“The fact that the deaths continue at such high numbers despite widespread indications that fewer people are crossing the border has led many experts to conclude that illegal border crossers face a deadlier trek than ever across Arizona’s desert,” McCombs writes.

It is hot in the desert.

Migrants who can’t keep up with groups are left to die.

If you haven’t seen the newspaper’s database on migrant crossing deaths, it is a worthwhile resource.

In Phoenix, with upcoming hearings on whether SB1070 should be enjoined, and heated primaries focused on illegal immigration, the “deadlier trek” is sometimes forgotten. Or the global forces that drive illegal immigration, which I write about in one chapter in my book.

I worked for over a year on what seemed to be a never-ending project,  the book about undocumented immigrants in the Phoenix area.

I reported like crazy. This picture  shows me reporting. Yep, you got it. The grey-haired woman with the notebook. I took a lot of notes. I translated from Spanish to English as I took notes. Then, at night, I went over all my reporting and then I closed my eyes and listened to Tibetan gong sounds on my iPhone.

Then the next day, I’d write. This picture below shows me writing. Or, at least, thinking about writing.

And this picture below shows me relaxing with my husband after I finished the book for real.

I relaxed for two weeks. You didn’t see me on these pages. You would have seen me in the Sonoran Desert, though, hiking around, looking for Mexican poppies and lupine.

It was my first real vacation in over a year.

The book won’t come out until August, so now  it’s time to write again. I’m working on a post about Minutemen. Stay tuned. I will be back really, really soon. Just as soon as I get a couple of documents.

And down the road, as we near publication dates, I will  redesign the website, too, so you will be able to meet the real-life characters in the book via video and podcasts. And, also, I really want to take polls. I want to see what you think about, say, Minutemen.

Would you like to read about them and their connections to highly placed politicos in Arizona?

I hope so, because that is the topic of my  next post.

The store had closed. I was disappointed, because I  had wanted to write about people who eat chapulines for my book. Grasshoppers are eaten by indigenous Mexicans, and they’re a great source of protein.

I swear I’m not making this up,  but the very next day I met a source for an interview. As he walked in the room, he carried a little plastic tub full of fried, salted chapulines.  His dad had brought them up to Arizona from the Mexican state of Guerrero.  Here is a picture I took of the tub of grasshoppers.

Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

The man told me that female grasshoppers taste  better than male grasshoppers because female grasshoppers are fattier. This is a picture of a male and female grasshopper he picked out of the tub.

Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

“Eat one,” the man told me,  ”but first pull off the legs because they are like splinters and get caught in the throat.”

“OK,” I said.

I chose the guy grasshopper.

It took me a couple of tries, but I finally got the little fellow  in my mouth.

I forced myself to chew. The chapulín tasted clean, salty and crispy.

God, I love writing this book.

But if he and his advisors gambled that rounding up hotel maids and landscapers would gain him more voter approval, they gambled wrong.

In part due to his “hard-nosed and sometimes perceived heavy handed tactics against illegal aliens” as well as an ongoing federal grand jury inquiry over alleged abuses of power, Sheriff Joe’s  support is tanking in the Phoenix metro area, according to a recent poll of Maricopa County voters.

The details: Well-respected local pollster Earl de Berge, who has taken the pulse of Phoenix for many years,  found that only 39 percent of registered voters now  approve of Sheriff Joe. That’s down from an astonishing 64 percent approval rating in 2007.  According to the poll, Sheriff Joe’s still got most of the county’s GOP voters in his camp, but he’s lost the support of those free-thinking Independents. And in a state where one-third of the voters are Republicans, one-third of the voters are Democrats (they never cottoned to Joe) and one-third of the voters are Independents, Joe might well lose his next election.

Which might explain why Sheriff Joe sent out a  fund-raising letter to voters who live outside of Maricopa County. A friend of mine who lives in heavily conservative Yavapai County forwarded me  a copy of Sheriff Joe’s fundraising letter. It references a January 16 human rights march in Phoenix that I happened to cover for my book, which comes out in August and is called ILLEGAL: Life and Death in the Undocumented Underground.

Before I get into the letter, here’s a picture of the march  by  photographer Kathy McCraine. (I’m the female journalist in jeans covering the march.) Do you see nasty signs? Do you see masked marchers? Do you see hooligans?

Photo by Kathy McCraine

See, the reason I ask all these questions is because Sheriff Joe, in a fundraising letter that he sent to  those conservative prospective donors in Yavapai County, writes this about the march documented in the picture above:

“On January 16, 2010, more than 10,000 protestors marched on my jails to oppose my enforcement of state and federal immigration laws.

Protestors brawled with and assaulted police. Demonstrators dressed in all black and wearing hoods to conceal their identity threw bottles filled with rocks and attacked officers including a mounted officer and her horse. The mob then surrounded her and hit the horse with sticks.

The masked protestors screamed profanities and called for my assassination carrying signs that read “Assassinate Arpaio” and other violent messages some so profane, I won’t bother repeating them here.”

Sheriff Joe says in the letter to send money fast, so he can continue to enforce the law even in the face of mounting attacks from the Leftist media, the Leftist presidency, the Leftist U.S. Attorney’s Office, and now, from this most recent demonstration he infers  a mob of 10,000 masked izquierdistas  threw bottles and beat horses with sticks.

Here’s the truth: Of 10,000 marchers, 9,997 were peaceful.

That’s according to public documents.

Only three marchers were singled out by county prosecutors for causing trouble at the January 16 march. That’s right. Three people. The first, nineteen-year-old Jeremiah Matthew Henry, allegedly used a wooden stick to whack a mounted Phoenix police officer  who was “working crowd control.” Twenty-seven-year-old Issa Emadi is accused of throwing one water bottle at the cops.  And twenty-four-year-old Sarah Grace Daniels is accused of striking a cop with the handle of a banner she had been carrying in the march.

I’m not saying Henry, Emadi and  Daniels were in the right if they did what they are accused of doing. They face serious criminal charges for their actions, and if they’re guilty, they’ll pay.

But isn’t it also a sin to scare donors into sending you money by  painting  an entire group of peaceful marchers (mostly Latino families) as radicals?

I have covered several of these marches against the Sheriff’s alleged violations of human rights, and I can tell you I have never seen any violence. I didn’t see violence on January 16.

However, a mom, dad and their two children  saw part of the melee that allegedly involved Henry, Daniels and Emadi. The parents told me they saw a female mounted cop ride into the crowd and squirt  people with pepper spray. Of course, the cop was probably trying to subdue the three protestors.

Unfortunately, the Phoenix mountie also sprayed this immigrant couple’s  five-year-old son.

The child was treated at a hospital emergency room for breathing difficulties.

I took this picture of him a week later. I slanted  my iPhone camera in order to take advantage of the natural light. 

You can see the child is  physically okay now, and he doesn’t like to talk about the pepper spray. Scroll back up and take a look at his eyes. You’ve  got to wonder what goes on inside his five-year-old heart whenever he sees a uniformed cop or a horse.

Ask yourself: Who is the true victim?

The boy?

Or the sheriff?

And she’ll listen, and do all she can for them, because she loves them that much.

During the time of the rosarios, the Virgen is taken from home to home. She stays for one  night at each home, and the people in the shadows say a rosary to her. The next day, she’s taken to another home. Another rosary is said in her honor in the new home. And so it goes.  In Phoenix, a lot of  the homes the Virgen visits belong to people on the edge. The recession, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and the harshest laws in the nation against undocumented people have all taken their toll. But the  Virgen loves the people in the shadows, and they love her, and sometimes honestly that’s all they need. Here is a picture of the Virgen at one of the homes in Phoenix. She stands on an altar  outside a house trailer. The people inside don’t have money to buy food. But they give thanks to their  Virgencita anyway.

La Virgencita in Phoenix -- Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

The feast day of the  Virgin of Guadalupe is December 12, and that is the last day of the rosario. As the feast day approaches, many of the people in the shadows take joy in the matachine dancers. You can read historical context of the matachines here. These dancers dance in gratitude to the Virgin of Guadalupe.  And the dancers aren’t professionals, but the people in the shadows themselves.

Sometimes, they dance in the day. And sometimes, they dance in the night.

Matachine Dancers in Phoenix Photo by Terry Greene Sterling

On December 6, the matachine dancers assembled at the Immaculate Heart Catholic Church in Phoenix. (This was a church built many years ago because Mexicans weren’t all that welcome in white Catholic churches. Hey, it’s Phoenix. What did you expect?) The matachine dancers danced all the way to the headquarters of the  Diocese of Phoenix, where they were blessed by the bishop. I think this was about mile or so of dancing. I videotaped it on my iPhone, and made a movie out of it, which you will see below. It reminded me how privileged I am to write a book and tell the untold stories of the people in the shadows. For me, it is such an honor to write a book for a non-Spanish speaking audience, a book that  conveys how undocumented immigrants live, love, sin, hope and pray. And one of the lessons I’ve come away with is this: You don’t need a lot of stuff  to celebrate and give thanks.  You just need to sing and dance.

So now, from the hidden worlds of the undocumented immigrant to you–an iPhone video.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZab6PeGL9c

Merry Christmas from Terry Greene Sterling. Merry Christmas! Sing! Dance! Be grateful!

Plight of dairy farmers in Arizona

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It’s just not a substantive  issue, and I will tell you why.

Before I wonk out, though, I gotta say this: People argue over whether to call men, women and children “illegal immigrants.” Journalists use the term all the time, because it is acceptable usage  in the Associated Press Stylebook. The good people at AP are unaware that calling people “illegal immigrants”  hurts and outrages millions of undocumented immigrants and millions of others who care about them.   Latino journos have long suggested the term “undocumented immigrant” be used instead. “Terms such as illegal alien or illegal immigrant can often be used pejoratively in common parlance and can pack a powerful emotional wallop for those on the receiving end,” the National Association of Hispanic Journalists advised in 2006. The word “undocumented” takes the sting out, is more neutral.  The word “illegal”  automatically criminalizes and separates 12 million people now living in America.

Or worse.

Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, once said “no human being is illegal.” He had a reason for saying this, he believed calling people “illegal”  was the first of many steps that led to the Holocaust.

And he ought to know.

This said, guess what I’m calling my book, to be published by Globe Pequot Press in 2010?

ILLEGAL.

That’s right. It will be so titled  because the book tells true stories of hate, violence, and marginalization in the lives of undocumented people hunkering down in Ground Zero for the immigration brawl, my home town, Phoenix.  ( I speak Spanish. This book has lost nothing in the translation. The stories are raw and real. )

So, getting back to healthcare…while reporting the book I learned that half of the nation’s  12 million undocumented people are already insured. The other uninsured half, about 6 million people, only cost the nation one half of one percentage point of our total healthcare expenditures. I learned this from Paul Fronstin, director of health research at Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, D.C. This is no radical group; members include consumer groups, insurance companies, employers, unions, and healthcare providers.

In Arizona, undocumented people are barred from getting publicly funded healthcare unless it’s a dire emergency. Once immigrants are stabilized, if they’re chronically ill with, say, cancer, they’re often shipped back to their country of origin. Just read this story about Joe Arvizu, who was sent back to Mexico to die by Catholic nuns.

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