I know most everyone knows about the father and daughter who dies — drowned in the Rio Grande. Their names were . Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria. It is an image I can’t get out of my mind. And to make matters worse it is everywhere. It is the image of a father and daughter, and no, it isn’t like the one of me and my daughter. Although it should be. No, it is similar both of them together, her little hand around his shoulders. Except for one minor detail... they are both drowned. They won’t ever laugh again or cry or do all the little things that fathers and daughters do.
The irony is that they actually made it across the Rio Grande to the US river bank. But as he turned to go back and help his wife the young girl followed him. What must he have been thinking as he watched her plunge out to him arms outstretched while he shouted “No!” Or when he got his arms around her only to have the current suck them down.
The river gave them up not too long after. But it was too late.
Here is the kicker. It didn’t have to happen. This Salvadoran family was trying to seek asylum in the USA. I don’t know if they’d have qualified or been sent back. What I do know is they had waited for months in the harsh desert with dwindling hope and the knowledge that America, the promised land, was only a little bit away - if they could get there they could then ask for asylum.
So they tried and failed. The father and his 23 month old daughter lost their lives. And for what? So Trump and his supporters could look tough? So a manufactured crisis on the border would result in enough money to build the wall? A crisis that is quickly becoming real as people are forced to try to get around the system of asylum and Border Patrol agents lock up families, separate the children and then don’t provide them with blankets, or diapers or even toothpaste? People argue that these are not concentration camps - but that, I suspect, is only to make themselves feel better. Call them what you want but to the children and families these are literal Hell.
I keep going back in my mind to that picture and all that it represented. It represented the hopes of a father dashed. It represented a million laughs and quiet smiles and sleepy snuggles that never will be. It represented years and years of growth, learning, joy and sadness that this girl will never have.
I’m sad for the father and daughter. I am sad that his wife and others will have to go on without the child and him. And I am sad for my country which I don’t recognize right now. The lack of empathy and human decency is shocking. You can’t even feel badly that a 23 month-old lost their life without someone saying “They shouldn’t have tried to cross illegally. What a joke.”
I shouldn’t be shocked but I am. I thought our country was better than this. I thought Trump was an aberration. But maybe he is a reflection of us. Or at least of the ugliest parts of us. Which I guess were bigger than we ever imagined.