The bones, says Gerardo Campos Moreno, find you in the desert easily. If the vultures and coyotes have picked the flesh, when the Wind and Sand have polished and clean, when the sun has dried and bleached, and then they lie there and gleam white among all the brown, Beige and Ochre and dusty Green. “Bone Shine,” says Campos Moreno.
it is Much more difficult to find a reasonably fresh corpse in the desert. “A body that is only since two or three weeks out here in the Bush, looks like the Bush”, says Campos Moreno. A person who once had strong muscles, then there remains only a dried, gray-brown bundle held together by leathery skin and the fragile fabric of his clothes. Often it is the stench that leads Campos Moreno and his people to a dead.
he, Too, was once immigrants: Gerardo Campos Moreno.
Gerardo Campos Moreno is a wiry, not very big man. He was born in 1960 in Mexico. Today, he lives in California, just North of San Diego. He is a Florist. His business is running well. However, once in the month Gerardo Campos Moreno drives into the desert to search for the dead.
Campos Moreno is part of an organization that calls itself “eagles of the desert”. The group was founded ten years ago in San Diego of Mexican immigrants. They have made it their task to search for the bodies of those migrants killed in an attempt to cross clandestinely from Mexico to the American border.
road through desert
The border between Mexico and the United States to 3145 kilometers long. In some sections it is clearly visible – a massive barrier of steel or concrete. In some sections it is a fence, however, is little more than a rocky pasture. But almost everywhere the border through barren, rocky, dry Land. Who wants to of Mexico in the United States without being detected, must through the desert.
die How many illegal immigrants each year to the Mexican-American border, is not known. The US border patrol published once in a year, the number of the dead, it has found itself. 2018 there were around 300 victims, which is something more than in the previous years. Other organizations for the past year to about 400 Deaths, because the corpses count, which were discovered by local police authorities along the border.
However, this number is likely to be far too low. Because it is often the case that migrants disappear on their way across the border. She’s going Hiking somewhere in Mexico, but never in the USA, where they are expected. Those Missing no one. If Gerardo Campos, listen to Moreno about a case like this, los he pulls.
The search for Jesus begins very early on a Sunday morning at the end of March. It is still dark and cold. In a Parking lot in San Diego three dozen Volunteers collect. Most of them are immigrants from Latin America; workers, gardeners and craftsmen. The area in which you suspect the body of Jesus, you have borders roughly.
another man was with him. He came by.
The 35-year-old Jesús Guzmán Rezendis had made of Central Mexico in the United States. At the beginning of March, he disappeared in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, a nature reserve East of San Diego. Many migrants take advantage of the Anza-Borrego and the adjacent Cleveland National Forest, to get to San Diego passing by to the North. You come from the South, cross Interstate 8, a major East-West highway, which is monitored by the border police, and then disappear again in the thicket of nature conservation areas. Sometimes, not always.
The eagles want to search on this day a small Canyon. You have put all the information together, they could gather about the last whereabouts of Jesús Guzmán Rezendis. Another man was with him who came by. He told the eagles of the Canyon. Some of the relatives of Jesus, living in California, came.
you freeze to death, they drown, they die of thirst
There are many ways to die in a Canyon in the desert. Even in a desert, which is located just one and a half hours drive from a big city like San Diego. And even in a Canyon, from which it is only two miles to the nearest Park, or campground, on the Americans Park their cars, if you drive out to go to the nature reserve for a hike.
However, the Americans have everything you need in the desert. Fleece jackets against the cold in the Morning and function trousers, which you can remove the lower part of the Trouser Leg, when it is noon, hot. You have boots. You have energy bars. But above all, you have water.
The migrants, through the Anza-Borrego will have none of it. You can wear old Jeans and shoes that are made out of brown carpet and a couple of bands at the foot. You rush to lie and then remain injured. You’ll freeze to death in Winter, when a snow storm hits the desert. You are drowning, if you are surprised in a dry Creek bed from a fall rain. You are sick, because you will get a heat stroke or dirty water to drink. Or you die of thirst. They crawl into the shade under a Bush and die.
There Gerardo Campos Moreno and his men find the Remains. You determine with a GPS unit, the coordinates and report the find to the border police. Assumes the salvage and creates the dead to the nearest morgue for identification. “For some people out here to have Fun,” says Moreno. “But for others it’s just a matter of Survival.”
circling vultures
The eagles work your way to the Canyon, in which you want to search for the body of Jesús Guzmán Rezendis. A Park Ranger observed a few days ago vulture, circled and falling from the sky with a lid. Well possible that there is something dead.
You can see that here people were on the road. In the Sand, Foot marks. In the brush the water canister. And someone has tied colorful plastic bands on the branches and a path through the thicket is marked. “Coyotes,” says Gerardo Campos Moreno. The criminal called, the people in the USA to smuggle.
Actually, it would be the task of the US authorities to find the bodies in the desert. “But the border guards are too lazy for that. Sitting all day in their air-conditioned cars,” says Campos Moreno. “The hunt, at best, migrants living, but not dead.”
“One or two days Hiking in the desert can even kill a strong man.”
Many of the eagles of the desert are themselves years ago to illegally cross the border came. Earlier it was easier. “You are over driving the car and said, you’re a U.S. citizen,” says Campos Moreno, passed in 1984 in the United States and now legally lives here. The number of dead increases, also has to do with the border is now guarded sharper, and the US government is always higher and longer border fences built. That is pushing migrants into ever more remote areas.
Should be close to President Donald Trump, the official border crossings, of which currently many migrants to apply for legal asylum, actually, as he has threatened, are probably still more people on the way through the desert. And even more will die. “The Coyotes are telling people: No Problem, you just have to run a little bit,” says Campos Moreno. “But that is a lie. One or two days Hiking in the desert can even kill a strong man.”
The eagles Jesús Guzmán Rezendis not find this Sunday. His Relatives with their heads bowed back to their cars. Maybe he had Yes luck, says Campos Moreno. It was already occurred, that migrants who were missing, were picked up in the truth of the border police and under a false name somewhere in a detention center was accused of conspiracy. But actually, Campos Moreno does not believe that the man has survived on the outside.
(editing Tamedia)
Created: 04.04.2019, 18:17 PM
