University of Texas-Pan American Professor Irma Guadarrama

EDINBURG, June 13 - University of Texas-Pan American Professor Irma Guadarrama has penned a poem about the recent shooting by the Border Patrol of teenager Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca in Ciudad. Juarez-El Paso.

Here is the poem:

Who’s to Blame?

A child of 14 playing hide and seek
  With the migra under el puente negro
Doesn’t know that the game is deadly.
He lost the game – hiding, trying to make
  A run across the gauntlet pass;
Not so uncommon for boys his age;
  It’s a rite of passage in a border city
Where violence lurks around the corner.
Blood pours out of a gaping hole in
  His head; a gunshot fired from a
Border Patrol’s gun; his dead body
  Lay in an awkward pose as horrific as the
Last words he may have spoken.
  His name was Sergio. He lived in
Ciudad Juarez but died on the border.
He wore a new pair of tennis shoes.

Who’s to blame for his death?
  A border agent fraught with anxiety whose
Finger pulled the trigger,
  Sergio, for underestimating the danger,
Miscalculating the adventure,
  The border for being the border that it is,
The chaos of social and economic hopelessness
  That poisons the dreams and hopes of young
People like Sergio  -  whose life and death are
  Emblematic of a lost generation  - too many lives
Gone wrong  - and so
   The question looms – what will we do?
How will society burden the tragedy of Sergio?

Who’s to blame for Sergio’s death?
   Ask his mother, his father, his family whose hearts
Have been broken and their lives shattered forever.

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