Artifact Reflection 4

Hi, all.

It's missing a couple parts.  I apologize.

My fourth artifact is a small LEGO helicopter.  It's orange with black propellers, maybe six inches long. It has lights to shine down (with your imagination, that is) and a grappling hook that can come down from one side.  I chose this as my fourth artifact because I wanted to talk about the scene in The Distance Between Us where Reyna and her family are attempting to cross the border for the third time, their last chance.  Their first two attempts failed because of Reyna, and if they don't make it this time, she and her siblings will be sent back to their paternal grandmother's house in Iguala, a home where they will never find the love Reyna's been looking for so desperately throughout the story.

This scene was important not only for the purposes of plot, but for those of understanding.  Before reading this book, I'd never realized how drastically divided - and ultimately, broken - families can become in the process of immigration.  I'd never really thought about the possibility of them not being able to take their entire family across the border.  In America, there are so many horrible jokes about how many illegals can fit into a car, so I'd always just assumed that they all came over at once.  In fact, when Reyna's mother left in the beginning of the story, I was a bit confused; why didn't her father just send for all of them?  Were it not for the border crossing scene, I still wouldn't fully understand.

Illegally migrating is damn hard.

Like I said, this is their third try.  The first time, Reyna got a tooth ache and couldn't walk on her own, so her father had to carry her.  They couldn't move quickly enough that way, and border control caught them.  The second time, they stopped to rest and Reyna wandered off, stumbling on the body of a man lying in the bushes.  She screamed loudly, and again, border patrol found them quickly.

The third time, they traveled across the border by night.  About halfway through their trip, a helicopter flew low overhead, searching.  They ran for shelter.  Reyna's brother, Carlos, tripped and they nearly left him behind.  When the searchlight came down, it caught Reyna's shoe, and she yanked it under the brush.  It was a miracle that they hadn't been seen.

So in short, the reason Reyna's father hadn't sent for all of them the first time was because three children, ages four to eight, couldn't have made it.  I think this is also applicable to our current migratory situations (as mentioned in the last three posts and the next one, too) because it sucks that, while people try so desperately hard to get into the United States, and have close to nothing to go back to, when we find them, we just deport them anyway.

We need to fix this somehow.

-Allie H-S