The Deported: Lines of Flight through Nogales, Sonora

After Francisco Olachea was deported to Nogales, Mexico, the trained nurse began to walk the city streets with medical supplies in his backpack, earning the reputation of “la ambulancia caminante” (“the walking ambulance”). Realizing that Central American asylum seekers are routinely turned away from Mexican hospitals, Francisco—whose nickname is Panchito—repurposed a worn-out van into a free ambulance for migrants and other vulnerable populations. This chapter traces Panchito’s many conversions, transformations, and becomings—arguing that the sacred threatens the profane world of things in its impulse for rupture and change. Panchito says he arrived in Nogales drunk and barefoot. He slept in a cemetery, believing his life to be over. But he made a home out of this tierra entre medio, or nepantla. The sacred and sanctuary are most comfortable here—in the in-between, not interested in arriving or settling down in one place.