from the desert Protection Podcast is made possible by listeners just like you. If you want to help us out, you can go to 90 miles from needles.com donate or text needles to 53555 think the deserts are barren wastelands foreign it's time for 90 miles from needles, the Desert Protection Podcast. Thank you, Joe, and welcome to 90 miles from the desert Protection Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Clark, and this episode, I think, is fairly powerful.
0:00:56 - (Chris Clarke): We're going to be talking about border politics and the reality on the ground. But before we get to that discussion, I wanted to remind you that speaking of the border, we are trying to get this podcast to El Paso, Texas, right across the Rio Grande, Rio Bravo from Juarez, Mexico. Juarez, Chihuahua, in the beautiful Chihuahuan Desert for the Chihuahuan desert fiesta on September 27th of this year. That's a Saturday at the El Paso Zoo and Botanic Gardens.
0:01:23 - (Chris Clarke): The fiesta is sponsored by the Chihuahuan Desert Education Coalition, among others. I'm really excited about getting there, and we have launched a fundraising campaign that is dedicated to getting the podcast out to El Paso. And we've had a pretty good response. We're a little bit more than halfway to our initial goal of 850 bucks. We may put a stretch goal in there if we make the 850. You can contribute by going to 90 miles from needles.comelpasso all one word and you can give the amount of your choice.
0:01:56 - (Chris Clarke): And I know that I've already thanked some of the folks that gave to our Chihuahuan Desert Travel Fund in the last episode, but I'm going to thank everybody that's donated to that campaign in particular, because it's just a really important spot campaign for us. So starting with the first donor, we have Peter Osorio, Marcia Geiger, Jacqueline E. Smith, Cindy Siegel, Lorraine Turk, Sandra Dumas, Davin Widrow, Julia Sauer, Naima Shea, Michael Wangler, Nancy Klein, Antoinette Brodhead, Catherine Andrews, and Nancy Cusimano.
0:02:37 - (Chris Clarke): Y' all are awesome. It is inspiring to see how much people want to get this podcast to El Paso. You know, after trying to promote this thing in print and online and in a bunch of different ways, the most successful way of getting getting people interested and excited about 90 miles from Needles is to talk to them in person. So we're going to do that, and we're also going to see what stories they have that they want shared outside of Texas and southern New Mexico.
0:03:05 - (Chris Clarke): There's amazing work going on in that part of the Chihuahuan Desert. And bonus, since I'm going to be driving through Tucson on the way there and then on the way back. Maybe we want to get an event together in Tucson two days beforehand or two days after. If you have ideas, let me know. Also, our hundredth episode is approaching. We are in the process of setting up a public recording session for that episode, which means you'll be able to log into our virtual recording studio and watch what's going on.
0:03:43 - (Chris Clarke): I have in mind getting some desert writers to read from their work. Sort of a round robin kind of thing. It should be fun. I am hoping to get a sampling of different desert writers with different styles and once we get some of the details nailed down, which I'm pretty sure will be by next Friday, we will let you know the details. We're going to be charging admission to this thing, but it's going to be sliding scale based on your own capacity to pay.
0:04:08 - (Chris Clarke): All of you that have been listening to the podcast and supporting it for the last few years are responsible for us having made it this close to 100 episodes. In the next five or six weeks, we'll make it to the hundredth one and we couldn't have done it without you, so thank you for that. We'll get talking about the border and the Sonoran Desert and migrants and the hardships that they face really quickly here.
0:04:32 - (Chris Clarke): But on the way we're going to stop at we thump Joshua Tree Wilderness in southern Nevada. Clark county, one of the best Joshua Tree forests remaining on earth. For a little bit of nature recording by our friend Fred Belt, let's listen. Sam Ra in summer, walking becomes more difficult, at least during the day when it's above 105 degrees. Here, unless you have prepared yourself physically, emotionally and probably spiritually, a short routine walk can become an ordeal, an expedition in the 19th century sense, in which it's not assumed everyone who embarks will be coming back when it gets this hot. We walk our dogs at night, whether late in the evening after the pavement has had a chance to cool, or if my wife is making the decisions just before the sky starts to lighten in the morning.
0:06:42 - (Chris Clarke): Night walking is a year round pursuit. Mind you, going out without benefit of flashlight to navigate by star shadows is a worthwhile pass time any time of year, and in the winter it's more likely that any randomly chosen walk time will fall at night anyway. There's just so much more of it then. So come with me. Venture out late. After 11pm the day's heat has dwindled to a mere 89 degrees or so. It's almost bracing, the breeze refrigerates the sweat in the back of your shirt.
0:07:14 - (Chris Clarke): On the southern horizon, just skimming the ridgeline, is a bright constellation that appears to have a sharp hook at the top. The Scorpion. The hill across the road hides the scorpion's striking tail but not its heart, a bright red star that one might at first mistake for the planet Mars. It is not Mars though, and we know that this not being Mars is ancient knowledge because the ancient Greeks named it not Mars or rival of Mars Antares.
0:07:51 - (Chris Clarke): Antares, the ancient celestial opponent of the God of war, watches over the deserts to the south. Back in 2006, working on a border story for the magazine I edited back then, I walked along an imaginary line in that desert to the south. The air temperature was well in excess of the 115 degrees I'd seen a couple hours earlier. On a thermometer hanging in the shade, I caught myself calculating the capacity of my water bottle out of nervous habit.
0:08:24 - (Chris Clarke): Despite several gallons in the air conditioned truck 100 yards away. The driver had started away from the truck, stopped mid stride and mid sentence, gone back to the truck, popped the hood and removed the distributor cap, then shut the hood again. Why? To the north, the Sierra Pintas glowered black in the mind numbing heat. They vanished over the northwestern horizon and kept going, following the curvature of the earth.
0:08:55 - (Chris Clarke): Or perhaps that was a trick of the intense shimmering air. North of the Sierra Pintas I could just make out the south end of the Bryan mountains through about 11 miles of overheated saguaros and ocotillos. Follow those mountains and within about two days, more or less depending, you would meet their continuation in the Mohawk Mountains and from there It's a mere 30 waterless, baking deadly miles to Interstate 8.
0:09:24 - (Chris Clarke): Even the most upright passerby might well be tempted to steal a four wheel drive truck with a few gallons of water in it as an alternative to trying to make the trek on foot, slogging through gravel and sand and shimmering heat for at least 10 days, all the while avoiding detection by the border patrol or other unpleasant types and being aware of the ever present possibility of betrayal by the men you paid to guide you across, who are perpetually one whim away from taking your money, taking your water, taking violent liberties, and then taking their leave and going through all of this in the hope that once you reach the highway you'll manage to get a ride into the city without being found out.
0:10:07 - (Chris Clarke): And in the city, if you are phenomenally lucky, you then gain the chance to clear tables or harvest cotton or mow lawns in Phoenix whose each square meter drinks each day 10 times the water it would have taken to save the lives of those you left behind. You collapsed and staring dully skyward in the Growler Valley. I stood there almost 20 years ago and imagined making that trek, or more accurately, tried to imagine it, and I felt unequal.
0:10:44 - (Chris Clarke): I spent a minute or two desiring to meet the kind of person who could make that trek, until I remembered that I had met them in bars and at stores and restaurants and at work and at parties. I had met them almost every single day of my life since the Clinton administration barricaded all the safer places to cross without documents. San Diego, El paso, Nogales. In 1996, the Clinton administration started the American tradition of shunting teenagers and young mothers and children into the Sonoran Desert's hottest outback on the assumption that if enough of them died, few would follow.
0:11:30 - (Chris Clarke): If that assumption bore fruit, it was entirely strange fruit in the Billie Holiday sense. And all that came after was merely intensification and elaboration. Even the most horrifying of news over the past weeks, with slack souled venal men hiding their identities while arresting children, their grandmothers, their working parents. Atrocity piles on atrocity. So far in 2025, according to the Humane Borders migrant Death Map, Authorities have documented 42 findings of remains of migrants.
0:12:09 - (Chris Clarke): More than two thirds of those found had been laying in the desert for at least six months. Enough time for their bones to have shed their burden of flesh. Enough time for those bones to have begun the slow process of crumbling into dust. Attempts to cross the border in Arizona have slackened in recent months, in part due to the unpredictability of ice raids, in part because the El Paso area has become a route of choice for migrants.
0:12:39 - (Chris Clarke): But the Arizona desert is still giving up skeletons, a backlog of skeletons from previous years. By this point last year, authorities had recorded 63 instances of human remains in the Arizona desert, nearly half of them dead less than a week. Flesh melts away. Bones disarticulate, scatter. Decompose. Identification papers last longer. Of the 200 plus bodies found in the Arizona desert since January 1, 2024, we know the names of 86 of them.
0:13:21 - (Chris Clarke): Martha Caracheo Paramo. Aguida Vasquez Reynoso. Rosalina Varelas Angulo. These were not nameless people. They were known. They were loved. Jesus Estrada Marquez. Alejandro Aguayo Flores. Jesus Alatorre Avina.  Each had their own reasons for making the trek. Gerdi Barrios Olivares. Francisco Betancourt Cabrera. Some were fleeing violence and tyranny. Claudio Bruno Castro. Jaime Cabrera Zavala. Erika Cagal Chagala. 
0:14:16 - (Chris Clarke): Some came because of economic hardship at home. Soterio Calel Lopez. Santiago Carlos Santos. Fernanda Carrillo De La Cruz . Some looked forward to joining loved ones in Phoenix, in Las Vegas, in Chicago. Arnoldo Castillo Canaca. Carlos Castillo Cortes. Cristian Cojon Castro. To say that some of them were unprepared for the rigors of crossing the desert is a hell of an understatement. Last January I pulled over to the side of the border road and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. A flash of red had caught my eye.
0:15:08 - (Chris Clarke): It was a brightly colored children's fleece blanket draped carefully atop a young saguaro, as though it was waiting for someone to grab it and toss it in the nearest washing machine. Nearby was what seemed an entire thrift store worth of clothing. A pinstripe dress shirt had clearly been taken care of extremely well. Aside from its location at the the moment, there were still creases in the sleeves, an athletic jacket that looked new, thermal underwear and gym pants.
0:15:44 - (Chris Clarke): It was 80 degrees despite the time of year. I imagined the migrants making it past the wall, looking northward across the Sonoran Desert, and jettisoning everything they suddenly deemed dispensable as they contemplated their next few days and the 60 or 70 miles to Interstate 8. Three days later, 220 miles east and 3,000 feet higher in elevation, 22 year old Gherdi Barrios Olivares would be found by the side of Route 80 at the south end of the Chiricahua Mountains.
0:16:18 - (Chris Clarke): The medical examiner determined that he had likely died of hypothermia in the previous 24 hours. Prepare for too much heat and the desert will quite happily go in the other direction to kill you. On that same day, three human skeletons were found in the remote reaches of the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. They still remain unidentified. Of the more than 200 souls whose mortal coils have been found in the last 18 months, we know the ages of 81 of them.
0:16:53 - (Chris Clarke): Those ages average at 33 years in a few months. The oldest, 70 year old, Antonia Robledo Verdugo, was killed when the vehicle her coyote was driving flipped over near Arivaca. The youngest, Ana Reyes Camarillo, 17 years old, died of heat injury in late June of last year. She was 35 miles from Interstate 8 and just 17 miles from the town of Ajo. And with temperatures peaking at 111 degrees Fahrenheit in Ajo that week, both those destinations might as well have been on the moon.
0:17:36 - (Chris Clarke): Her brother, 19 year old Jose, was found dead three miles away, roughly in the direction of Ajo. They had hailed from the small pueblo of Malacate near Alpatlahuak in the state of Veracruz. A verdant ferny community clinging to the side of misty conifer clad mountains. How memories of that abundantly watered place must have plagued them both in their last hours, aching and delirious as Antares watched helplessly the from sky in the direction of home and family.
0:18:15 - (Chris Clarke): Two days after the pair were found, a neighbor in nearby Manzanita, Veracruz wrote this on Facebook in Spanish. Jose Miguel Reyes Camarillo, 19 years old. Ana Cristina Reyes Camarillo, 17 years old. From the community of Malacate Alpatlahuak. Eternal rest. They were only looking for the American dream. Humane Borders' records stretch back to 1981. From that year until the end of December 1999, the database holds 134 records of human remains found in the Arizona desert that were judged to have belonged to migrants.
0:18:59 - (Chris Clarke): Since January 1, 2000, 4256 more bodies have been found there. A total of 4390 dead who have actually been found in Arizona. Likely double that number as yet unfound. People who simply vanished. People who no one knows they need to look for. We regard graveyards as sacred land. Sites of slaughter and battle are hallowed ground. This Sonoran Desert has been sanctified by too many sacrifices. At some point we will need to honor this landscape in appropriate fashion.
0:19:46 - (Chris Clarke): Until that day, the heart of the scorpion bleeds over the southern deserts. The anti war star stands witness to our war on the poor. We have looted the Americas for centuries. Quien siem bra vejos recoje tempestares? These are the kinds of people I want as neighbors. They have shown they can persevere. They have shown devotion to those they love. They have walked through the valley of the pale shadow of death and yet embraced joy.
0:20:32 - (Chris Clarke): They should not have had to make that trek. The border is itself an atrocity, a meaningless abstract flag waved to stoke hate by people who had never been within a thousand miles of the border place. The border is a lynching rope and we would do well to cut it down, to cut it asunder, to relegate it to a receding, mortifying historical obsolescence. Let people escaping tyranny come here as they will, and let us rid this place of tyranny as well as part of our usual obligation as hosts.
0:21:17 - (Chris Clarke): Let people seeking opportunity come when that opportunity knocks. Let families separated not just by orange tyrants but by decades of quiet warfare and endless miles of summer desert, reunite as they wish. Let them go home for Christmas and weddings by assuring them that they'll be able to return safely afterward. Let the desert return to the wildlife, the visitors, the native people who've been tending it since long before James Gadsden drew a line in the sand and called it something real.
0:21:52 - (Chris Clarke): Let Antares gaze down once more on a landscape of joy and peace. Let that shift happen and soon let us at long last be neighbors. And that's it for this episode of 90 Miles from Needles, the Desert Protection Podcast. In addition to the wonderful folks I thanked earlier for donating to the Chihuahuan Desert Travel Fund, which is at 90 miles from needles.com elpaso I also want to give a big shout out to Nancy Roth, who is a first time donor to our general fund, our Desert Defenders Fund, and another shout out to Sandra Dumas, who being an excellent friend, decided to give both to the Chihuahuan Desert Travel Fund and to the Desert Defenders General Fund.
0:22:47 - (Chris Clarke): Thank you both. Thanks as well to Joe Jeffrey, our voiceover guy, and Martine Mancia, our podcast artwork creator, as well as Fred Bell, our nature sound recordist. Our theme song, Moody Western is by Brightside Studio. Other music in this episode is by Orchestralis and Score Wizards. This is being published on the 4th day of the month of July, so enjoy. If you do that sort of thing, be sure that your dogs and cats and, you know, ferrets and pot bellied pigs are secure against the possibility of being terrified by fireworks, firecrackers, gunshots.
0:23:28 - (Chris Clarke): Depending on where you live, you may have some of each of all of those. More dogs and cats go missing on July 4th or the weekend thereof than in any other similar span of time throughout the year. Makes me really glad that my pit bull has finally gone basically deaf. It's a hassle the rest of the time, but on the 4th of July it is a blessing. This episode has got me very grateful for the people that make it through the Sonoran Desert and on through the gauntlet of Border Patrol checkpoints and ICE raids and General MAGA Yahoo nonsense.
0:24:04 - (Chris Clarke): In order to become my neighbors and my friends, it occurred to me recently that if the migrants getting rounded up were the threat to society that the administration claims they are, wouldn't masked ICE agents rounding them up have come under fire? At this point, just somewhere it's clear they are rounding up peaceful, non violent people who are, yes, have broken a law by coming in without authorization, without the proper paperwork.
0:24:31 - (Chris Clarke): Except for, of course, all the people getting rounded up that are doing everything legally or who are American citizens or enrolled members of Native American nations. But you keep hearing that, well, they broke a law by coming into the country illegally. Here's something to chew on. You can bring it up. And if you're in an argument this weekend over the barbecue with your uncle, if you've ever made income you didn't account for on your tax return, selling things at a garage sale or helping a friend move and they give you 200 bucks or taking a job off the books, you have committed a crime that is considered significantly more serious than entering the country without authorization.
0:25:14 - (Chris Clarke): If you've ever decided to sail through a stoplight because you misjudged how long that yellow was going to last, you have committed a crime that is far more serious than entering the country without authorization. Just food for thought. Anyway, we're going to get away from my voice for the next couple episodes. If all goes well. I mean, I will be here, but we'll have other people to talk to as well.
0:25:39 - (Chris Clarke): Good interviews. Going to be heading up to the Sierra Club California Nevada Desert Committee meeting in the White Mountains the first weekend of August. And there are usually some interesting folks to interview up there. And if nothing else, the pit bull and I will have a couple of days up above 6,000ft. Much needed. Please be careful with the fireworks and I will see you at the next watering hole.
0:26:04 - (Chris Clarke): Bye now. 90 miles for needles is a production of the Desert Advocacy Media Network. 
Martha Caracheo Paramo.
Aguida Vasquez Reynoso.
Rosalina Varelas Angulo.
Jesus Estrada Marquez.
Alejandro Aguayo Flores. 
Jesus Alatorre Avina. 
Gerdi Barrios Olivares. 
Francisco Betancourt Cabrera.
Claudio Bruno Castro. 
Jaime Cabrera Zavala. 
Erika Cagal Chagala. 
Soterio Calel Lopez. 
Santiago Carlos Santos. 
Fernanda Carrillo De La Cruz. 
Arnoldo Castillo Canaca. 
Carlos Castillo Cortes. 
Cristian Cojon Castro. 
Rosalinda Contreras Alvarez. 
Pablo Cruz Maldonado. 
Iván Cruz Solis. 
Janneth Cuji. 
Angela De Jesus Rosales. 
Juan De La Cruz Mendez. 
Elias Escayon Ixtazuy. 
Antonio Espinosa Hernandez. 
Oscar Estrada Munoz. 
Nicolasa Garcia Ixquier. 
Benael Garcia Nuñez. 
Edin Gatica Ortiz. 
Elias Gomez Ortiz. 
Wendy Gomez Pelico. 
Eleazar Gonzalez Altamirano. 
Francisco Gonzalez Lopez. 
Jose Gonzalez Ramos. 
Ishwor Gurung. 
Pedro Hernandez Gamas. 
Erica Juan Hernandez. 
Jesus Leon Mendoza. 
Sebastian Lopez Gomez. 
Nidelson Lopez Ramos. 
Araceli Lopez Torres. 
Sadot Luna Castillo. 
Marco Martin Ramirez. 
Amelio Martinez Zapien. 
Leydin Meza Rosales. 
Mariano Michaca Saavedra. 
Ulises Molina Perez. 
Rosalinda Morales Lopez. 
Cesar Nah Santamaria. 
Fidel Ochoa Torres. 
Yesli Ojeda Marquez. 
Irma Pérez Silva. 
Rosa Paulino Sierra. 
Edwin Perez Itzep. 
Martha Perez Lopez. 
Jorge Perez Perez. 
Gerson Perez Ramos. 
Edbin Perez Velasquez. 
J. Eutaquio Perrusquia Mauricio. 
Rigoberto Quino. 
Ancelmo Ramírez Pérez. 
Salvador Ramirez Castaneda. 
Ana Reyes Camarillo. 
Jose Reyes Camarillo. 
Luis Reyes Perez. 
Juan Rivera Alejandre. 
Filiberto Rivera Estrada. 
Antonia Robledo Verdugo. 
Yael Rodriguez Garcia. 
Monica Ruiz Tiro.s 
Socorro Saldana Gonzalez. 
Geovany Sales Mendez. 
Javier Sanchez Quintuna. 
Irineyda Santiago Tito. 
Victor Silva Navarro. 
Felix Tobar Soyos. 
Florentino Toledo Morales. 
Cristobal Torres De La Cruz. 
Mario Trejo Moran. 
Gabriela Vaca Gomez. 
Ramiro Vargas Duran. 
Nilson Vela Lopez. 
Maribel Vidal Morales. 
Abdy Villagres Alvarado. 
Miguel Viruel Sanchez. 
Rony Xo Cholom.