The Jaguar's Children (2 page)

 

How much can I tell you about what is happening in here? It is hard to see it, but even harder to say it. These are things no one wants to know. The son of the praying woman is moaning now and will not stop. It is not a normal moaning but the same sound every time in a rhythm. His mother is holding his head and begging him to be quiet, to rest, but he will not, or cannot. Maybe his ears don't work anymore, or his mind. It is harder to think good thoughts in the dark.

The only other voices now besides them and me is an older man in front who is also praying sometimes. Everyone else is only breathing, saving themselves. I don't know if anyone is dying and I don't want to know. I am only looking at the screen, at the battery and at your name.

¡Chingada madre! Still one bar only. So many messages I wrote and all of it is saved for later.

So I tell you because this waiting is a torture.

When the sun came up this morning, we knew it only by the sounds the tank was making as the walls got warm and then hot. It is a desert all around us, but in here the air is thick like the jungle and with the heat comes the smell of everyone, a thick blanket you can feel but cannot see. On the left side of the tank, two people down from me, is a woman from Michoacán, a baker, who left her home because of so many threats from the narcos if she doesn't pay them every month. They killed her husband for this already and I heard her ask the praying woman, “What is better, to leave your home or stay in a place so heavy with fear and hate not even bread can rise?”

“God knows,” said the praying woman.

“I think He left already,” said the baker.

She is the one who said we should make a toilet at one end of the tank, in a bag, but no one wanted to give up their place and no one wanted to be near the bag and some others could not wait so now the whole tank is a toilet. People are ashamed to talk about it so they are doing what they have to just anywhere, maybe in their water bottle, maybe in a plastic bag or their backpack, but it is bad anyway—the smell crowding around you with nowhere to go so you must breathe through your shirt, a sock, whatever you have. More than one person threw up already. With this and the heat and the thirst, people aren't thinking right. I know this from the things they say. Some ask for empty bottles, but in return others ask for water. Some are begging even. No one wants to say what they have. In the dark, you can keep some things a secret, but not the sound or the smell.

¡Ay, estamos jodidos! This situation is fucked, no? When those Greeks were hiding in that horse they wanted to attack the city, and when the terrorists were hiding in those planes they wanted to attack the country, but when Mexicanos hide in a truck, what do they want to do? They want to pick the lettuce. And cut your grass.

There are brave fighters in my country, I swear, but most of them are dead or working for the narcos.

 

Thu Apr 5—11:10

 

I gave César some water. He cannot take more than a little without choking so I must drip it in with the cap. Then I take a capful for myself.

Did you ever find yourself in a situation that you cannot believe is happening—to you? That last part is important. Maybe you had dreams like this, but in the end you are permitted to wake up. I am talking about la realidad—the dream without end, a dream you would refuse to believe if only your power to refuse was so strong. Of course there are many sad situations—more and more all the time. All our newspapers have la página roja with its narco murders and terrible accidents, and I think we are like the bulls in la corrida, always distracted by the red. But since your NAFTA and the narcos, people have lost interest in the bulls, and why not? We are sacrificing humans now, just like in the old times. We are used to such things in the news, but it is different when it is happening to you, no? It is hard in this moment to believe I am actually awake and alive.

It is so dark I jumped at the touch of my own hand.

 

Thu Apr 5—11:22

 

César's phone gives me hope—his strong battery and his minutes. I am amazed no one stole it before he got in the truck, but he hid it very well I can tell you. On our way to meet the coyotes, the bus was stopped outside Santa Ana and the police went through everything, made us empty our pockets. Searching for drugs and weapons they said, but of course they sell them also. To migrantes, everyone always says, Don't bring anything valuable because they will take it—if not the police, then the soldiers or some other cabrones. Maybe you must pay a mordida, maybe they look in your bag and find something they like. Whenever they want they can do this, and each time is like those screens they use to sort the rocks for cement—smaller and smaller until you have left only sand. That is about all we had when we got to the border.

 

We got off the bus in Altar, which is in the state of Sonora, eighty kilometers from the border. This is where my father instructed me to go. Altar is a little town only for migrantes and narcos and you pay extra to get off there. There is a lot of extra between Oaxaca and el Norte. From the bus I saw a sign saying
ÉXODO
1:12. I was half asleep, tired from traveling three days, and I thought it was the time until we reached that place. But then there was another one—
ÉXODO
3:17 and then
MATEO
5:5 and more after that. Maybe you have a Bible and you can tell me what this means.

The moment we stepped off the bus we were surrounded by coyotes, some on foot and some in vans with dark windows. They were working that place like pimps and all their girls had sexy American names—

“Yo, chapo, you want L.A., Atlanta, Nueva York? I got 'em right now.”

“Oye, esé, you like Miami—you get a job in a country club ten dollars an hour como mi hermano. Todo es posible. We go tonight.”

“¡Chis, Oaxaca! Over here. Where you want to go, güey? Tacoma? I got a good price for you.”

In the north, Oaxaca is an insult and many times that first day I heard it—“Heyyyy, Oaxaquito!” What they are really saying is, “Heyyyy, stupid poor indio from the south, let me take your money!”

I just looked away because everyone knows there are many pandilleros up here. But in my mind I was saying, “Chinga tu madre y chupa mi verga oaxaqueña, pinche pendejo.”

Besides the church which is old from the days of the missions, there is nothing in Altar, barely a tree, just a few blocks of houses, some hotels and restaurants, a gas station, the Western Union, some little tiendas and many rooms and beds for rent. Always on the plaza was an old man sweeping with his broom made of branches—sweeping and sweeping even when there was nothing to sweep. There are stalls there with things to buy, but there is nothing for the house or the milpa, nothing nice to eat or to wear. Besides expensive water, it is mostly clothes and almost all of them are black or gray—T-shirts, jackets, balaclavas and gloves, even the bags—so you can be invisible in the desert, in the dark, because that is what a migrante needs to be to make it in el Norte.

Altar is the same I think in English—where you go to make an offering, a sacrifice. You can tell by the faces and the bodies that people come from everywhere to do this—not only from Mexico, but Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, some guëros and chinos too. There were so many—hundreds, thousands even—almost all men, wandering around the bus stop, the plaza, the streets. It was like the corrals at the matadero where they keep the cattle waiting. There were more around the church of Our Lady of Guadalupe and inside also, praying for the journey. In Altar, la Virgen de Guadalupe is everywhere—on the men's jackets, on their pants, tattooed on their skin and painted on the walls, rising up over the mountains of el Norte to guide and comfort her dark children—los migrantes, los peregrinos, los hijos de la chingada.

Most of them are walking. It is a long trip, two or three days from the Sásabe crossing, and it is easy to get lost in the desert, easy to die. Along the border there are signs from the government saying,
¡CUIDADO! IT'S NOT WORTH IT
, with pictures of snakes and scorpions and skulls. But when you look north, past the sand and rock and mesquite, toward that wall of mountains with only cactus growing, you still believe you can do it because who wants to turn back now when you came so far? What is there to go back to? Your family is depending on you. And if you are still not sure, there is the voice of the coyote—“¡Ándale! Stay together. If you fall behind we cannot wait for you.” This is the message of Progress in the New World, and coyotes are the messengers. But some of us do fall behind. In Altar, by the church, I saw a map with red dots marking all the places migrantes have died. Everywhere north of Sásabe was covered in red dots, all the way to Tucson. If they ever make a
Guinness Book of Third World Records
, this border will be in there for sure.

 

It was César's idea to go in the truck. I was going to walk across because it is cheaper, but César told me about his older brother, Goyo, who walked into California from Tecate and nearly died. “He had a good coyote who stayed with them,” said César, “but they got lost anyway. It was only when one of them climbed a small mountain and saw the lights that they knew where to go. By the time they got to the place on the highway to meet the van, they'd had no water for a whole day and they were almost crazy. He said their saliva was like glue, their tongues so thick they couldn't speak. And that was in January.

“Goyo saw some things out there,” said César. “At the end of the first day they found a body. He told me it was like the ones you see in las catacumbas where the mouth is open screaming and screaming and the skin is tight like a drum. The face of this one, he said it was full of cactus spines. Because this is what happens when you go crazy from the thirst—you will try to eat a cactus and the pain will not stop you. Nothing will stop you and anything is possible,” said César. “Goyo told me that face stays with him—como un fantasma oscuro—visiting him in the night. There is another thing my brother saw out there and that was the diapers. Goyo is a father, you know, and to think of babies and small children out there in such an infierno—‘Who can do this with a child?' he said.”

César's brother told him there are thousands of bodies out there, thousands of red dots. When I was young in the pueblo the padre read to us about the Valley of Dry Bones, but then I did not know it was real, or that those bones were ours. César said his brother made him swear on their mother he would never try to walk across, but it wasn't until we got to Altar and met Lupo that César told me of this promise.

 

We found Lupo in his garage across from el Mercado Coyote Blanco. He was tall and thin with rings in both ears and a mustache so short and fine you can count the hairs. There was some kind of tattoo animal crawling out of his collar. I couldn't see what it was, but its claws were in his neck. When Lupo gave us the choice to walk for twenty thousand or ride for thirty, César is the one who said to me, “There is some risk with a vehicle of getting discovered at the border, but I'm telling you, man, three hours in a truck beats the shit out of three days in the desert.”

I could have left him then. I had the chance, but I was afraid to go alone. I called my father and told him about the truck and how it was more expensive but safer than walking. He called back soon. Don Serafín would permit this, he said, but I must pay the difference and if I don't make the payments every month there will be a problem between him and Don Serafín—so I must not fail. I know my father was afraid for me, but he is also afraid of Don Serafín and how I might cause him shame and other problems if I don't pay back the money. That was the last time I talked to my father, and after it I felt like I was carrying one of his buckets of cement.

César made his own bargain with Lupo, but he did not speak of it to me and I did not ask. Once this was done there was only the waiting for the truck to be ready. Behind the garage where Lupo and his compadres were working, there was a little choza with some old mattresses and pieces of foam on the floor and this is where he told us to sleep. “If you go out,” he said, “be careful. You can be kidnapped here. It doesn't matter if you have nothing, they will get it from your family no matter where you live. And if they can't, they can make you carry a gun for them or maybe la mota. Or maybe they just kill you for your liver and kidneys—there is a market for that here too—and when they finish there are many holes in the desert filled with Oaxacas just like you.”

He wasn't lying about this. “My brother Goyo made this trip many times,” said César, “but five years ago was the last time. Before, it was different—you could go back and forth, no problems. You might get robbed, but you wouldn't be kidnapped and killed. Now the whole situation is changing—many times they move the people and the drugs together. I think now he can never come back to Mexico.”

It is the same for my tío in L.A. who has no papers. He hasn't been home in ten years. That part of the family is broken off now, like they went to China.

 

The last thing Lupo said to us before they closed up the hole—“Whatever happens, don't make a sound.”

Well, something happened. First the road was smooth for maybe an hour like we were on the highway to Sonoita, and then it wasn't. I thought, Oh, it is construction, because in Mexico the road is always under construction. I said this to César. And this is when he said, “Dios, espero que sí.” That is when I began to be afraid. There was something in his voice and I was thinking then I must save my water. I don't know these other people except for César and I said nothing after that, only to curse when my head hit the wall of the tank. The road was never smooth again, only rough and more rough, and we were banging around inside here like turkeys in the back of my father's truck. People were becoming frightened and angry and the air was getting bad. Our clothes were wet from the rusty water and the things growing and this was mixing with our dried sweat and sour clothes from all the days traveling to be here and it smelled like food going bad. It was the end of the night and because most of us are from the south it was cold for us. Whatever clothes we had, we were wearing them. For me it was only jeans, a polo and my sweatshirt with the hood.