Photograph by Tobias Faucher on Unsplash
One in every of my childhood properties—and the house the place my dad and mom nonetheless dwell—sits simply miles from the sting of the Everglades, west of what Miami locals affectionately name la sagüesera. Throughout school, I usually biked Shark Valley, the 15-mile loop that winds by means of the center of Everglades Nationwide Park, the place egrets dipped into nonetheless waters and gators lazily crossed our path. We’d swerve to keep away from them, half-laughing, half-holding our breath—mystified and terrified, however all the time in awe. It was their residence, in spite of everything. The swamp pulsed with life, wild, unpredictable, and stuffed with reminiscence.
Not removed from that path, on this identical fragile and sacred ecosystem, the DeSantis administration is establishing what many have rightly referred to as a focus camp—a detention web site for immigrants that Trump has promised will maintain “among the most vicious individuals on the planet.” The information, after all, betray that lie: a big variety of these detainees have no legal report in any respect. Of those that do, many are charged with visitors violations or unlawful re-entry—hardly crimes that justify this stage of carceral brutality.
The location has already been dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, an eerie nickname that masks the horror of what’s unfolding. Within the Florida warmth, on blistering tarmac in a storm-prone ecosystem, our bodies are being caged—with out trial, with out rights, with out due course of. This facility isn’t constructed for justice, however for management. These are websites of concern, the place governments goal the susceptible—usually based mostly solely on identification, race, migration standing, or perceived risk. They’re instruments of empire, designed to dehumanize, to erase, to terrorize.
However empire doesn’t know methods to sing. It doesn’t perceive restoration—solely extraction. Empire doesn’t plant; it paves. It doesn’t hear; it silences. It razes each individuals and land as a result of it sees each as disposable. And the place it can’t dominate, it destroys.
And empire, we should bear in mind, by no means wounds in isolation.
This web site is embedded in one of many world’s most delicate and endangered ecosystems. The irony is sort of insufferable: whereas the federal and state authorities have poured billions into restoring the Everglades—a panorama as soon as decimated by colonization and growth—they’re now spending thousands and thousands to construct a carceral complicated that can undoubtedly do additional injury to the very land they declare to be saving.
This stress—between restoration and destruction—is on the coronary heart of the Everglades’ story. As soon as drained for agriculture, sliced up for sugarcane manufacturing and cattle grazing, and dismissed as ineffective swampland, the Everglades practically collapsed below the load of human greed. However in 2000, one thing extraordinary started: the Complete Everglades Restoration Plan. A bipartisan dedication to therapeutic the land. A uncommon political act of humility.
Since then, the “river of grass” has slowly come again to life. The Kissimmee River, as soon as mutilated right into a straight ditch, now winds once more—its curves restored, its wetlands reborn. Twenty-five thousand acres of floodplain breathe as soon as extra, as ibises and herons return to their ancestral habitat. The water flows. The soil heals. The land sings.
However empire doesn’t know methods to sing. It doesn’t perceive restoration—solely extraction. Empire doesn’t plant; it paves. It doesn’t hear; it silences. It razes each individuals and land as a result of it sees each as disposable. And the place it can’t dominate, it destroys.
Lengthy earlier than the Everglades grew to become a web site of scientific surprise or environmental debate, it was residence to the Calusa and Tequesta peoples. They navigated the watery labyrinth with ability and reverence, constructing canals, tending to ecosystems, and residing in deep kinship with the land. For them, the swamp was not an impediment—it was a relative. However European colonizers arrived with a imaginative and prescient of conquest. They introduced illness, violence, and a theology of supremacy that noticed the land as wild and the individuals as savage. Of their try and tame the land, they severed relationships that had sustained life for generations. And in draining the wetlands, they drained tales, languages, and lives.
However the Everglades resists. So do the Seminole and Miccosukee peoples, whose continued presence and advocacy are testaments to the ability of survival. Restoration, right here, isn’t just about ecosystems. It’s about truth-telling and honoring reminiscence. It’s about resisting the forces that will slightly us neglect, and about standing in opposition to an ideology of destruction that degrades and depletes each soul and soil. As a result of that is how empire works: it bulldozes, then it buries. It destroys, then it denies. And if we aren’t vigilant, we are going to discover ourselves complicit in a narrative the place cages are inbuilt swamps and the soil is anticipated to remain silent.
The Bible provides us language for this. The Babylonian exile was greater than a political disaster—it was a disaster that shattered each individuals and land. When Jerusalem fell, bushes have been burned, fields scorched, and groves laid waste. “How lengthy will the land mourn, and the grass of each subject wither?” the prophet lamented (Jeremiah 12:4), voicing the groans of a creation ravaged by imperial violence. The individuals, too, have been devastated—torn from their properties, their our bodies exiled, their songs silenced in international locations. As a result of that is how empire works; it sees land as territory to be conquered and folks as labor to be exploited. The violence of the exile was complete: it tore flesh and it tore roots.
No decree of empire can erase the divine picture etched right into a individuals—or the sacredness of the land that holds them.
But within the prophetic creativeness, each individuals and land awaited redemption collectively. The earth, bearing the load of injustice, additionally longed to be made entire: “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom… they shall see the glory of the Lord” (Isaiah 35:1–2). Even in wreck, the imaginative and prescient of restoration remained. Therapeutic would come—for each the displaced and for the soil beneath their toes. As a result of land isn’t simply land. Like us, it remembers. It groans when wounded. It rejoices when restored.
From throughout the rubble, the prophets solid a imaginative and prescient of return: of vineyards replanted, ruins rebuilt, and weeping turning into dancing. They remind us that dignity can’t be legislated away. No decree of empire can erase the divine picture etched right into a individuals—or the sacredness of the land that holds them.
The prophets provide us a glimpse of what may very well be, however visions should not ensures. They demand one thing of us. Reminiscence alone just isn’t sufficient. If the land remembers—and the individuals do too—then what can we make of this contemporary fortress rising from sacred soil, constructed to cage and neglect? As historical past threatens to repeat itself, we should ask: how will we reply? Will we meet the dehumanization unfolding earlier than us with silence or with resistance? Will we flip away, or will we confront tyranny head-on?
Already, a coalition of humanitarian and environmental teams is suing Governor DeSantis, arguing that this facility violates each human rights and environmental protections. Their resistance reminds us that the struggle for justice just isn’t summary. It’s authorized, embodied, organized. It’s a struggle being waged in courtrooms and communities alike—a struggle for the dignity of each the earth and those that dwell upon it.
And justice begins by telling the reality, by naming what’s occurring simply miles from the place households trip bikes within the swamp: a state-sanctioned focus camp constructed on sacred floor. It seems like honoring the ancestors who walked gently with this land, and heeding the Indigenous voices nonetheless laboring for its renewal—and for the thriving of the individuals sure to it. It seems like recognizing that the restoration of ecosystems and the restoration of human dignity should not separate struggles, however intertwined. As a result of when the land is wounded, it’s usually probably the most marginalized and susceptible amongst us who bleed with it.
We dwell in a world the place the Everglades can bloom once more and nonetheless be a web site of recent violence. The place rivers are revived, and individuals are imprisoned. We can’t behold this dissonance and stay unchanged. It calls us to dwell in another way—to carry grief and hope in the identical breath, to dig our heels into the soil and refuse to let empire have the ultimate phrase over land or over lives, to decide to conservation and to liberation.
As a result of the land doesn’t neglect. And neither do the individuals. Collectively, we are able to reclaim what empire tries to erase.
