Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Mexican Migrants (34 page)

“
Well, my editor in Miami, who sent me on this assignment. And then there’s another editor in Phoenix, who was going to pick me up tomorrow on the other side. And my wife and kids in Denver—I called them this evening. They all expect me in the morning. They were a little worried, you know.”
I laughed. I had even made up people.

“
Mmm. And what will you be writing in your story?”

“
Well, nothing, I guess, because I couldn’t cross the border. If I didn’t cross, there’s not really a story in it, is there?”

The
comandante
shook his head.

“
They won’t be happy, but I’ll just have to tell them—this wasn’t a good idea. It’s too dangerous. It’s against the law, after all—though I didn’t realize that before.”

The
comandante
looked at me.
“No story, then?”

“
Of course not”

They asked me about the
coyotes,
and I explained adamantly that they were wrong about Genaro. To the best of my knowledge, I went on, drugs had nothing whatsoever to do with the trip. As far as specifics of route and financing, I pleaded ignorance, not wanting to contradict anyone else’s story.

Finally the
comandante
left the room with the tall one. A few minutes later, the tall one came back and looked at me.

“You can go.”

I rose, reassembled the contents of my wallet, and walked out of the small office. In the large, dimly lit room where they waited, I knew my companions were watching me. I wanted to tell them what had happened, see what I could do for them now that my cover was blown ... but the tall cop had opened the door, was standing by it. In my last glance into the room, I saw Evangélica, huddled against Jesús ...

Outside it was even darker. Until I reached the highway I remained nervous that it was some kind of ruse, that they were saying I could go, but didn’t really mean it. Then finally I was relieved, but a sickened feeling lingered in my stomach. They were all still in there, and I felt like a traitor for having been released. I walked a few blocks down the highway, to the bridge over the stream, descended to the banks, and then circled back around behind the police station. Quietly I skirted its dark side, and then crossed a street to an alley which afforded a view of the back door. And there I waited for them to come out.

The windows of the headquarters were open, and male voices drifted out. There was yelling, what sounded like insults and demands, and periods of silence, but at least no more of the telltale gasps and moans, no cries of
“¡Ay, Dios mío!”
It was cold; I guessed it to be three in the morning. After another hour they all filed out, still at gunpoint, and climbed again into the truck. My heart began to pound again: where were they taking them? Where would I go? After five minutes, the tall cop came out and collected money from each one. Jesús paid for Evangélica. Then the cop returned to the building, and they waited.

I was sorely tempted to whisper out to them, even to sneak over and climb in too. Otherwise, I well might lose them for good. But if I were caught again, I knew, they might not go easy on me. For what seemed hours but was probably only thirty minutes, they waited, crammed as before in the back of the smuggler’s pickup. The smuggler and guide apparently were still inside the headquarters. Then at last the building’s lights began to go off, and the
comandante
and four
judiciales
came out and locked the door. They appeared not even to notice the group in the back of the pickup, just walked to their cars. The
comandante’
s was a large, powder blue, brand-new Oldsmobile Cutlass. At the last moment, one of the cops stopped his car alongside the truck, rolled down his window, said a few words, and then drove off. As the dust settled, one by one my friends descended from the pickup truck, stiff legged and tentative, looking around, as I had done, for the trap. But we were alone. As they headed for the street, I came up behind them.

We stopped and had a huddle. The Quirambal men looked bruised and unhappy, and kept to themselves. But the others wanted to know what had happened to me. And then Jesús described what had happened to them.

“
After you left, they didn’t beat anyone else.”
Tiberio patted me on the back.
“But they accused Tiberio, Conce, and me of planning to smuggle drugs. We said no, but they said we were, and we were probably carrying money we made from it, and so they told us to take off our shoes. They found the money of Tiberio and Conce in their socks, and mine in my pants. They took half of it, and said that was the government fine.”

Tiberio took over.
“Then the fucking bastards said we’d had enough trouble for tonight, and they offered to drive us back wherever we were going. Of course, we didn’t believe it, but what choice did we have? We had to go climb back into the truck. Then that tall bastard came and got twenty dollars apiece, the amount they found out we were going to pay the driver. And then we waited. And then those bastards left. The last thing they said was, ‘Oh, you’re still here! Well, sorry, our shift’s over and we’ve got to go home. Good night!’ Hijo de la puta madre!”

At least, I thought, they had left Evangélica alone. We walked to the main highway, but instead of turning right toward the stream, they headed left.

“
What’s going on?”

Jesús pointed to the town’s main, American-style motel.
“We’re going to go see how much they charge. ”

The price was twenty-five dollars for a one-bed double, an exorbitant rate for Mexico—but this was the border. It was hard to believe that, having just been robbed, the guys were willing to shell out that much money. But then, it was hard for me to believe what had just happened. And everyone needs a break now and then: when the night clerk finally agreed to allow three to a bed, they accepted. Victor, Tiberio, and I took showers and then crashed on the bed in our room. It was, alas, somewhat narrower than a normal full-size. But the room was warm, and no one paid any attention. No one even had the energy to remove the bedspread. We just lay down on top of it, and slept until mid- afternoon. The the full group went out to a cafe for breakfast.

*

Genaro rose gingerly, one hand over his left kidney, one on his back. He had not wanted to talk about what had happened to him, but someone had finally pried it out of him. While handcuffed, he said, he had been made to close his eyes so that he would not know when they were going to punch him in the stomach. After being punched, and doubling over and falling to the floor, he had been kicked in the stomach and back. All this preceded the
tehuacanazo
.
“Lucky we hadn’t eaten dinner, eh?”
said another of the Quirambal men wryly. He had had a pistol held against his temple and a can of Mace inserted in his open mouth, though neither had been discharged. The same cop that did that—a short one they called
“El Chino”
for his Asiatic features—had also struck his brother open handed against both ears at once. The boy was still having trouble hearing.

Genaro, for once, was not laughing. He was angry and humiliated and sore. The description of his torture had not been necessary to understand how he had suffered. His cries were my most vivid memory of the night before: a man from the
ranchos,
a man who thought nothing of all-day mountain walks, who crossed the desert as a way of life, who lived hours from a doctor, a man as strong and tough as Genaro did not cry out for God unless he hurt bad. I hated the
judiciales.

With Genaro finally on his feet, we were ready to go. There was still some space between the sun and the western horizon, but we had decided it was necessary to take advantage of the light: we were going to walk the entire way. It would add a day and a night to the trip, but there was no other choice. We were reprovisioned and extremely wary. There would be no
coyotes
this time—they could not be trusted, and we could not afford to get caught again.

With Plácido back in the lead—restored to that position by Genaro’s injuries—we again struck off up the stream. No one, I noticed, paid the slightest heed when we passed the stand of trees where we had waited earlier. That was behind us. Ahead would be a very large desert; the road to the United States was strewn with obstacles both numerous and exotic.

Because the stream meandered back and forth in huge curves that sometimes even took us opposite from the direction we wanted, we made many shortcuts, most on the advice of Genaro, at the end of the line of walkers. Usually the shortcut entailed scrambling out of the arroyo, over rocks and loose sand, grabbing for roots or anything else to steady you, and then walking across flat land to meet up with the stream somewhere else. Occasionally someone would climb a tree—there were a few, as we were still close to water—to try and spot the most direct route. It was a tiring way to travel, and always a relief to return to the moist, cool streamside. Human footprints mixed with goat prints on the sandy bank.

As the sun was about to set, Genaro directed us to leave the stream again and climb the north bank. At the top we found ourselves on a parched field—an onion field, by the looks of it, lying fallow. There was a light breeze we had not felt in the arroyo, and I paused to cool down and watch it scatter straw over the empty furrows. The field was wide but laced with deep fissures as though it were dry way, way down. Carefully we picked our way across these, having to work hard to move over the loose soil. Then Genaro, finally climbing out of the arroyo with the help of his townsmen, hissed us to the ground.

“
Why? What is it?”
Jesús whispered back. Genaro pointed across the field. Following his direction, we focused far away and saw ... cars. Two of them, moving rather fast, apparently traveling a good road.

“
La frontera,”
came the reply. It was the border, and the border highway. We finally were there.
Los Estados Unidos
—home—and yet, from this angle, it did not beckon as usual. For the first time, I could almost see America as a foreign country, full of mystique and danger. A new feeling had been superimposed on my old one in the course of this odyssey: Was I home, or had I arrived someplace else?

With the sun casting long shadows, and nothing behind us to prevent a silhouette, we were obvious, standing tall on the field. But crouched down, guerrilla fashion, it would be harder to pick us out. We moved ahead, lowly and slowly, taking advantage of a dry irrigation ditch for as long as it ran, and then of a barbed-wire fence that had had a wall of tumbleweeds blown against it. Slowly, across a landscape of browns and golds, we approached the highway.

We stopped again fifty feet away, and waited for a faraway truck to approach and depart. Then, when it had disappeared, we abandoned our single-file formation and sprinted across the road, en masse. Immediately we were faced with another barbed-wire fence, triple stranded; two men stepped on the middle wire and lifted the top one, making a hole for the rest of us to slip through. It was still light enough to make out rocks and small cactuses and other obstacles, but discerning the strands of wire was a little harder. Another two hundred feet and we were faced with a third fence, old and loose enough to push down and walk over carefully. Now we were on the side of a hill, climbing quickly, though nobody else was around. Yet another fence presented itself minutes later: barbed and four stranded, it had, in addition, vertical wires joining the strands every foot or so and was strung extremely tight. Nobody knew for sure which was the border fence, but this one got my vote. Though only four feet high, it was very tricky to cross. Straddling it, three people including me got their pants caught and pricked their thighs; one of the Quirambal men, slipping through, went too fast and got his black jacket hooked. Scared to stop and sort it out, he kept going, the result being five long white slashes down its back where the insulation was revealed. Evangélica was literally lifted over by Jesús and Tiberio. We had just become
alambristas
, Mexican slang for our sort of wire jumpers.

Now we moved fast, Plácido setting a stiff pace and nobody talking. The American side of the border was hilly and uncultivated; I guessed we had entered Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, which had the border as its southern perimeter. As we walked, the organ pipe cactuses grew taller and taller, eventually towering way over our heads, twenty or thirty feet apart. Interspersed, and splaying in every direction, were the long, thin
palo verde
cactuses; prickly pears and barrel cactuses were the main hazard to our feet, especially those feet clad only in
huaraches
—about half of them. But mostly the surface of the desert was clear and flat, sometimes pebbly, sometimes rocky, sometimes sandy.

After about an hour, we stopped so that those who had them could get out their flashlights. Genaro and Plácido conferred about the route. Genaro pointed toward the northeast horizon, and a jagged line of mountains just visible against the darkening sky. It was hard to say how far away they were—twenty-five miles? They, or more specifically the gap between two of them where there was a pass, were our immediate destination. To have as our object something so vast and dark and distant set the imagination swirling. As the procession rose to its feet and continued, I wondered how many others were thinking about those mountains, now just a shadow—would we be able to see them in the light? What lay in that dark, indeterminate space between us and them, what obstacles, what enemies?