Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Mexican Migrants (11 page)

Casually moving to the edge of the lot, the men wove through some decorative citrus trees and then, single file, descended a rocky slope to the dry wash of the seasonal Agua Fria River. Expertly they moved among stones, ditches, wires, and trash, through the dark shadow under a highway bridge. At the top of the far bank it dawned on me that, for reasons I didn't understand, this was a clandestine mission. One thing I was learning about Mexicans was that they weren't as committed to explanations as other people I knew. If you wanted to learn what was going on, you would just have to hang around. Asking too many questions was not done. Real men didn't need explanations.

A
“ssssssh,”
the same in English or Spanish, made its way back through the file to me; we were now crossing under some barbed-wire fence. A six-foot chain-link fence encircled a storage shed on our left; to the right, farm vehicles were visible under a mercury light. Rafael touched a spigot rising from the ground on the left and whispered to me, “It’s the only fresh water they have.” Another hundred yards and we were in the orchard.

We walked between many rows of trees, emerging now and then at a dirt crossroad, jumping the occasional irrigation ditch. Here, apparently in their element, the men were not so afraid of whatever it was they had been afraid of before. Always, though, they were watching, and when we stopped to take a better look at a distant flicker of firelight, barely visible through rows of trees, I understood one thing they were looking for.

“
A campsite,"
said Rafael, meaningfully.
“La Migra never catches them out here.”
For a long while the men debated whose campsite it was and then decided to keep moving. Fifteen minutes later we saw another one, and this time made our way to it.

"Yes, it's them,"
confirmed Rafael, and as we neared it he called out a greeting—important protocol when dealing with people who live outside. To a man around a camp fire, the surrounding darkness is a danger zone. The orchard dwellers, I had heard, often suffered at the hands of nighttime thieves.

Several men were seated around a fire; as we entered the circle of light one of them, Rafael’s brother-in-law, rose and shook his hand warmly. Immediately, to defuse any nervousness, Rafael explained who I was. Though we had never met, several of the men around the fire nodded—they had heard of me. Easily three hundred men worked in the citrus farms this side of Phoenix, and yet it was a small world.

The beers we had carried in were passed around the fire, and for the next several hours the men talked and talked. After waiting a decent interval, I asked the brother-in-law about Carlos and his friends. It took only five minutes for him to relate the story I had already heard, and then share the information I’d been hunting for: they were staying with Fortino, a Bodine picker, in the town of Surprise, just north of El Mirage. Fortino, an excellent picker, earned enough to rent his own apartment and drove to work every day. The brother-in-law gave me directions.

I wanted to leave right then, but had no idea how to get back to my car. And, after all, I owed my guides a visit with their friends. I scooted up nearer the fire and resigned myself to look and listen. Really, this was an astonishing place—people
lived
here, right in the middle of this chilly, pesticided, artificial woods. Over our heads, just down the row from the fire, a large piece of plastic spanned the space between two rows of trees—the men's roof, sold to them by the owner, they said. This man, I had read in the paper, had recently been named chairman of the board of the Western Growers Association, whose members "grow, pack and ship about 90% of the fresh vegetables, and some of the fruit, produced in Arizona and California." According to the men, he sold blankets too, which could be seen stashed by the trunks of the trees. Even with them, it had to be cold: this was, after all, the desert, disguised with fruit trees. Because the rows all had to be irrigated to survive, the men were periodically flooded out, often without notice. For bathing, and drinking, they had only the irrigation ditches. Recent studies had shown that the wells supplying these ditches often were contaminated by pesticides leached from the agricultural soils above them. All of a sudden, my nook in the barn's refrigerator room seemed the lap of luxury.

Bodine's was the one citrus ranch in the valley that had never been unionized. The bad blood generated by strikes and organizing drives, I learned, was the reason we had to sneak in. Management had guards on the lookout for trespassing organizers; many of the workers, too, held grudges against AFW members, and you entered at your own peril. That was why it was important not to err in your choice of camp fire.

Most of the valley's citrus workers, I knew, were not from Guerrero but from Querétaro, a small, mountainous state just north of Mexico City. Years of labor and family connections had resulted in a traditional relationship between regions of Querétaro and the Phoenix citrus growers. Members of the AFW tended to come from a region around a town called Ahuacatlán; but Bodine's pickers came from around a town called Alejandria. Though neighbors, residents of the two regions were said to hate each other; their feud had its roots in the bitter labor disputes that had given birth to the AFW Alejandrians, according to many AFW members, were nothing more than scabs. But those from Ahuacatlán, according to the Bodine pickers, were bullies and tyrants who didn't know how to mind their own business. It was only family ties between a few individuals that allowed us to sit around the same fire on this evening.

Testing the waters, I asked our hosts about a story that I had heard at camp about a Bodine foreman. When it came time to move his pickers from one side of the orchard to another, the story went, he would order all of them and their ladders into a large delivery van. Even with everybody standing, there were men who didn't fit, and so the foreman would jump behind the wheel, accelerate the truck, and then brake suddenly, compressing the passengers toward the front. This made room for more at the back. Others had been forced to travel with citrus in crates on the bed of a semitrailer, according to another tale. Yes, said one older man, those things were once true, but what of it? As I could see, life here was much improved. And why did I care about it anyway? Sensing a sore spot, I muttered that, really, I didn't care. And would he like another beer?

*

Early the next morning I drove to Surprise, just up the highway from El Mirage. The Hacienda Lounge had behind it a small motel with dirt parking lot and no amenities, residence for assorted poor Americans and a few Mexican workers. I knocked on the door of Number 6, and a Mexican woman with a baby in her arms opened it a crack. Inside it looked dark; another baby screamed.
"¿Sí?"

"I'm looking for some friends of mine, Carlos or Victor or Ismael
..." I looked at her face:
Immigration,
she read me, fearfully. She withdrew almost imperceptibly from the light outside.
"I'm their friend. We worked together at the camp. I just
—"

“
I’m sorry,”
she said, shutting the door. But suddenly there was another noise inside, sounds of men speaking quickly to each other. I heard my name spoken, and scuffling. Suddenly Carlos, sleepy looking and shirtless, appeared behind the mother.
“¡Hola, Teodoro!”
he said with a broad smile, opening the door wide despite her. He motioned me in, and before my eyes were Victor, Ismael, and Timoteo. Also shirtless, they had been laid out on the concrete floor, apparently engrossed in a very small television. Within a second we were shaking hands and slapping backs. The door closed.

Though wan and tired, all appeared to be in good health. Half of the fatigue, Carlos explained, came from sitting inside all day, avoiding the
coyote.
They had heard he was after them, and were terrified about it. The story, as recounted to me at camp, was basically true: they had run when the
policía
appeared, hidden in bushes and behind cactuses, and then regrouped when police and
coyote
left. There had been disagreement over whether they were close enough to Los Angeles to keep going, one way or another; or whether Phoenix was really closer and it was unwise to arrive in L.A. without a guide. Of course, there was no one around they could ask. Ten miles back down the road from Phoenix, Carlos's group had met a Hispanic convenience store clerk who, for cash, had driven them back to Surprise. The apartment, Carlos said, was that of Fortino, the friend who picked at Bodine's; the woman and children were Fortino's too. Though it barely had one bedroom—a large closet separated from the combination living room/kitchen by a sheet hung over the doorway—eight people were living there.

“Fortino’s woman,” Rebeca, fixed us beans, eggs, and tortillas while Carlos described their plan. They didn’t have enough money left to pay a proper
coyote,
but between them they did have $300—enough to buy a car in which Fortino, in exchange for keeping it afterward, would drive them to California.
“Sounds good,”
I said.
“When are you going to buy it?”

“
Ah, we’ve already got it!”
exclaimed Carlos, opening the door a crack to reveal a shiny Toronado outside.

“For three hundred dollars? What’s wrong with it?”

The group, as one, smiled sheepishly.
“We don’t know yet,”
said Carlos.

It was great to see them all. We talked for a while, and ate, and then I went out and came back with more tortillas and a twelve-pack. I really didn’t want to see them go again, and suddenly I decided:

“Can I go with you?”

Carlos looked puzzled.
“Where to?”

“To L.A., of course. To see where you guys end up. There’s a cheap late-night flight back—I’ll stay just a few days and then come home. Think they’ll forgive me at the camp?”

Everyone seemed for it, but agreed to ask Fortino when he came home from work. Late that evening Fortino, a tall, wiry man with long black hair and a U.S. Army shirt, pointed out that it would be crowded, but added that it was okay with him. We left the next evening, a Friday night.

Three-hundred-dollar cars always have something wrong with them. If they're at a dealership and can start up and run, that's almost worse, because then the defect is something not immediately obvious. Basically, Mexicans looked for a car they thought they could fix when it broke, and then they held their breath. The only problem with the Toronado that we could detect at first, as we got on the interstate highway on a remote ramp outside town, was that the seat-belt buzzer wouldn't go off. The noise, like a giant mosquito, threatened to drive me crazy, but I resolved that if the Mexicans could stand it for 400 miles, then so could I. For better or worse, I only had to endure for about 50: that's when the overheating light came on and we exited the highway, turning off the lights and ignition. When the steam cleared enough to take a close look by the flicker of a cigarette lighter, we discovered half-inch holes through two sides of the top of the radiator.

“
Someone fucking shot this thing through with a rifle,”
commented Fortino, and it certainly looked as if he was right—though, to judge by the rust, it had happened several years earlier. That was at about 8:00 P.M.; it took us until 3:00 A.M. to drive the fifty miles back, all of them at about fifteen miles an hour, all on dirt roads to avoid having a police car stop and “assist” us. At every suspected bridge, hose, or irrigation ditch, we would pile out, fill up a variety of milk cartons, bean cans, and bottles we had found, and replenish the radiator. In the end, it was hardly worth the trouble: just blocks from Fortino’s home the cylinders seized. The Toronado was no more. Unloading our few possessions, we abandoned it by the side of the road, closing the doors in defeat.

The next day was dreary and depressing. With my limited budget for the next several months, I couldn’t afford to make my friends a loan that would entice any
coyote.
They had no relatives left at camp from whom they could borrow. The hard-pressed union couldn’t make funds available for members to relocate. We were all lounging around on the concrete floor, breathing air that had already been breathed several times that day, when Carlos had an idea.

“
How much did you say that cheap flight from L.A. to Phoenix costs?”

“
Thirty-nine dollars. ”

“
And does it fly the other direction too?”

I nodded.

Carlos took up a pen and began figuring, counting aloud in Spanish.
“If we bought your ticket, would you be our guide?”

“
What?”
The others stared at him.

“
We’ve almost got enough money. I think Fortino would lend us some. It’s just that nobody knows how to do it, how to go on a plane, how to be in an airport. ”

I was stunned, but intrigued. Undocumented workers flying in a jet—it was a novel concept.
“You mean, I would be your coyote? You guys, I can’t! If I get caught
...”

“
No, no,”
said Carlos.
“You’re not helping us—we’re helping you. You want to go with us to Los Angeles, right? You want to write about it, yes? Then you are the one who is being helped. ”

With reasoning like that, I thought, Carlos was wasting his time being an illegal alien; he should be going to law school. I thought and thought. Victor went out to buy some beer, and with its help, I thought some more. We just might be able to pull it off. It would take some planning and preparation, though.
“When were you thinking of leaving?”
Today was Thursday.