Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Mexican Migrants (4 page)

“
They can get you to Houston for five hundred dollars
said the man.
“San Antonio? Four hundred fifty. L.A., seven hundred dollars.”
Apparently it was normal, in this trade, to deal in a foreign currency.

Alonso stared at the table.
“Isn’t that awfully high?”
he finally asked.

The man pretended offense.
“High? Look, things here are hot. We take a lot of risks. Anything could go wrong. You might not pay us, we might get caught. If you get caught, they just send you back. But if we get caught
—” He drew his index finger across his throat.
“How much you got?”
The man pointed at the bulge in Alonso’s pocket.

The directness embarrassed Alonso further, and he began to withdraw.
“Very little,”
he said, looking away. For a long time we sat in silence.

“
Okey,”
said the man finally, in border English, getting to his feet.
“I’ll be around if you find the dough. ”
He nodded goodbye and left.

Dawn seemed to have little effect on the cold, but by 9:00 A.M. we felt the day was slipping by. Shoulders hunched, we set off on foot toward the city center and the Rio Grande.

The neighborhood was industrial, and wind from around the bleak buildings added to our chill. Alonso was nevertheless interested in the different warehouses and factories, and peered in any open door to see what was going on inside. The sight of the place seemed to cheer him.
“If I can’t get across with the money I brought, I’ll be able to find work here,”
he said.
“Look
—
there’s things happening everywhere. ”

Though there was also great poverty, the Mexican side of the border was a relatively prosperous place. Here international corporations, taking advantage of cheap labor and few unions, had constructed numerous giant
maquiladoras
—assembly plants, for the most part, using materials brought in duty-free from the United States (such as textiles and electronics components) and then exported back to the States with duty levied only on the value added by the work done in Mexico. The relative ease with which a Mexican, male or female, could find work in the border towns was a main reason that these towns, contrary to what many Americans thought, were not large generators of illegal immigrants to the States. Those who crossed, as studies have shown, typically began their journeys in poorer regions far to the south.

“
What if you can’t find a job, though?”
I asked. Alonso seemed to me to travel on distressingly slim resources, without a great deal of forethought, with faith in what seemed the questionable belief that something would turn up.
“What if nothing turns up?”
Alonso shrugged, unconcerned.
“Something always turns up. ” “But, like
what?”

My lack of faith in providence was curious to Alonso.
“Something, anything, ”
he tried to explain.
“See, I go to where the rich people are. Maybe a hotel, or a restaurant, or parking lots. Maybe the bus station. I offer to carry their bags, or open the doors—I see what they need. Sometimes I wash cars. I find a rag
—”

“
But where do you get water?”
I interrupted.
“What about soap?”

“
You borrow things. You knock at the back of the restaurant, and borrow a pail. Maybe they lend you a sponge, a chunk of soap. If they don’t, you go find a rag. If they like you, people will help.”

The spirit seemed so enterprising. It reminded me of stories of the days when the United States was a developing country, when ordinary kids would hit the streets to sell newspapers, shine shoes, shovel a walk for a few pennies. If there were no jobs to be had, they would invent them. Kids still work hard in America, but the relative prosperity of modern times means less scrambling. America’s poor, young and old, take little interest in work so poorly paid it seems tantamount to begging. In Mexico, though, where work is tantamount to survival, the lowest job is still an opportunity.

We came to a fast and dirty boulevard leading downtown and had to turn into the wind. Collars up and faces toward the sidewalk, we didn’t notice the policeman until we had nearly walked into him.
“¡Vengan aquí!”
he said, turning on his heel and motioning for us to follow him. His cruiser had been parked down an alley, hidden until now behind a hedgerow. Leaning casually against it, looking the other way, was his plainclothes partner. Startled, Alonso and I glanced quickly at each other. My instantaneous reaction, that of an American tourist used to being treated like royalty in Mexico, had been a feeling that the cop must have something important to ask us, that perhaps he needed help in solving some crime. But as we approached the car and were ushered into the backseat without a word, I sensed something very different was happening.

The cops slammed shut the doors. Turning around in the front seat, they began to fire questions at us: Where were we from? What were we doing in Nuevo Laredo? Where were we going? Did we plan to cross the river? On their demand, I turned over my wallet; they were angry to learn that Alonso had left his identification at home.

Ironically, he had left it out of fear of getting caught on the
other
side—if the Border Patrol discovered he had been deported several times before, he might face jail instead of what they called a “voluntary departure.” A similar fear had prompted me to talk with
him
in the bus station about the risks should American Immigration catch us together and suspect me of smuggling him across. We had already come up with a story. I was a journalist hoping to interview
mojados
fresh from the river, and Alonso had just arrived. We knew no more about each other than that. Caught sooner than expected—though for what crime I had no idea—I knew the story would have to be quickly adapted to new circumstances.

Fortunately, the cops gave me a chance to begin revisions while Alonso was present to hear them.
“Where do you know this man from?”
they demanded.

“
I met him in the bus station,”
I said calmly.
“I am a journalist learning Spanish and he seemed interested in learning English. We had time to kill so we started talking.”

One cop whispered to the other, and then the plainclothes- man ordered Alonso out of the car. I felt certain he was going to beat him. When the door was shut, I could hear Alonso being questioned aggressively, and then the other cop began to do the same to me. No, I insisted, I have no idea whether he plans to cross the river. No, we have no arrangement to smuggle out drugs. I know very little about him—but is it a crime for a Mexican to leave his own country? Is it a crime for an American to get to know a Mexican?

After about fifteen minutes, the policemen traded positions and, as I would learn later, asked each of us the same questions he had asked the other. Then Alonso was pushed back into the rear of the car, the cops got in, and we pulled out.

The policemen’s questions as we drove revealed that they had learned nothing, that Alonso knew how to keep his mouth shut, that he kept cool under pressure.
“It’s very dangerous to cross the river,”
they told Alonso.
“You might drown and never be seen again. Then, if you had no identification, how could we notify your parents? We’re checking on you for your own good. Tell us the truth.”

Alonso had no more to add. Neither did I. Yet the cops kept driving. We had both said we were heading for a coffee shop to get some breakfast, which was true, and the policemen continually pointed them out as we drove by. Once they came to a stop beside one, tantalized us with the prospect of release, and then drove on.

“
I think we are going to have to take them to interrogations,”
said the uniformed cop to the other, who nodded emphatically. This response, along with the way the cop addressed his friend instead of us, lent what could have been a truly terrifying statement an almost melodramatic air. It occurred to me then, for the first time, that perhaps the truth was not necessarily what they were after. My next question was overdue.

“
Um
...” I volunteered,
“uh, isn’t there any other way we might be able to take care of this?”

One cop glanced at the other.
“What did you have in mind?” “Well, isn’t there maybe ... some sort of fine we could pay?”
There was a brief silence.

“
How much did you have in mind?”

I looked at Alonso. He mouthed,
“Five hundred.”

“
Five hundred pesos.”

“
Apiece, or for both?”

Again I glanced at Alonso, trying to avoid the driver’s eye in the mirror.
“For both,
” I replied.

He shook his head and turned another corner. This time I conferred more openly with Alonso.
“Apiece, then, ”
I announced.
“A thousand total. ”

“
Two thousand,”
said the cop. It was just like bargaining in a Mexican marketplace. I swallowed hard and took a chance:
“Fifteen hundred.”
The cop took off his hat and laid it upside down between them on the front seat.
“In the hat. ”

Alonso and I dug deep into our pockets. Alonso then reached over the front seat to deposit the dirty, crumpled one-hundred-peso notes in the cap. Perhaps purposefully, however, he chose an inopportune moment to do so—just as the car was passing through an intersection crowded with pedestrians.
“Not now!”
hissed the uniformed driver.

Moments later, and 1,500 pesos poorer, we were deposited outside a restaurant on Nuevo Laredo’s main plaza. Upon slamming the door, Alonso let loose a virulent stream of Mexican profanity. (Later, perhaps ashamed, he declined to translate specifics for me.) The police had significantly depleted his dwindling cash reserve. I, too, was furious, but the more I thought about it, the more pathetic the incident seemed. We had been driven around in the police cruiser, and occupied the time of two men in blue, for nearly an hour, and they had extracted the princely sum of four dollars! As my adrenaline subsided, it all seemed funnier and funnier. Amazed but not depressed, I offered to buy Alonso breakfast.

The border may be the only place in Mexico where things can happen quickly. Partway through our meal I left the table briefly. Returning, I found that a man had taken my seat and, in between bites of my pancakes, was talking to Alonso. Wondering whether I was perhaps ignorant of some fine point of Mexican etiquette—were pancakes fair game if left for more than a couple of minutes?—I presented myself cautiously at the table. Alonso’s face was slightly flushed, as it had been after talking to the first bus station
coyote.
The man glanced at me, took another large bite of pancake drenched in butter and syrup, and scooted over in the booth to make room.

He was large and heavy, with shoulder-length hair and a thin mustache. His trousers were dark; his shirt was of the silk, disco/black light variety.
“He has an offer, ”
said Alonso to me.

“
Two hundred fifty dollars to San Antonio. Houston, four hundred, ”
he volunteered. I stared at him.
“Where do you want to go?”
he asked Alonso.

“
Does a person who goes with you to these places have to swim the river first?”
I interrupted.

“
Of course not. The river here is a city block wide. It is fast, and there are many weeds and branches in it, and eels. Almost no one swims. There is a lancha. ”

I did not know the word
lancha,
but it sounded like the English “launch,” a speedboat. Getting across the river was our main goal, and to cross the Rio Grande in a smuggler’s speedboat —now, that would be something. From Laredo, Texas, Alonso had said he knew ways to get to Houston cheaply—there was no need to pay an expensive smuggler.

“
How much just to cross the river?”
Alonso asked.

The man considered this for a moment.
“A hundred fifty dollars,”
he replied finally. Alonso and I excused ourselves and moved to a nearby table to discuss things. The price, we agreed, was too high, and probably negotiable. A sense of unreality swept over me as we returned to sit with the
coyote.
The speedboat, the negotiation, my role in all this as an American ... it was a situation I could never have imagined. And then add to it the pancakes! The hardest part was gauging the recklessness factor—was it all too absurd to take seriously? Or, on the other hand, was it too dangerous to reasonably consider? I wasn’t sure, but felt I had to see it through.

My jump off the high board continued.
“A hundred and fifty is too high, ”
I told the man.
“One hundred—for both of us. ”

“
Wait a minute,”
said the smuggler in midbite, staring at me, “you’re
going, too?”
He turned to glance at a man standing behind him whom I had not noticed before—a slighter man who also had long hair—and let out a short, incredulous laugh. The man standing smiled, revealing a gruesome collection of withered teeth. But I was in too deep to find it funny, and, besides, now I had to lie.

I nodded.
“But
why?” he demanded. The two of them watched me closely.

“
I’ve had some problems with the law. That’s why I’m in Mexico. I can’t cross on the bridge.”
Criminals, I thought, would relate to the problems of being a criminal.