This website uses cookies in order to enhance your experience. Please review our Privacy Policy to learn how we may use cookies and how you can change your browser settings to disable cookies. By continuing to use this website without changing your settings, you consent to our use of cookies.
James Baldwin said, "The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers."
What an apt description of a new art installation at the southern border.
A set of bright pink teeter-totters extend into both the U.S. and Mexico through the barrier between the two countries. Children and adults on both sides of the border can play together, seesawing up and down, their view of one another partially obscured by the vertical steel slats that separate them.
The vaquita is an innocent bystander that may go extinct as Mexican cartels battle for the "cocaine of the sea."
Less than two dozen of the smallest porpoise on Earth exist due to gill net fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico trying to catch the endangered totoaba fish. Totoaba are falsely believed to have medicinal purposes and China and can be sold for up to $100,000.
Cartels in Mexico purchase totoaba from poachers and then sell them to Chinese traders.
In 2016, the Mexican government banned gill nets from most fisheries in the Gulf of California, but they haven't done enough to hold the poachers accountable.
The gill nets used by the totoaba poachers are anchored to the sea floor floor so when the vaquita are snared they are unable to get to the surface to breathe. "These nets are anchored to the seafloor and so they can't pull those nets up to the surface to take a breath," Cynthia Smith, executive director of the National Marine Mammal Foundation told "Nightline." "So, a marine mammal or a sea turtle — they're going to drown really quickly."
The vaquita or "sea cow" in Spanish, is the smallest species of porpoise on earth at about five feet in length and they live for around 20 years. It has a distinct body shape and a dark eye rings and lip patches on its face that resemble goth makeup.
They tend to live in groups of three and live on small fish and squid.
According to ABC News, the vaquita may only last for another six to eight months.
While the odds are stacked against the vaquita, a new documentary "Sea of Shadows" chronicles the two-front war being fought for its survival. The film chronicles the work of conservationist Andrea Crosta as he fights the cartels and traffickers on land and Smith's battle to rehabilitate them at sea.
"From the outside it looks like an environmental story, right? But if you dive in, you understand the role of transnational crime, the narco trafficking, working with Chinese traffickers," Crosta said. "They form what we call Totoaba cartels because they work in the same way, with the incredible power to corrupt, all over the place."
15 years ago, Hilda Villegas' family was counting on her: She needed to find both work and child care, and it couldn't wait.
Hilda was a single mom with two daughters — the oldest was 4 and the youngest only 3 months old. Their father wasn't providing the support they needed, so Hilda had to drop out of college to care for them. The problem was that she had very little work experience, so it wasn't easy to find a job. But her family was depending on her.
Thankfully, her daughter's teacher told her that a local organization called La Mujer Obrera provides great child care and could pick up her kids for day care. She jumped at the chance to sign up.
On May 10, 2017, actor and activist Leonardo DiCaprio took to Twitter to save a marine species.
"The vaquita is the most endangered marine mammal in the world," he wrote of the species, which can only be found off Mexico's shores in the Gulf of California. "Join me [and the World Wildlife Fund] and take action."
It may seem like an average tweet, coming from one of the biggest environmental advocates in the world. But the tweet has had global ramifications.
