Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Mexican Migrants (30 page)

I walked on, stopping at the local Conasupo
,
the government food store, to buy some canned tuna for Lupe. The mother of Jesús and Vicente, Raquel Rendón, ran the one-room store, and when she mentioned that she, too, had heard I would be going, I knew I wouldn’t need to continue on to find Jesús. I was thrilled. But she looked pensive.
“Ah, Teodoro, Teodoro,”
she said,
“they're leaving again.”
She leaned forward on the counter and shook her head.

“
What is it, Señora?”

“
They’re leaving again, and now their younger brother, Armando, wants to go too—before he even finishes secondary school.”
She sighed.
“We have eleven children, the father of Jesús and I. Only three are boys. Of course, at their age, they’re independent. But their father and I try to tell them not to go. There’s no future in it! It would be better if they stayed home, studied for a career. Jesús is very good at fixing cars, and his father arranged for him to have an apprenticeship at a shop in Querétaro. But he had no patience. To do these things, you have to sacrifice! But they’re more interested in adventure.”

I didn’t feel she was trying to get me to change their minds; rather, their leaving was something she just wanted to talk about; and her opinions, I figured, were something I ought to listen to. She continued:

“
I suppose the experience of being over there is good in some ways. If they get into tight spots, they have to get themselves out.

Here, they can always turn to one of us, to a relative. And they have learned some English. But you know how it is—when they go, they usually go with a group of friends. Since they can’t speak English, those are the people they’re always with. So in some ways, they don’t learn any more than if they had stayed here.

“
They do come home and tell us stories. Did you know Vicente was arrested in Texas last time? He spent a month in jail, but he told me it wasn’t that bad. There was a big room where he could talk with all the other guys. They talked about sports and things like that.

“
Their father and I make enough to get by, so we’re not like lots of parents—we don’t expect them to send us money. What they earn, they can spend. But we keep telling them it's important to save it. If not, what do you have when you’re done? Nothing! You’re just older.

“
I wish them well, but oh, sometimes I’m frightened when they leave. It is next week, right?”

I nodded.

“
Well, there’s nothing to be done. God bless you, Teodoro. Look after them in your country.”
She finally smiled, and handed me a lollipop from a display on the counter. For the road.

*

We met on the same corner where the White Arrow had dropped me off, that first day in Ahuacatlán, four months earlier. Jesús was wearing boots and jeans, a snap-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Slung over his shoulder was a white
costal,
the woven-fiber carry-bag of the sierra. Conce arrived in his trademark sleeveless T-shirt, straw cowboy hat casting a shadow over his face. Tiberio wore sneakers, as usual, and his
Tecolotes
team soccer shirt. Victor was there, and two others I had met from
ranchos:
Plácido and Rolando, both highly experienced, in their thirties. I was somewhat surprised by the presence of two others: Marín, one of the core group’s hangers-on, a fifteen-year-old with big feet who must recently have been promoted; and Inocencio, a small Indian with a big smile who worked part-time at the sandal shop.

The group gravitated toward the cauldron of
chicharrones
—intestine stew—that was gurgling in front of the butcher shop, which faced the highway. Jesús and Victor bought small platefuls, though it was only midmorning. (For me, the time was never right for eating
chicharrones
.) Everyone looked a little jumpy, a little nervous, and small talk helped pass the time waiting for the White Arrow. But something about the scene was strange. Jesús had ten siblings in town—where were they? Plácido had a wife and four children—why weren’t they there to see him off? Why were there no parents around, no buddies? Instead of calls of
bon voyage
or
buen viaje,
there was, it seemed to me, an ambivalence. The men were leaving on a rite of passage that shook the town to its core. Even if they could expect to benefit financially, friends and relatives could not be glad to see them go. And the men themselves, though excited about the adventure ahead, were once again leaving home (the two youngest for the first time) on an uncertain passage, an outlaw trip across the border and into a foreign land. I recalled that work, and the search for work, were nicknamed in Mexico
la lucha
—the fight. There was a good reason for that. We sauntered toward the open door of the White Arrow when finally it arrived, a swagger masking the uncertainties beneath.

AS THE WHITE
arrow retraced the winding road to Querétaro, Jesús was losing a battle to keep his eyelids open. Again and again they dropped, their slow, fluttering fall interrupted only by the shock of a swerve or an occasional pothole. A long stretch of flat road and the bus’s calming drone finally succeeded in closing them completely. Jesús’s jaw relaxed, too, and, mouth open, he slumped down in his seat, head against the vibrating window.

A sharp bump jolted him back to semiconsciousness. He sat up and blinked.

Conce looked at him from across the aisle, amused.
“Hombre, ¿qué pasa?”
he asked
“This is the
beginning
of the trip! Why so tired?”

Jesús gazed back at him, not quite focusing.
“Ooo,”
he moaned.
“I was up late with la costilla.” La costilla
translates “the rib”—slang for a woman, a girlfriend.

“
Maria Elena?”
asked Conce, turning sideways in his seat to stretch his long legs. Maria Elena was the mother of Jesús’s first child, a two-year-old boy.

“No, the other one,” said Jesús.

“
Aaah, Evangélica,”
Conce replied, smiling. Evangélica was a very pretty, petite young woman from a
rancho
near Ahuacatlán who had been smitten by Jesús during his most recent stay. We had met, though none of Jesús’s friends knew her well. Nothing more was said for several moments, until Jesús revealed:
“She’s meeting us in Querétaro.”

Conce sat bolt upright.
“What? Alone?”
Jesús only nodded. Conce leaned back against the side of the bus and stared at him in disbelief. I couldn’t see what was so unusual—she was going to see him off? So what? But Conce knew what it meant when a woman from their area traveled out of town, alone, to meet a man.
“You’re going to bring her with us? Across the border? The whole way?”

Jesús nodded again. And now I was staring too.

“She took the bus at four
A.M.
,” Jesús said. He turned to me. “Her family would not permit it,” he explained, “but she wanted to very much. Last night she said ‘Take me.’ I said I would. She left her rancho yesterday. Her family thought she would spend the night with her sister in Ahuacatlán and would return today. But she had a little suitcase, and her sister figured it out. They got into a big fight.” Conce shook his head, again leaving the impression that this was very grave. “But I still don’t see—what’s the big deal?” I asked.

This time Conce explained. “You don’t know the sierra,” he told me. “If a man takes a woman without asking permission, without marrying her, then her whole family—her father, her uncles, all her brothers—may come after him, may even kill him. If he’s up in the States, maybe they’ll even find him there.”

Jesús looked a little pale. “Maybe this time I’ll stay two years,” he said. “Then I will have earned more money, more time will have passed, and her family will be a little less upset.”

The bus whined on up the hill. Besides his child in Ahuacatlán, Jesús, I knew, had another in Monte Vista, Colorado, by a Chicano woman. A third child, I supposed, could be expected within a year in Idaho. Fathering children and “having” women remained closely tied to masculinity in rural Mexico. It often did not seem a happy connection.

Word soon spread down the seats to the rest of our group, and by the time we arrived at the station in Querétaro City, all eyes were searching for Evangélica. But Jesús had prearranged a rendezvous at a far end of the platform, and only Conce and I went along. She stood behind a tile-covered column, almost hiding, wearing a royal blue chiffon dress and clutching a small white purse—her Sunday best. Dark brown hair fell over her shoulder, setting off a complexion the color of coffee ice cream. Her eyes were large and brown, as dark as her hair. Even in high- heeled shoes that matched her dress, she was scarcely five feet tall; standing near Conce and Jesús, each nearly six feet, she looked even smaller. She and Jesús embraced, and I could see why he was attracted. Conce, too, was staring at her.

“
Where is your suitcase?”
he asked. She shook her head—no suitcase. It was as Conce thought.
“Then these are your only clothes?”
She nodded.
“¡Caray!”
said Conce, turning away and rolling his eyes. Jesús, finally realizing what his friend was getting at, looked at her straight on, with outstretched arms.
“We’re going to walk across a desert!”

“
But all you said, ”
she protested,
“was that we were going to America!”
In a nice place like America, obviously, you had to look your best. A lump formed in my throat. The men had seen the world, but the women never left Ahuacatlán—or, in her case, the
rancho.
She had no idea.

Two hours remained until the bus left for the border—enough time to walk into town and buy Evangélica what she needed. We regrouped and headed toward the shopping district. Several stops netted Evangélica jeans, a jacket, and a pair of sneakers. Others, meanwhile, stocked up on
novelas
—Mexican-style comic books, good for passing the time—and food for the road: two roasted chickens, fried potatoes, a can of hot
serrano
chilies, and hot corn on the cob, smothered in mayonnaise and paprika. Also, we picked up Eduardo, a tall, curly-haired Ahuacatlán native also known as “The Woodpecker.” He worked as a government mechanic in Querétaro, but had heard a lot about the States and was eager to try his luck. With the Woodpecker, the group was eleven.

Evangélica was very shy, speaking only to Jesús and then only in low tones the rest of us couldn’t understand. Conce, so concerned at first about her presence, now appeared to regret his initial behavior toward Evangélica. Perhaps he had come on too strong.
“Are you angry?”
he asked her, as we crossed a plaza, Jesús talking with someone else.

“
No,”
answered Evangélica softly,
“just scared.”

We returned to the bus station, which had grown so crowded we were unable to find any seats. In resignation, we gathered against a wall in a little semicircle.
“Where are all these people going?”
I wondered out loud. Jesús looked at me as though I ought to know. I looked more carefully. The passenger profile, I realized, was almost exactly what it had been in the Nuevo Laredo bus station on the border, where I’d waited with Alonso. The passengers were almost all men, young to middle aged, and evidently from the countryside. They, too, were bound for America.
“Why else would a group of campesinos travel together like that in their working clothes, carrying all those bags?”
said Jesús.
“It’s like this every night.”

On his instruction, no one in our group was toting more than a small shoulder bag or knapsack—that was important for the desert, he had said, as well as for dealing with the police... something I would understand later. At 10:00 P.M. the emigration began, with a mass movement from the terminal to the platforms of the seven different coaches that were making the trip to the Texas border. That left a smaller group—maybe fifty people, including us—for the two 11:00 P.M. coaches to Tijuana, Mexicali, and points on the Arizona border.

Our specific destination was Sonoita, a tiny town across the line from Lukeville, Arizona, 1,600 miles away. Our bus—a Yellow Arrow this time—finally rolled out of the station around 11:30, headed first west to Guadalajara and then north up the Pacific coast to Mazatlán, Culiacán, Hermosillo, and
la frontera.
It was a big coach, with reclining seats and a rest room; the eleven of us occupied eight double seats, across the aisle from each other. We were half-starved from having waited so long to eat the aromatic chicken dinner, and now dug in ravenously. Most Mexican food had come to seem bland to me without the hot little peppers, but when I rubbed a sleepy eye with a finger that had been dipped into the can of them, I quickly realized there were still things to learn about Mexican food.

“Yow!” I cried, as the pepper juice began to sting my eye. Something salty was the best cure for too hot a pepper on the tongue, but I had no idea what to do about juice in the eye. Fortunately Evangélica, peeking back at me through the crack between her and Jesús’s seats, knew a good mountain antidote. She turned around, leaned over the seat back, and offered me one of her long pigtails. I stared at it dumbly.