Migrantes

The road from the countryside of El Salvador to the lowcountry of South Carolina is long and hard.

If you take the time to ask the migrants along that road, “Why are you trying to make it to the United States?” they will answer, “I’m trying to find una vida mejor, a better life.”

The journey along this road is fraught with danger and heartbreak.

"We walk on,” whispered the old abuelo, Gustavo, “Telling ourselves that if we get attacked, we get attacked. There’s nothing we can do. The suffering that we migrants endure on the trail doesn’t heal quickly. Migrants don’t just die, we’re not just maimed or shot or hacked to death. The scars of our journey don’t only mark our bodies. They run deeper than that. Living in such fear leaves something inside us, a trace and a swelling that grabs hold of our thoughts and cycles through our heads over and over. It takes at least a month of travel to reach Mexico’s northern border…Who takes care of us? Who works to heal our wounds? Sometimes we feel like los migrantes que no importan, the migrants who don’t matter.

It is important to remember that people do not leave their family and their land unless they have to.

If your children are threatened by violence, sickness or poverty, you migrate and look for una vida mejor for them.

If your house is bombed and your land is stolen from you, you migrate and look for una vida mejor.

If you open your cupboard, and there is nothing there but dust, and you reach into your pockets to find money to buy food, and there is nothing there but dust, and there is no sustaining work for you to do to support your family, but only dust, you migrate and look for una vida mejor.

No, no one wants to leave their family and their land unless they have to.

No one wants to take on the danger and heartbreak of migration unless they have to.

But some people have to.

Hilcias, his mamí and his abuelo did.

They are migrants.

They do matter.

They are human beings.

They are life.

I am here to take care of them.

I am here to heal their wounds.

I am here.

- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown eyed girl, 2020