Transborder Immigrant Tool Series: Poetry Built for Survival on the U.S.- Mexico Border (Multimedia)
A series of 24 bilingual poems, titled "The Desert Survival Series/La serie de sobrevivencia del desierto," forms part of the Transborder Immigrant Tool software, designed to augment low-cost cellphones to provide poetry and a simple navigation system for immigrants crossing the Mexico-U.S. border.
Kevin Dooley / CC BY 2.0
The Transborder Immigrant Tool is a GPS cellphone safety-net tool for crossing the Mexico-U.S. border. It was developed by Electronic Disturbance Theater/b.a.n.g. lab in 2007 by artists Micha Cárdenas, Amy Sara Carroll, Ricardo Dominguez, Elle Mehrmand and Brett Stalbaum, in conjunction with CALIT2/Visual Arts Department/University of California, San Diego/Program in American Culture, Latina/o Studies/English Department/University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
The technology, which includes a free GPS applet, was developed to augment low-cost cellphones to provide poetry and a simple navigation system that leads immigrants to water caches left by Water Station, Border Angels and Quaker help centers. It also provides geographic locations of highways and other landmarks used for navigating and surviving a border crossing. It repurposes inexpensive, used mobile phones that have GPS antennae. Its software aspires to guide “the tired, the poor” and the dehydrated citizens of the world to sites with water, and also offers poetic audio “sustenance.”
In 2010, the artists of Electronic Disturbance Theater/b.a.n.g. lab were investigated by three Republican congressmen, the FBI’s cybercrimes division and the University of California at San Diego, where Dominguez is an associate professor in the visual arts department, for misusing public funds and promoting illegal activities. The investigations were eventually dropped, and the university did not find any misuse of funds.
Poet Amy Sara Carroll wrote a series of 24 poems, titled “The Desert Survival Series/La serie de sobrevivencia del desierto,” which were uploaded onto cellphones equipped with simple compasses and interfaces. Each poem is a form of lyrical advice that provides readers and listeners with tools for every hour of a day spent in the pernicious borderlands between the U.S. and Mexico. Truthdig will publish each of these poems in both Spanish and English over the next few weeks in our Poetry section, accompanied with bilingual audio recordings by various contributors to the project. For more information on the project, watch the video presentation below.
The first poem in “The Desert Survival Series,” read by Amy Sara Carroll in English and Ricardo Dominguez in Spanish
1.
The desert is an ecosystem with a logic of sustainability, of orientation, unique unto itself. For example, if the barrel cactus—known otherwise as the compass cactus—stockpiles moisture, it also affords direction. As clear as an arrow or a constellation, it leans south. Orient yourself by this mainstay or by flowering plants that, growing toward the sun, face south in the Northern Hemisphere.
El desierto es un ecosistema único en si mismo, con su propia lógica de sustentabilidad y orientación. Por ejemplo, el cactus de barril o biznaga—conocido como cactus brújula—acumula el rocÃo y la humedad, también proporciona direcciones. Tan claro como una flecha o una constelación, se inclina hacia el sur. Oriéntese haciendo uso de este recurso o por las plantas que florecen, creciendo hacia al sol, ya que estas siempre apuntan hacia el sur en el Hemisferio Norte.
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The 12th poem in "The Desert Survival Series / La serie de sobrevivencia del desierto" warns those crossing the U.S.-Mexico border that though a sting by an Arizona bark scorpion is, for the most part, not lethal, it requires medical attention.
The 11th poem in "The Desert Survival Series / La serie de sobrevivencia del desierto" urges those crossing the border to phone for help immediately in life-and-death situations.
The 10th poem in "The Desert Survival Series / La serie de sobrevivencia del desierto" debunks certain myths about the hairy arachnids, while explaining what will certainly occur to those who taunt the tarantula.
The ninth poem in "The Desert Survival Series / La serie de sobrevivencia del desierto" explains that Africanized bees, even when unprovoked, will attack humans.
The eighth poem in "The Desert Survival Series / La serie de sobrevivencia del desierto" provides crucial tips the desert traveler can use as the sand turns to "sandpaper" and the heat suffocates during a journey across the Mexico-US border The eighth poem in "The Desert Survival Series / La serie de sobrevivencia del desierto" provides crucial tips the desert traveler can use as the sand turns to "sandpaper" and the heat suffocates a journey across the Mexico-U .
The seventh poem in "The Desert Survival Series / La serie de sobrevivencia del desierto" explains how clusters of cottonwood trees indicate a nearby spring, a crucial tip to surviving the desert border crossing between Mexico and the United States.
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