On a bitterly cold snowy morning a group of committed and prayerful women and men gathered near a cattle pond, where an unidentified woman drowned in mid-November of last year. This woman, who was a daughter, maybe a wife and mother, and maybe even a grandmother, was probably waiting to be picked up by someone who would take her to Phoenix, where she would eventually be joined with her family somewhere in the United States.
The medical examiner in Tucson said this woman drowned. How can this be? She may have been waiting for a day or maybe more and was without water and decided to drink from the cattle pond where the cattle, also, were drinking. She may have slipped on the steep slope and was too weak to escape from the muddy pond. We have no idea how this courageous woman drowned in this cattle pond, but we do know that she risked her life for a dream of a new life, a dream that drowned with her this same day.
May the suffering of this woman not be forgotten. May her suffering urge us to continue to do all we can to prevent these needless and unjust deaths in our desert.
Pilgrimage of remembrance 