The Long-Distance Run
A road trip through the United States West leads to a haunting lesson about a past atrocity—and inspiration from longtime border activists, who share what keeps them going as we enter a dark new chapter.
By Melissa del Bosque (The Border Chronicle)
HAVANA TIMES – When your job is to pay close attention to our dire political moment, digest the information, and make sense of it in clear, concise words, it can be hard to disconnect. But damned if I didn’t try for my own sanity.
In mid-July, as I drove north on I-25 to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and then Denver, billowing clouds floated over the rust-colored, juniper-studded hills, and the green plains of Colorado spread out before me, with the snow-fringed Rockies on the distant horizon.
It was almost as if life were normal.
Before leaving for my road trip, I had promised myself that for a week I would stop scrolling on social media, where there were countless videos of heavily armed, masked agents kidnapping people off the streets. And I would not spiral over the Trump-produced horror show in Los Angeles or Governor Ron DeSantis’s concentration camp in Florida.
I won’t say I was entirely successful, but I did mostly stay off social media. I also learned something new. In Denver, I wandered into the History Colorado Center and soon found myself at an exhibit about the Sand Creek Massacre, a chapter of U.S. history that I had never heard of.
In November 1864, at least 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho women, children, and elders were massacred by U.S. soldiers, even though the U.S. government had promised to leave them alone if they stayed on their ratified treaty land near Fort Lyons, a U.S. Army outpost. Three months earlier, Colorado’s governor had issued a proclamation authorizing the arming of militias to “pursue and destroy” any Indigenous people who did not move their camps near a military fort.
At sunrise on November 29, U.S. Army Colonel John Chivington commanded his men to open fire on the unarmed settlement of Cheyenne and Arapaho. Many soldiers followed his order, butchering women and children as they pleaded on their knees for mercy. Army Captain Silas Soule refused the superior officer’s order and held back his troops, despite being threatened with hanging. Later, in a letter to another military superior recounting Chivington’s massacre, Soule wrote, “Any man who would take part in the murders, knowing the circumstances as we did, was a low lived cowardly son of a bitch.”
Afterward, at a military tribunal, Soule testified to the barbarity he had witnessed. The whole country learned of the horrors at Sand Creek and Chivington’s brutality.
At the end of the trial, the congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of War issued its ruling. Chivington had massacred innocent people, then manufactured a story that it was the Arapaho and Cheyenne who had attacked his soldiers—all to burnish his political career and win a promotion in Washington. “As to Colonel Chivington, the committee can hardly find fitting terms to describe his conduct,” the committee wrote. “It is thought by some that desire for political preferment prompted him to this cowardly act; that he supposed that by pandering to the inflamed passions of an excited population he could recommend himself to their regard and consideration.”
Chivington resigned from the military, his reputation in tatters. But he never spent a day in jail. Not long after the military tribunal and Soule’s testimony, Soule was shot dead in the streets of Denver. His killer was never brought to justice.
As I left the museum with all of this swirling in my mind, I spotted a fading image on a brick wall in an alleyway. Later, I looked up this image online. It was Chief Little Raven, an Arapaho tribal leader who had survived the Sand Creek Massacre and, despite the barbarity and greed of the white men who had killed his people, devoted his life to negotiating peace.
There are many dark chapters like this in America’s history. As I stood there in the exhibit, it was hard not to relate our brutal past to the present. The corrupt Chivington had “pandered to the inflamed passions of an excited population” to bolster his career and seek wealth, all the while convincing others to join him in committing atrocities. Sound familiar?
As Americans, we find ourselves again at the beginning of one of these chapters. The pages are still unwritten, but we have all the familiar ingredients that signify tragedy. With the spending bill passed on July 4 by Republicans in Congress, $170 billion will go to building a national police force under the command of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. The massive and dysfunctional DHS, created after the 9/11 attacks, was already politicized by MAGA and, under its current secretary, Kristi Noem, is tasked with neutralizing and punishing political opposition, building out detention facilities and concentration camps—essentially a private for-profit American gulag—and walling off our land borders, which are being placed under military control.
It sounds like a dystopian science fiction movie. I wish it were. The nonprofit Washington Office on Latin America has a full breakdown on the MAGA spending bill, which starkly lays out the consequences as billions are transferred from working families and our social safety net to law enforcement and private corporations for detention and surveillance.
Here are just a few key points:
● ICE and private detention contractors receive an additional $45 billion to spend on detention over the next four years and three months.
● ICE and private transportation contractors receive $14.4 billion over the next four years and three months. That is in addition to half a billion dollars for land-border deportations into Mexico and $100 million to deport unaccompanied children.
● ICE’s annual budget will likely exceed $30 billion a year, and it will be hiring at least 10,000 more agents. When combined with regular appropriations, ICE’s new budget will be larger than most military budgets around the world.
As I returned to Tucson, the Sand Creek Massacre was lodged in my mind as I pondered how to meet this moment—documenting it, weathering it, and retaining a shred of hope for our country. More than 160 years later, many white Americans still don’t accept that the Sand Creek Massacre happened. But the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and countless other Indigenous Americans have held this truth for generations. In 2000, the Arapaho began a new tradition, running from the site of the massacre all the way to Wyoming over several days and hundreds of miles. Along the way, they reinforce their connection with their ancestors and sacred places to heal their trauma.
As an American, I draw hope from Chief Little Raven and Captain Silas Soule, and marvel at their physical and moral courage. I am also buoyed by the countless Americans today who are working to alleviate suffering and provide hope and sustenance to those who are being terrorized and marginalized.
This week, I reached out to longtime border human rights advocates to ask how they and their communities are coping and preparing for what’s ahead. I also asked them, How do you find hope? How do you take care of yourself so that you can continue to help your community during these dark times?