From Draft NOtices, January - February, 2004
— Jorge Mariscal
As he crossed the Iraqi desert during the 12-hour drive from Amman, Jordan, to Baghdad, Fernando Suarez meditated on his long journey from his youth in Mexico City to moving his young family to Tijuana and then across the border to San Diego, and now to his entering the lands of ancient Mesopotamia. As one of the more recognizable members of a fact-finding delegation organized by Global Exchange, Military Families Speak Out, and Veterans for Peace, Suarez was completing the next logical step in his role as a peace activist. He had come to the country where his son Jesús, a 20-year-old U.S. Marine, had died on March 27, 2003, after stepping on a U.S. cluster bomb.