| A DESPERATE CALL FOR HELP |
| Written by Maria Elena Salinas |
| Monday, May 26 2003 |
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| It was, without a doubt, a call of desperation. The words were in Spanish, the voice was in agony: "Nos estamos asfixiando." The 911 operator could not understand the man's cry for help. They were suffocating. In fact, they were going through a living hell. At least 70 undocumented immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua were trapped inside a tractor-trailer in southern Texas. The cramped container was quickly becoming an airless deathtrap.
It's common for smugglers to pack dozens of people like sardines into a truck or a freight train, and for an amount of money equivalent to a life's savings transport them across the border or further inland, where the border patrol cannot spot them. But what is not common is to have 19 people lose their lives in such a horrific manner when it didn't have to happen.
Their deaths could have been prevented if someone at the emergency center in Victoria, Texas, had spoken Spanish. Ironically, in a border state where 32 percent of the population is Hispanic, no Spanish-speaking emergency operator could come to the phone in time to answer any of the 10 calls that came from a cell phone inside the sweltering truck.
Their deaths could have been prevented if the smugglers who took their money had not turned out to be murderous cowards who left them stranded. Truck driver Tyrone Williams, 32, told authorities that he was paid $2,500 to drive the truck into Texas from the Mexican border. He says he stopped the truck after hearing a commotion inside the trailer. Williams, himself a Jamaican immigrant, unhitched the trailer and drove away. The smugglers who were supposed to be following close behind were nowhere to be found.
The commotion was actually the most gruesome act of desperation that anyone could possibly imagine. A survivor who narrated the ordeal to a Univision correspondent said two Salvadoran men wanted to take drastic measures to call attention to the truck. According to the witness, they took a child who had fainted and intended to throw him out of the truck through a hole they had perforated in the vehicle. He said they began to pound the child's head against the wall of the trailer.
According to the witness, when he tried to defend the child he too was attacked, and two women who interfered were beaten to death. If his account of the story is true, certainly some of the deaths could have been avoided had it not been for the savagery that overcame them.
The deaths of 19 immigrants could also have been prevented if it were not for the pathetic living conditions in their countries of origin, which forced them to risk their lives by crossing a dangerous border into an unwelcoming environment. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants do it annually. About 350,000 stay in the United States, according to census numbers. The rest are either deported or return on their own. But the most frightening statistic of all is that some 300 immigrants die annually in the process.
Of course, these deaths could have been prevented if the immigrants had never gotten into that trailer in the first place. But let's be realistic -- as long as immigrants can come to the United States and earn in one hour what they would earn in one day in their countries, they will keep on coming. As long as there is a demand for cheap and hard-working labor in this country -- and there is -- they will keep on coming, and they will keep dying.
The deaths in the truck in Texas -- and many more -- could have been prevented, and more could be avoided in the future, if there were an immigration accord that would allow immigrants to work legally north of their borders to fill a demand for labor in the United States. After Sept. 11, President Bush put aside plans to negotiate a guest worker program. It's time to take another hard look at the problem and respond to that desperate call for help. |
