The Furious Spinner

This morning we awakened to rain. We went out into a glorious cool morning, and I could smell the rain. Or I could smell the desert after a rain. What a miracle it was to be able to smell. And there is nothing like the desert after a rain. Everything is plump and juicy and ecstatic. I told Mario it's like being in a world where everyone and everything got lucky the night before.

We headed down to Nogales, Mexico, to go to the No More Deaths tent just across the border. Part of the reason I wanted to do this was for research for my novel Old Mermaid Sanctuary. But immigration is also an issue I have been interested in and involved with (on the periphery) for many years. As this country seems to drift further and further away from our ideals, it then becomes the responsibility of the citizens to make our ideals visible through us and our actions. Part of what I want to do with both COTOM and Old Mermaid Sanctuary is to tell migrant stories. My husband is an immigrant. Both his parents endured great hardship to leave their countries in hopes of a better life. Nearly all of us who live in this country are here because an ancestor left his or her country to come here.

So with all this in mind, we headed down south. I had gotten directions from two people who volunteered with No More Deaths. They both told me that Gilberto would be at the tent, and he knew English and he could answer any questions I had. When you normally drive to Nogales to cross the border, you go to the end of Highway 19—or almost to the end. You park your car across from the Burger King and walk across the border. Today, we got off at exit 4 and followed the truck route. We turned the wrong way, so we got lost for a little bit. Then we followed the road as it wound around in the desert for a while. Then we came to what looked like a truck stop. I saw concrete blocks which was where Shura had told me to park. All around the parking lot were men, watching and waiting—I don't know what they were waiting for; they just had that air. Several of them were on cell phones. Shura had told me to park the car and then walk toward the chain link fence. There were chain link fences everywhere. And there were semitrucks everywhere lined up to go through one gate. I'm sure there was some kind of order, but it seemed like chaos to me. The air pulsed with the sound of these trucks. The wind was blowing. It was cold. If we went where the trucks were going, I couldn't see that we'd end up anywhere. But I couldn't see a pedestrian entrance. It was like being in a very confusing noisy industrial park. We didn't know where to go or what to do.

Finally I asked a man who was walking by how we got into Mexico. He didn't speak English. So I asked a woman. She thought I wanted to be on the U.S. side, but I told her I was going to the tent on the other side, the No More Deaths tent. She seemed to think that was a bit strange (or I was), but in her accented English she kindly told me where to go. I thanked her, and then we were separated by an orange fence. She smiled at me, and I smiled at her, and we both shrugged at the divide and went our separate ways. There was something sad and poignant about our separation that I can't really explain, except that I know we both felt it; I saw it in her eyes as the bars came between us.

Mario and I went through the turnstile and were in Mexico. It's always amazing to me all the fuss there is to get into this country and absolutely no fuss to go into Mexico. Two lanes of road were backed up from as far as I could see with cars waiting to get into the United States. The sun reflected off the tops of the cars, and I couldn't look at them. The road going into Mexico was empty. Concrete blocks were everywhere, it seemed, trying to keep something out, making it barely a road. Mario and I couldn't figure out where to go.



In the near distance I saw a big building. Shura had told me to look for the customs building, so Mario and I walked toward that, weaving in and out of moving cars and people. We crossed the road and walked past a long line of men. We reached the building and I saw the No More Deaths tent.



As we got near to the small white tent with a small trailer next to it, two Anglo women inside turned toward us. One said, "Are you Kim?" I said that I was. I went toward them and introduced myself and Mario. In the back of the tent, a man stood by the stove cooking. I asked if he was Gilberto. He said that he was. I asked him if Shura had told him who I was and what I was doing. I repeated that I was a writer and I wanted to ask some questions if that was all right with everyone, and I told him I could help out, too.

The tent was open on one end, closed where Gilberto stood by the stove. Behind Gilberto was a mound of clothes; I assumed those were extra clothes for the migrants. On the south side of the narrow tent, four migrants sat: three women and one man. They sat in chairs, but there was a cot near the opening of the tent with a wet sleeping bag on it. On the north side of the tent was a table with a mishmash of supplies on it: food, water, papertowels, cutlery, etc. Near the opening of the tent were the first aid supplies. The dirt floor was wet and muddy. The two volunteers for No More Deaths were organizing the supplies.

I squatted next to the migrants and asked if they spoke English. None of them did. I asked Gilberto if he would mind translating. He agreed to do that. (I don't know how he was able to do that and everything else he did, but he did it. He was cooking. He was getting coffee. He was talking to people. If he does this for twenty-four hours a day, I don't know how it's humanly possible.)

And so I began speaking with Alicia, Theresa, Phillipe, and Caterina. (I have their last names, but I don't want to post them on the oft chance I might inadvertently cause them trouble.) Alicia and Theresa were very shy. Theresa kept her hand over her mouth most of the time, even when she spoke softly. Caterina and Phillipe were brother and sister, and they talked with me the most. I asked them all if they had been treated well when they were picked up by la migra. They said they had been. They were given crackers and water, and no one was hurt. I asked them why they had tried to cross illegally. They said they wanted "a better life for my family." I asked if there weren't job where they lived. Phillipe said there were jobs, but the pay was bad. They said they could make about $4 a day.

(By the way, in case you haven't heard, the price of tortillas in Mexico has been going up and up. Most Mexicans eat about ten tortillas a day—at least that's what I read recently and now I can't find where. Tortillas are a staple of the Mexican diet and of their economy. When NAFTA came into being, American corn growers dumped their cheap corn on Mexico. That put the small growers and tortilla makers out of business. WalMart came in with cheap tortillas and took a big chunk out of the market. Now American corn growers are selling their corn for ethanol which leaves Mexico without corn and with the farmers out of business that leaves a shortage of corn and tortillas so price gouging occurs. I'm sure I missed something or got something wrong in this summary, but that's the gist of it, I believe.)

Anyway, the four migrants I talked with were each leaving children behind, thirteen in all. They felt they had to do this so that they could come to America and make some money. They all said they wanted to stay a few months, make some money, and then return home. Gilberto said, "When they get to the other side, the chollos are waiting for them. They have guns and they rob them." I asked if the chollos—gangsters, he said—were Americans or Mexicans. "Oh no," he said. "They are Mexicans. Sometimes they make the women take off all her clothes and they see if she's hiding anything up there. Sometimes they rape the women. One man came in here, tears coming down his face, and he say they raped his wife. Fifteen years old." I said that was very sad. (Understatement of the year, but that's about all I knew how to say in Spanish.) They all agreed if was very triste.

I had Gilberto ask the migrants if they had just been robbed by chollos. They had been. Phillipe described with his hands that they had taken the money in his wallet, his ring, the chain around his neck. He said there was nothing he could do because they put a gun to his head.

I asked Gilberto why the guia—the coyote—didn't take the migrants on a different route if the chollos waited in the same spot all the time. He said the coyotes were in on it. When the chollos robbed the migrants, they always asked, "Who is the guia? Then they take him aside. They don't rob him." I asked if they could cross without a guide. They said no. They needed someone else on the other side to pick them up, and the guia knew the way through the desert.

I asked if the desert trek was very difficult. Phillipe said to get across it was about eighteen hours, but it wasn't too bad. He said they saw coyotes, the canine kind, and the Border Patrol told them there was a mountain lion up by Tucson. I asked Gilberto if the Border Patrol was telling the truth or just trying to scare them. He said they were trying to "make them afraid."

I asked if crossing was different now than it used to be. They all said it was much more dangerous. They said it would be easier if they could just come across and work and then go home again.

I asked Gilberto if he knew of women with children at home and without husbands who were crossing. (He didn't know what I meant when I asked about single women. I have heard that thousands of single women live in this country, work, and send money back home to children they may not see for years.) He said he did know of some women like that. "But they shouldn't do it. No, they should stay home."

I asked for permission to take pictures of them, and they all agreed.


Shura, Theresa, Caterina, Alicia, Phillipe, Gilberto

The other volunteers left, and Mario and I helped prepare a meal. Mario cut up tomatoes and onions for huevos that Gilberto was making. More people came into the tent. I helped get coffee. A man came in who was very hungry. He quickly ate several tortillas and beans. Gilberto made the huevos (scrambled eggs, tomatoes, onions), and then Mario and I served the migrants. We gave them all forks, which was silly. They just wrapped the huevos up in the tortillas and ate them that way.


Alicia, unknown, Gilberto

After everyone had eaten, Mario and I decided it was time to go. I shook hands with everyone and thanked them. They thanked me, too. Caterina put her hand over mine and said something very kind, but I didn't know what. (I understood some of what they were saying, even though my Spanish is twenty years gone. I think if I was someplace Spanish-speaking I would pick it up fairly quickly again. I certainly picked up the rhythm of speech within minutes. I'm an unconscious mimic that way.) I asked Gilberto to ask them to all be careful. He repeated what I said in Spanish, and everyone in the tent responded to that. They looked at us and nodded, said gracias. We could tell it was something they appreciated—something they were concerned about.

Then we left. We made our way through the concrete jungle back toward the turnstile. Cars, cars, cars everywhere. I couldn't really digest any of it because it was so overstimulating—I just concentrated on not getting hit by a car. Finally we approached a single guard who asked us what our citizenship was. And then we went on through, crossed another street, and got into our car.

Before we went home, we decided to go to the tourist part of Nogales. We got back on 19 and drove to the end, parked by the Burger King, and walked to Mexico. This entrance was much quieter, less cacophonous. I wanted to see again the white crosses on the border fence; each one represented a migrant who had died trying to cross the border.





I also wanted to buy something. If my dollars could help a family that was trying to live on $4 a day, I wanted to do that. We walked down the streets and responded as each barker tried to get us to go into their store. I enjoy the banter. When I do go into a store, I'm always amazed that they all seem to think we are rich. Today I realized that if someone is trying to live on $4 a day, we are rich, no matter what we may think.

I bought something for $13 from a Mayan woman: a rattle, box, a ceramic cat for the woman who is taking care of our house. We got a ceramic sun from another shop. After we bought it, we stood outside talking to the man next to a huge pile of cow skulls. Georgia O'Keeffe would have loved it. He told us that after it rained, like today, and the sun came out, the skulls would really start to stink. I said, "Those are a lot of dead cows." Steers, I guess they were, because they had horns. He said they're from slaughterhouses. The skulls are put out into the desert until they're just bone.

Later we stopped by a shop that had beautiful finely woven rugs. I was admiring these works of art and letting the man show me rug after rug when I realized that I was wasting his time. He was trying to make a living and I was looking at rugs I could not afford. We did buy a red kokopelli blanket from him, however.

By this time, we were exhausted. Most Americans are not accustomed to this kind of shopping, including us. And I am not accustomed to shopping at all. We left Nogales and headed home. Soon after we got on the freeway, a golden eagle came straight for our car but veered off just before I hit it. I had to actually brake on an expressway to keep from hitting an eagle.

About thirty miles up the road, we had to stop a checkpoint. The Border Patrol was set up under Agua Linda Road. As our car neared where the officer was, I got angrier and angrier. What has happened to our country? How have we let ourselves come to this? This was the United States of freaking America and I was being subjected to a police search without cause, without notice, without reason. It is outrageous. The blond boy looked at our lily white faces and waved us past.

Mario patted my leg and said, "It's all right."

"It's not all right," I said. "It's really not all right. We're just lucky we look like what their version of an American is."

Once we neared Tucson, the drive got tedious. Too many long desert roads with too many cars and too many lights. We were exhausted. Then we saw the storm over the Catalinas. And the light. And the clouds. We opened the window and breathed deeply. The Rincon Mountains weren't visible, covered in storm clouds or dusk or mystery.



We followed the rainbow home. Drove right over it as though it were a bridge. How easy it was for us.

I wish the world had more bridges and less walls.

Wouldn't that be grand?

Labels: Arizona, Mexico, migrant issues, No More Deaths

All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.