Heartbreaking Realization: Living on the Border

By: Jessica Figurido

WENHAM – David Rios has experienced first hand an immediate family transition from Mexico to the United States. But Rios is not the only student on Gordon’s campus that has seen the tragic transition of immigrants after crossing the border. With over 2,000 miles separating the American-Mexican border from New England many students and alumni are still experiencing first hand Mexican immigration.

Currently residing at Gordon in Wenham, Massachusetts, Rios, 19, Los Angels, California, a first year, business administration major, describes his family’s transition as “tough.” “My dad followed my mom when she came to the United States and was here illegally up until a couple years ago,” says Rios. “Growing up both of my parents worked so my grandmother babysat me.” Living illegally in America, the Rios family had no other choice than to live a life of secrecy. As if life wasn’t easy enough, the Rios’s family dealt with the same financial struggles as any traditional American family. But that wasn’t all. Rios’s family struggled socially. And because the family’s native language is Mexican, as a child Rios became an English communicator in the household.

Hundreds of miles away, and affirming the struggles of Rios’s family, Katherine Stephens, 18, a first year at Gordon, English and secondary education major, witnesses’ the difficulties of Mexican immigration daily while growing up in El Paso, Texas. Stephens says that the temptation for Mexican’s to cross the American border is inevitable with only a highway and sliver of the Rio Grande River dividing El Paso from Juarez, Mexico.

Similar to Rios’s family, many Mexican families are desperate for the American lifestyle. So much so, students living in Juarez would commute to school in El Paso each day. Stephens says that the daily commute for both students and parents is common. Alike Stephens, Gordon alumni, Mariwyn Light is also living in El Paso and agrees saying, “it is strange to have coworkers, classmates and friends who travel back and forth over the border every day.”

Light, 2008 graduate of Gordon College, communications art major, says “El Paso is like living in Mexico with American guidelines.” With the population of Mexicans in El Paso now 85% and growing, according to Light, she says that there is a lack of diversity.

Rios, Stephens and Light have seen the current Mexican cruelty within the past couple years. For Rios when visiting Rosarito, California, a border state of Tijuana, Mexico, Rios describes a dead drug mule that he and his family stumbled upon, laying on an American beach. “It was an intense experience and it really is an entirely different world compared to the United States,” he said. In agreement, Stephens and Light express the heart-wrenching breaking news of newspapers headlines in El Paso, “Six Gunned Down in Juarez” or “13 Slain in Party Massacre in Juarez.”

Living by the border, Rios, Stephens, and Light are unfortunate to expect these horrific occurrences each day. “It is easy to turn a blind eye to and to sort of get desensitized to the poverty and dangerous conditions that exist less than two miles from my house,” says Light, “I’m so inundated with information I have learned to just expect the worst.”  Yet there is still praise for many families’ throughout this whole ciaos as Rios says, “[We] are extremely thankful to be living here and away from where [my parents] grew up, not only for [my parents] sake but also for my brother’s and mine.”