A young woman I’ll call Jhovid, who came here from Venezuela, has asked me to listen to her answer, so that I and others may understand.

Her hair is neatly ponytailed, her clothes tidy, she looks composed — but her food is uneaten and tears streak her face. She tells me that people are starving to death in Venezuela. She looks at me to make sure I understand. Starving.

We know about the dire conditions generally, and we know that our Colorado town of Fort Collins, like many, has absorbed large numbers of newly arrived immigrants who fled for their safety. But she hopes someone will bear witness to her particular journey, and so we gather with my friend, bilingual author Laura Resau, who has collaborated with other South American women to help them share their stories.

Jhovid is one of the many Venezuelan refugees who climbed off a bus months ago with no coat, food, shelter or contacts. She’s 32, she tells us, and graduated from college with a degree in business administration, but Venezuela was sinking economically as she was growing up. Jobs were scarce and gangs were everywhere.

She traveled with her sister to Colombia, where they worked for five years in a tennis shoe factory. But economic conditions soured there too, so the women went to Chile, traveling 23 days by foot and bus.

“We were crossing a banana plantation on the Ecuador-Peru border and men approached, asked for valuables, but we didn’t have any, so they said, ‘You’ll have to pay with something else, then.’”

I wince, predicting what is to come, but she offers a small smile. “I gave them my cheap cell phone and they left.”

Luck, kindness and perseverance seem to be the themes of her story, where, time after time, good people—in law enforcement, nonprofits, people living in poverty themselves—offered help.

Like the time that immigration officials in Chile “gave us medical help and food, and we got jobs in fruit processing.” She liked the factory, the country, and sending money to her family.

Pero después. But then. Her father, a retired police officer, who had been kidnapped and rescued, developed Parkinson’s disease. Her family was desperate for help. Jhovid knew that if she could make it to the U.S.-Mexico border where there was a “Very Famous Hole” through the border wall, she could get to America and find work that paid more.

For the next three months, the sisters traveled north, walking and hitchhiking through three countries. In Panama, they foraged for food in the jungle with los animales. Worst of all, her sister became very “sick from the river, because the river was contaminated from dead people.”

But then her eyes light up: A kind person gave them food, medicine, tickets to Costa Rica. Then it was on to Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico. They hid under cars at a mechanic shop to avoid the Mexican Mafia. Caught twice by immigration patrols in southern Mexico, they were sent to towns near the Guatemalan border.

By the third time, she knew how to avoid la migra, and after making it through the Very Famous Hole, they arrived in El Paso. Finally, she and others were bused to Denver, where a stranger directed them to a homeless shelter, and later, a bus to Fort Collins.

Various groups stepped up with lightning speed, including churches and the nonprofits Fuerza Latina and Alianza NORCO. She’s grateful for all the hold but is happy to have found a full-time job.

As Jhovid wraps up her story, I breathe out a sigh. This woman walked thousands of miles through country after country because she had to. Determination and the kindness of strangers helped her succeed. But as I listen, I think of a family member’s response to immigrants—one echoed by many in this country: “They’re ruining the country, why would you want to help them?”

My answer: Why wouldn’t you respect their desperate quest for a decent life?

Laura Pritchett is a contributor to Writers on the Range, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. She has two novels coming out this year from Torrey House Press and Ballantine; for more, see laurapritchett.com.

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The term “crisis” also describes the border with Mexico. Water that once flowed, wildlife that needs to roam, and religious pilgrims — none know political boundaries. Yet to build this wall, vegetation was wiped away, roads bulldozed over mountains, waterways blocked and groundwater depleted by pumping. Lighting that never goes off has been installed on top of steel barriers 30 feet high.

Animals have been blocked from migration, their food chains disrupted. Now, exotic weeds, insects and diseases can use the lengthy scar as a nick point for invasion, ultimately disrupting far more than what human border-crossers can do. 

Meanwhile, the many people involved in borderland alliances have learned hard lessons from this wall, and the lessons need to be shared.

First, any effort to protect and restore what’s been harmed must engage the First Nations of this continent, who still live along one-fifth of the border, from San Diego to Brownsville.

Any “environmental protection” coalition that lacks Native American elders and professionals among its leaders will not get far. Vice President Kamala Harris and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland need to ensure that all agencies err on the side of more inclusiveness and environmental justice for all.

Second, when we neglect to listen to the voices of ranchers, farmers and other private land stewards along the border, everyone stands to lose. 

Coalitions involving tough Texas property owners did far better at getting some concessions from Homeland Security than did coalitions in other states. At first, federal agency professionals and activists largely dismissed the concerns of ranchers and farmers who said they wanted better border security, but not a 30-foot wall.

In southeastern Arizona, the situation was different. As early as 2010, the Malpai Borderlands Group in Southeastern Arizona and adjacent New Mexico developed and implemented a tight border security plan. But its on-ground success was ignored by Homeland Security’s right-wing ideologues and discounted by left-wing activists who opposed any form of border security.

Third, we need to rally people around concerns that are universally shared. One is the need to better protect artesian springs and flowing watercourses from groundwater pumping and blockage of stream flows.  At least 80% of all neotropical birds and bats migrating between the U.S. and Mexico rely on wetland stopovers on or near the border. These water sources are also crucial to ranchers’ livestock, farmers’ food crop irrigation and local wildlife, especially as severe to exceptional drought affects every Western state. 

Unfortunately, border activists failed to sufficiently recruit the support of food producers and waterfowl enthusiasts on the corridors north and south of the border to protect these vulnerable links. Now, we need their support to remove wall segments and floodgates that block transborder streams and wildlife movement.

Finally, one of our effective strategies for building broader coalitions to eke out some concessions was to link the protection of sacred sites at the border to constitutionally guaranteed religious freedoms granted to all Americans.

We rallied support of intertribal and interfaith organizations to denounce the way the wall would impact spiritual sanctuaries along the border, from Quitobaquito to La Lomita Chapel. Spiritual leaders themselves should now direct the restoration of sanctuaries that were damaged in several states. And in Organ Pipe National Monument, cultural properties need to be fully returned to — or co-managed with — the Tohono O’odham and Hia-ced O’odham.

Many O’odham and Kumeyaay youth put their lives at risk to protect their “places of the heart” while agency professionals stood meekly aside.

Since then, the Tohono O’odham Legislative Council has passed a resolution granting “sacred personhood” to all saguaros in their aboriginal homelands. This puts agencies on notice that the mutilation of thousands of cacti will never happen again on their watch. 

I believe that United States, Mexican and First Nations peoples can work together to heal the wounds in the border landscapes in ways that heal the divisions among us as well.

It’s time to start. Gary Paul Nabhan is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, a nonprofit spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a Franciscan Brother, conservation biologist, writer and agrarian activist living in the borderlands.

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