Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Mexican Migrants

“Honest, funny, touching and important … There is grace in this book, even more wisdom. What makes it really glow on every page is Mr. Conover’s realization that he is dealing neither with a crime nor a tragedy, but with another of those human adventures that make America a country that is constantly renewing itself … remarkable.

— T.D. Allman,
The New York Times Book Review

“Absorbing … sharply observed and sympathetic … Mr. Conover’s description of what would normally be a routine plane flight from Phoenix to Los Angeles becomes a perilous, frightening journey for these workers; and a cross-country drive from Arizona to Florida (without a map) similarly takes on the nervous coloration of a thriller. In relating these events, Mr. Conover combines a sociologist’s eye for detail with a novelist’s sense of drama and compassion … he has defiantly succeeded.”

— Michiko Kakutani,
The New York Times

“Compelling, often funny, and suspenseful … He evinces a deep understanding of and feeling for the men who must take such risks to get mere subsistence money for their families …”

—
The New Yorker

“Ted Conover has written a book about the Mexican poor that is at once intimate and epic.
Coyotes
is travel literature, social protest, and affirmation. I can compare this book to the best of George Orwell’s journeys to the heart of poverty.”

— Richard Rodriguez, author of
Brown
and
Hunger of Memory

“A deftly written and compelling narrative … written with passion, wit and authority,
Coyotes
is … something to shout about.”

—
Seattle Times

“Incisive and revealing …
Coyotes
has a very unsettling way of prodding reflection.”

—
San Diego Tribune

“This engrossing story is also an important social document … Conover is a sympathetic and perceptive observer, but more than that, he is a superb storyteller …
Coyotes
is a book of astonishing veracity, and a galloping good read.”

—
Wilson Library Bulletin

“Conover’s book is full of good humor, the kind that hears the nightmare beneath the joke.”

—
Village Voice

“The 29-year-old Conover has but one other book to his credit … he, however, shows an insight and style that reminds you of more mature writers like Naipaul and John McPhee.”

—
Houston Post

“A superbly written, compelling, sometimes funny, sometimes frightening, extremely perceptive account … humor makes the book sing.”

—
The Minnesota Daily

“Ted Conover’s
Coyotes
should be greeted with applause … a first-rate piece of investigative journalism that reads like an adventure.”

—
Rocky Mountain News

A Journey Across Borders with America’s Mexican Migrants

TED CONOVER

Smashwords Editions

Copyright 1987, 2006 Ted Conover

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Conover, Ted.

Coyotes: a journey through the secret world of America’s illegal aliens.

(Vintage departures)

1. Alien labor, Mexican—United States.

2. Aliens, Illegal—United States.

I. Title.

HD8081.M6C65 1987 33i.6'2'72073 87-6101

ISBN-13: 978-0-394-75518-2 ISBN-IO: 0-394-75518-9

Author photo copyright 1986 Richard Larson

Map copyright 1987 David Lindroth

Cover design by Tatiana Villa

Ebook formatting by
www.ebooklaunch.com

Rolling Nowhere

Whiteout

Newjack

The Routes of Man

Foreword

Preface 2006

The Gringo and the Mexicano

Deep into the Orchard

Welcome to L.A.

Phoenix to Florida at 25 MPH

In the Land of Avocados

Coming into the Country

Epilogue

Afterword

Thou shalt not oppress a stranger, for ye know the heart of a stranger, as ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.

—EXODUS 23:9

Without the help of the following, this book could never have been written. Thanks to: Scott Lankford, Jay Leibold, and Eric Green, for manuscript suggestions. Dale Appelbaum, Elizabeth Krecker, the Richard Mallery family, Lupe Sanchez, Joaquin Lira, Laurie Martinelli, Nadine Wettstein, Matilde Martinez and family, Josie and José Ojeda, Francisca Cavazos, Phil Decker, Dr. Raymund Tanaka, Rita Goodman, Don and Niomi Devereaux, and the good people of the Arizona Farmworkers Union. Brad Segal, Katie Conover, Jerry Conover, Jacquelyn Wonder, Pamela and Jay Kenney, and Ross McConnell, in Colorado. Jim and Joey Christiansen and families, René Flores, “Dogie,” Christie Evans, Rick Larson, Teresa Keenan, Simon Boughton, Marvin Stone, William MacDougall, and John Crewdson, in various states. Hilario Pacheco and family, Peter Copeland, Joe Keenan, Richard Meislin, Patricia Morales, Marcia and Victor McLane and the people of the Casa de los Amigos in Mexico City, Lie. Eduardo Chávez Padilla, and Jorge Fragoso and family, in Mexico. Bob "Roberto Grande" Boorstin; Seth O. Lloyd; Peter Engel; David Rosenthal, my editor; and especially Jack Rosenthal and Sterling Lord, my agent, in New York City. Elizabeth and David Beim and Janet Conover, belatedly. Much of my research/travel in Mexico was made possible by an Ernie Pyle Fellowship from the Scripps-Howard Foundation and the Inter American Press Association (IAPA). Small portions of this work may have appeared previously in short articles published by IAPA member newspapers and in
Grassroots Development,
the journal of the Inter-American Foundation.

Most of all, my thanks to those Mexicans brave enough to entrust me with their story.

I met my first “illegal alien” while researching an earlier book on American railroad tramps. Both of us were sneaking through the Southern Pacific yards of Bakersfield, California, having ridden into town on different freights. When he appeared between two boxcars and asked me simply, “Mission?” I knew we were looking for the same thing, the local rescue mission, the “Jesus Saves.” My Spanish then was not great, but we could communicate; and, over the next couple of days, Enrique Jarra and I became friends.

From that meeting I realized that many Mexicans rode the freights—it was a way of getting around while staying out of the public eye—as well as something else: that, much more than the tired, aged tramps I had been sharing camp fires with, these people were the true present-day incarnation of the classic American hobo. Unskilled, single (or traveling alone, at any rate), immigrant, they were here to work their tails off in the finest American tradition. The skin was darker, the faith Catholic, but in most other particulars they bore much resemblance to my late great-grandfather, an immigrant from Norway, here to make a new life by doing America’s work.

By later traveling and working with Mexicans for more than a year, I caught a glimpse of the United States from the underground perspective of an immigrant group that may profoundly change our country. Lacking here is a good account of the experiences of female immigrants: while it was a challenge for me to earn the trust of Mexican men in the States, it was nearly impossible to gain the confidence of Mexican women. This is a project which I hope will be undertaken soon, and best by a female researcher. Also, though several of my companions asked me to use their real names (and spread the legend of their exploits), nothing has been revealed that would make it easier for the Immigration and Naturalization Service to apprehend “aliens.” The INS, I was surprised to discover, often knows where they are and how they move, even if it doesn’t always act on the information.

What
La Migra
does not know—what it perhaps cannot afford to know—is the more human side of the men and women it arrests, the drama of their lives. That’s what this book is about. It is not a policy book, but a story. It relates to policy only insofar as I hope through it to flesh out a missing perspective in the immigration debate: the perspective of those whom the whole thing is about. I think that the terms of the debate have tended to dehumanize Mexicans, turning them from people into “illegal aliens.” But because we as Americans control their destiny in so many ways, it is urgent that we know more about these people who ask little more than to wash our dishes, vacuum our cars, and pick our fruit.

How to know them? It seemed important to move beyond newspaper coverage. The truly meaningful things about a people are not learned by conducting an interview, gathering statistics, or watching them on the news, but by going out and living with them. To get to know Mexicans you need to speak their language, be willing to put up with living conditions less comfortable than our own, and, especially if you look and were raised as differently from them as I was, you need to believe in the subversive idea that a human is a human, and that human beings everywhere, with a little effort, can come to understand and even like each other.