MEXICO CITY.
Despite the heat, cold or the COVID-19 pandemic, throughout the year Laiken Jordahl, a campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity, has remained in the first line of defense for tribes and wildlife populations in the border between the United States and Mexico.
Week by week, month by month, like no other environmentalist, the activist graduated from the University of Arizona in Latin American Studies and Sustainable Development keeps in touch through his social networks and media that want to hear him, to denounce the atrocities that are committed in the construction of the wall of Donald Trump.
A Spanish speaker, who learned during his stay in Guatemala in 2012, where he worked and studied at the Mesoamerican Regional Research Center, Laiken Jordahl documents with photographs and videos the enormous scar that crews of workers cause in nature reserves to raise the monster of steel and concrete nine meters high.
Laiken gladly tells his friends that he learned Spanish while working as a waiter in the City of Antigua, Guatemala, when he was a student, where he also got to know the culture of Latin America.
Through its lens and its stories in real time we were able to learn in 2020 of the death of hundreds of saguaros, cacti with more than a century of life, uprooted by heavy machinery in the limits of the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and the Reserve of the Biosphere El Pinacate and Gran Desierto de Altar.
We were also able to be outraged along with him by the death of the first documented specimen of fauna protected in the shadow of the new wall. A male mule deer, who lost his life when trying to return south to Mexican territory in search of water and food, which regularly occurs during the hottest months, and who encountered an insurmountable barrier.
In addition, we saw how peaceful demonstrations by members of the Tohono O’odham tribe, with a presence on both sides of the border, were repressed with tear gas and violent arrests, for opposing the continued desecration of their sacred lands on the border between Lukeville, Arizona and Sonoyta, Sonora.
Laiken’s chronicles also gave an account of the exploitation of the scarce underground waters of the Sonoran desert, as well as the emblematic and fragile oasis of Quitobaquito, to make the mixture of rod and cement for the mega-project.
Further south of Arizona, we witnessed the explosions with dynamite that are carried out at all hours in remote places, to make way for the new wall, as is the case of the Guadalupe Canyon, which borders the area of influence of the Area of Protection of Flora and Fauna Bavispe, in the so-called Sky Islands, in the state of Sonora.
With the help of drones we appreciate how the detonation detonations fly towards the Mexican side, a critical habitat of endangered species such as the jaguar, and where it is practically impossible that there could be trafficking in people, weapons or drugs, due to its complicated orography.
In his most recent messages, the campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity called on the president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden, on the first day of his term, to cancel all contracts for the construction of the wall and stop the purchase of land for continue to advance in this purpose.
The activist also denounced that Donald Trump is taking advantage until the last minute to advance more kilometers and pulverize the desert.
Recently, civil society organizations from Mexico and the United States joined forces to send in the first days of 2021 a letter to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asking him to establish a clear position against the new border wall.
In the letter they warn that the flow of tributaries such as the San Pedro River, which flows from Sonora to Arizona, is also being obstructed and is home to more than 250 species of migratory birds and 84 species of mammals, including jaguars, badgers, beavers and bats
While this is happening, Laiken Jordahl is still present in the area and does not stop denouncing what is happening in these wonderful lands that the United States and Mexico share.
“I have spent this year watching the places I love the most in the world being torn down to make way for the border wall. Sometimes I feel like I’m screaming at the top of my lungs, alone in the desert, about this farce, ”the environmentalist recently wrote on his Twitter account.
THE DAMAGES
- Laiken Jordahl, who is a campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity, documented the death of a male mule deer, which lost its life while trying to return south to Mexican territory in search of water and food.
- Civil organizations will send a letter to the president of Mexico to inform him that the flow of tributaries such as the San Pedro River, which runs from Sonora into Arizona, is being obstructed and is home to more than 250 species of migratory birds and 84 species of mammals, including jaguars, badgers, beavers, and bats.
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