Aguilas del Desierto

Imagine getting a phone call from your child who is hundreds if not thousands of miles away from you. Maybe you get the call in the middle of the night, or moments before you’re heading out the door late for work again.  Maybe you are a little annoyed until instantly you remember she has ventured out days maybe weeks ago to traverse a wild and desolate wilderness terrain, a venture that already made you nervous and worried. Maybe you can barely hear her little girl voice but you certainly hear her needing you, needing your help, needing you to make everything right for her.

Listen to her labored breathing, the panic in her words, the pain she cannot hide for you are her mother.  What do you do? You want to know where she is as you make a plan in your head how to help her, who to call, where to find the one who will rescue your daughter.

She doesn’t know where she is. She doesn’t remember how she got there. She knows she has run: from the men who have hurt her, from the deafening helicopters who have hunted her down, from the border patrol who has spied and tracked her, from the men who are trying to make her body a commodity other men are willing to buy.

“Where are you daughter? Where are you?”

And in the last echo as her cell phone dies, she calls you “Mama” and trusts you will find her.

What do you do? You have no car, no passport, no bus or train money, no contacts near the wilderness your child has disappeared into. But you know she is out there, trying her best, attempting to grasp all you have taught her in her quest to reach safety and a life void of fear and violence.

You know what you need: an eagle to soar up from your home and glide along the path your daughter made; an eagle to search from high above the nooks and crannies, the boulders and caves, the stretches of hot sand and the muddy slippery low lands.

If you are very, very, very lucky you will find the angels of Aguilas del Desierto. If you’re even luckier, they will be able to search the last known place your daughter was at. But if you are certainly truly 'blessed', they will find your daughter, her bones and tattered blouse, for she is surely dead, perished desperately seeking that hallowed promised land that never existed – for her at least.