Echo Times

Issue date: 5/16/05 Section: A&E

Media Credit: Fatima Paiva Loder plays with her newly adopted pitbull in her San Rafael home.

She had a stable life in Brazil, a supportive family, a large group of friends and was getting ready to begin her courses in a prominent university. However, something was absent in her life. Bia Loder was soon making plans to leave her life in Brazil and immigrate to the United States to fill her missing void. Loder fled Brazil to live a love story.
Loder met her boyfriend, Alvaro Santiago, when she was only 15. It was love at first sight. Four years after they became a couple, they faced their first problem: separation.
Santiago and his family abruptly moved to California for financial reasons. His absence in Loder's life soon became a struggle. She decided to follow her heart by also moving to California. She tried to get a visa to enter the United States three times and got rejected with each of her attempts. "It was the biggest disappointment of my life. I felt humiliated and got really depressed," she said. "All I wanted then was to enter the United States, somehow, to be with my boyfriend. So I decided that I would do that by crossing the border."
In order for Loder to get to the U.S, she would first have to travel across the sea to Mexico, and finish her travels at the dangerous southern U.S. border. At just 19, Loder went to Mexico with a friend to meet the coyote (trafficker) they hired who would help them immigrate to the U.S. "I didn't tell my family that I was going to cross the border. Otherwise they wouldn't let me do it. They thought I had a visa," she said.
Loder and her friend first stayed in Mexico City for a day and then traveled to Tijuana. From Tijuana, they were told by the coyote to catch a bus and go to the city of Sonoitas. It was a six-hour ride of tension and anxiety. "The bus didn't have an air conditioner. Some windows in the bus would open and not close and some wouldn't open at all. The road was sandy and bumpy. Sometimes you could see a cloud of dust in the bus. The people in the bus seemed very poor. Some of them were carrying live chickens. The view from the bus was quite depressing," she said.
"There were cliffs all over the road and you could see cars that had fallen off these cliffs. Along the road you could also see flowers and crosses honoring the people that had died there. It was something that I had never experienced in my life," said Loder.

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