In the city of Nogales, in the northern Mexican state of Sonora, just about everyone knows Rosa Guadalupe Gonzalez Bucio.
Health personnel, local authorities, consular representatives, social organizations, local merchants – everyone knows this smart, determined, red-clad woman who drives an all-terrain vehicle through the streets and remote dirt paths in and around Nogales.
“Lupita,” as she is affectionately known, is an emergency medical technician, the focal point of the Mexican Red Cross's humanitarian aid for vulnerable migrants on the Mexican side of Nogales, a city that straddles the United States and Mexican border.
Every day, Lupita is out there, on her little Red Cross buggy, looking for people who are lost, dehydrated or who have been injured after trying to climb the wall that divides the two countries.
For many migrants, Mexico is the last step in the journey that people from all over the world undertake to reach the United States. In 2023 alone, there were more than 2.4 million attempts to cross the border between the two countries, which the United Nations called the world's deadliest land migration route.
In 2023, at least 686 migrants lost their lives on this route and almost half of them did so trying to cross arid landscapes such as the Sonoran Desert, the one Lupita drives through every day.
Mexican Red Cross emergency medical technician Lupita González talks to two migrants at a health clinic in northern Mexico.
Photo: Susana Arroyo Barrantes/IFRC
Tragic stories on an unforgiving journey
“Every day of the year we go out in the racer to look for migrants who need help,” Lupita says. “Although there are even more arid areas, here in Nogales during the summer, the temperatures are extreme. Heat stroke, dehydration and animal bites are common. But in the winter, the desert is also a deadly threat”.
It was precisely one freezing night 15 years ago when Lupita experienced a story that marked her forever. A woman walking with her young daughter in the desert fell and was immobilized. The group she was walking with called 911 for help and continued on their way. By the time U.S. and Mexican rescue groups reached her, it was too late. She had died.
The girl survived, protected by her mother's embrace. But since there were no shelters in the area intended for this type of case, the girl remained in the custody of the Red Cross until the authorities found her family.
Today, in Nogales, there are dozens of centers that each year receive thousands of migrants and asylum seekers from countries in the Americas, Europe and Asia, as well as from Mexico itself.
“We have been providing humanitarian aid to vulnerable people in transit for some 20 years and their stories and needs continue to move me as they did on the first day,” says Lupita.
“No matter where they come from, most are fleeing a difficult life and face an uncertain, dangerous path with no access to essential services. That's why, even if it seems little, we go out in the racer to look for them. That's why, even if it seems little, we leave water for them at the altars they build in the desert.”
And that is why, although sometimes the needs of the vulnerable migrant population seem unmanageable, the Mexican Red Cross offers them basic medical attention, pre-hospital care, psychosocial support and services that help them reestablish contact with their families.
The Red Cross offers these services throughout the country, from border to border, thanks to its network of humanitarian service points and thousands of volunteers who, with their commitment, keep humanity alive.