This Love Is Not for Cowards (20 page)

THE SUN HAS set on the Chihuahuan Desert. As it sank lower and lower, the sun flared in ever more intense shades of orange, until at the end it seemed as if Marco and Dany were roasting in a toaster oven. I hand the future groom back his flip-flops and Gatorade. I'm about to give the future bride back her shoes when the photographer sees one more possible shot.

The wedding will be held on the first day of May. That's very revealing. May first is the opening day of the Primera playoffs. For all Marco's talk about “a mathematical chance” and “we're not yet eliminated” and there still being the possibility the Indios will pull off “the miracle of miracles,” he and Dany have already booked a church. They don't really think the Indios can pull it off, and haven't for a while. The entire Indios' front office will be invited: Gabino, Francisco and Paco Ibarra, and Gil Cantú, of course, along with every player on the team and all the coaches and support staff down to Whiskey the equipment manager. Marco's clan in Dallas will be invited, naturally. Some of Dany's extended family live in Texas, too. One of Dany's aunts has lived in El Paso for twenty-two years. Her mother's second sister has lived in El Paso for the past decade. When Dany first told these maternal aunts the wedding and reception would be held in Juárez, the women balked. They haven't crossed the river in three years, not even to visit Dany's grandmother. They're not about to cross over with the violence growing worse, not even for their niece's wedding.

The photographer perches Dany and Marco atop a minor dune, the fading light at their backs. In the distance, the jagged Juárez Mountains have been reduced to a silhouette. From this angle, Dany and Marco are silhouettes, too. They're two all-black and human-shaped outlines against a lava-like orange swirl of sky. We'll drive back to the city after this. Soldiers will stop us on our way in, rifle through our things, ask us what we were doing and where we're going and what we'll do when we get there. “All these soldiers and police, and yet they never catch anyone,” Marco will say. It will be the first time I'll hear a comment like that from him, a hint that the wider world is seeping inside his soccer bubble. We'll go back to Juárez. Back into the thick of it, into a city where bullets are dividing families. The photographer clicks his shutter a few last times.

“Nice shot,” I say. Marco and Dany smile in the gloaming, out here in the desert. It's a really pretty picture.

Chapter 15

Exodus

What you're seeing is an exodus, like in biblical terms. Mexico is collapsing. And any sane person is going to get out, and they are.

—CHARLES BOWDEN

The mexican government finds the killer, the
sicario
who shot the pregnant woman from the U.S. Consulate. He's a member of the Azteca street gang. In the papers, the Aztecas are usually described as the enforcement arm of La Línea, itself once merely the enforcement arm of the Juárez Cartel. The killer's name is Ricardo Valles de la Rosa, also known as El Chino and as El 29. Police extract from him a full confession. He was going after the prison-guard husband, he says. There had been a dustup in the El Paso jail, and the guard had rubbed someone the wrong way. So, nice work, Mexican police! If only the confession can be believed. “We still maintain that we have no information to indicate that any of the [victims] were specifically targeted,” says Andrea Simmons, an FBI spokeswoman. El Paso Country sheriff Richard Wiles, who is emerging as my most trusted law enforcement official, seconds the skepticism.

The Aztecas are easy to finger. There's no doubt they are a force in border crime. I've seen pictures of Aztecas incarcerated in the Juárez jail, their arms, necks, and backs covered with elaborate art. Portraits of masked warriors with feathered headdresses and swords. Battle scenes in black ink. Aztecas are mean-looking dudes, tough and muscular
hombres
exactly like the guy standing next to me on the bus. I'm in Cancún, riding the shuttle that serves the tourist corridor. I'm here in advance of the Indios' next game, against the team called Atlante. Aztec designs darken the upper torso of my fellow commuter, the ink more than peeking out of his wifebeater. A friend riding with him sports the “C” logo of the Chicago Bears on the inside of his left arm. On the friend's right forearm, descending to his fingers, is the word “sin.” He's not necessarily Azteca, the friend. The first guy, though: classic. The ink, the shaved head: definitely. I'm surprisingly unthreatened to be straphanging next to him. We're all on spring break here. Our collective energies have been sapped bobbing in beautifully warm turquoise waves. Maybe these two have just finished a drinking session at Señor Frog's, downing tequila shots to forget for a while the game we all left back in Juárez. Even Aztecas need some R & R.

I've come to Cancún earlier than I needed to, three full days in advance of the game. I figured if I'm going to pay for a plane ticket clear across the country, then I should get as much out of this trip as possible. And hotel rooms are cheap right now, hardly an expense. Tourism in Cancún—tourism all across Mexico—is way down. Visits to Acapulco are off 45 percent, according to the latest figures I've seen. Cancún tourism is down by 30 percent. Texas police are warning spring breakers not to visit Mexican border towns. (Which is, like,
duh
.) The State Department has warned Americans about the dangers of traveling
anywhere
in Mexico. Several American universities have shut down their Mexican study-abroad partnerships. A story in the Orange County
Register
: “Spring Break May Be Broken for Mexico Resorts.”

I've checked into a hotel off the beach. It's just a motel, really, though they modernized it into a retro-hip kind of place. It's centrally located, there's a pool, they charge next to nothing, and the hotel is still maybe only half occupied. “It's very hot here,” says an American down from Los Angeles. It
is
hot, and more humid than Miami, which I didn't think was possible. I picked the motel because I wanted to stay away from the American tourist ghetto. Why go to a foreign country only to spend time with Americans? Yet almost every guest here
is
an American. And the reason they are here is traditional, and immediately obvious: They've flown down for the sun and the possibility of sex and, above all, to legally drink.

“Bro, I got a job offer today. In this recession!” A kid from Brown accepts fist bumps from his Ivy League
hermanos.
He twirls a sugar packet into a tall glass of spiked iced tea and asks if there are any zip lines to ride around here. Spring break may be crippled, but it is not dead. From what I can tell, just from listening to the guests in my hotel, sophomore year sucked, but this year has been great so far, and senior year looks like it'll be amazing. Young men not yet twenty-one down clear bottles of Sol and smoke Cuban cigars and top off their pre-party with shots of vanilla-smooth tequila. “We need some Spanish pickup lines, bro.” A sign in the lobby advertises morning jitneys to “the most sexiest beach club,” a daylight dance party I can't see myself committing to. I've been wandering around Cancún rather aimlessly, a solo explorer.

I've never been here before. I've never wanted to visit here before. So I never knew the beaches in Cancún are spectacular. It's the warmest seawater I've ever enjoyed, water so clear I stay in it for hours at a time, pulling myself out only to drip dry before repeating the wash cycle again and then once more after that. The beaches counterbalance the disappointing resorts lining the waterfront. They're nothing special to look at, and the guests staying there bore me. I walk up from the sand to check out one resort, passing a pack of students touching each other in a game of
fútbol Americano
. In the shallow end of a giant swimming pool, a kid in an orange Illini hat—he's age nineteen at most—sips from a can of Modelo, shouting out to every girl his age that walks by. There's not much action for him, I'm afraid. It's mostly middle-aged Middle America bulging through the plastic straps of beach chairs, basting in their own beers and reading paperback thrillers.

Fish tacos near the beach cost five times more than they do in the city. Everyone eating is an American tourist, some of the younger ones reporting (with a somewhat forced enthusiasm) that last night's foam party was wild, and tonight promises to be wilder still. It doesn't feel at all like the Mexico I've come to know, but I only have to look up at the
megabandera
—the exact same giant tricolor flag that flies in Juárez—to be reminded that this is indeed the same country. And that the issues that face Juárez affect Cancún, too. Border violence is crippling tourism all the way down here. A pedestrian mall near the waterfront hotels has been abandoned. It's an artificial esplanade designed to look like an Old Mexico village. All the businesses have closed up. Rusting steel gates shield empty storefronts. Graffiti tags the stucco walls. As I walk through the mall, I can't help but think of El Centro in Juárez, which, in the end, makes this ersatz Mexican village more authentic than the developers could have ever envisioned.

Indios and Atlante are playing at night, after the Caribbean sun has set. On the evening of the game, a couple hours before kickoff, the air is still hot (and moist and sticky) as I walk from my hotel to downtown Cancún. I see only one man wearing an Atlante jersey. Cancún doesn't seem to care that it has a team in the Primera. It's like Miami that way, a big-league destination with or without sports. Cancún's indifference is most evident at Atlante's lame stadium. It's just a concrete square, four building blocks of bleachers set down like unconnected Legos. The stands look old and weathered, but when I step into the press area I'm told that that Alain N'Kong, our inept striker, scored the stadium's first-ever goal, back when he played for Atlante, which couldn't have been that long ago. One of the local reporters howls at the mention of Kong's name. He hasn't scored a goal for us all season; it seems he was a fraud when he played for Atlante, too.

The press section isn't an enclosed box or anything, just a roped-off patch of bleachers. The rope seems superfluous. It's not as though anyone's going to take our seats. There's hardly anyone here. I pass maybe thirty-five fans as I walk down to the field to watch the Indios warm up. I find Gabino waiting in the tunnel. The players put in a good week of training, the head coach tells me. He and his assistants have drafted a solid game plan, and everyone's still pumped from last week's win over Querétaro. He expects another win tonight. Marco jogs past us and onto the field, first plucking a tuft of grass and crossing himself. He throws me a wave of acknowledgment, but otherwise he's dialed in, serious. He slaloms around a stack of orange cones, running backwards as instructed. I take a walk around the track that circles the field.

Back when I first met up with El Kartel, before I even rode the bus to Monterrey, I was told to get out my calendar and highlight this game. Ken-tokey promised me it would be El Kartel's best road trip of the year. Three days on the bus just to reach the Yucatán Peninsula, but, in the end—Cancún, man. Big parties. Soccer first, but then an epic night out. Here I am, but where is Ken-tokey? Where is anybody? Not a single Kartelero made the trip. No one thinks the Indios are going to win, so why bother? Atlante is a mid-table team, not the best in the Primera, but good enough to have won a coveted trophy. A banner hanging on a stadium wall identifies the Cancún club as the current champion of CONCACAF, the governing body of soccer in North America and the Caribbean. That's a major title; it comes with a ticket to the FIFA Club World Cup and a chance to knock off Lionel Messi, Gerard Pique, and the other superstars of Barcelona. When I make it back to the press box (press corral?), the reporters expect an easy Atlante win. No one is worried about a possible Indios upset.

ON LEAVING: IT'S estimated that some fifty thousand Juarenses have moved to El Paso in the past three years. Saul Luna's girlfriend, a Juarense, hasn't crossed back to Mexico in more than three years. Neither has an El Paso mechanic I visited when I needed a new set of tires. He and I got to talking, and it turns out he owns a house in my neighborhood, just one block from my apartment, a house he's simply abandoned. Francisco Ibarra postponed his move to El Paso for as long as he could. As the violence ramped up, and as it became clear his family was a target for kidnapping and extortion, he still tried to make it work in Juárez, to adapt somehow. First he bought a bulletproof SUV, then another. He hired a bodyguard to keep his family safe. It wasn't enough. His wife was assaulted. The names of his children appeared on kidnapping lists. He went ahead and set up Paco in El Paso. Immigration lawyers advised Francisco that he was free to join his son, to move the family over. But the residency process, in his case, required a full year on the Texas side. No crossing back to watch Indios games, or even practices. No checking in at his Juárez radio station. None of the schmoozing with politicians he feels is essential to his professional success. He didn't want to cross over. He didn't want to leave his city. He put it off, and he put it off longer still. But, eventually, he knew the time had come.

On his last day in Juárez, he visited the Indios offices down at the Grupo Yvasa complex. He followed that visit by stopping in at his radio station, lingering much longer than he needed to. He thought of his father, who refused to move to El Paso with him. Francisco recognized that if only he'd been born in Texas, as his mother had suggested, then a residency exile wouldn't have been necessary. He waited until the last minute. Finally, he told his driver to take him over. They drove on Colegió Militar, past Chamizal Park, and then past the soccer stadium. Their bridge loomed up ahead, in El Centro, coming into view.

“Stop!” Francisco commanded. He wanted to go for burritos. Immediately. Nothing on earth was more important. He demanded his driver double back, steer deep into the city to his favorite restaurant. It took a while to get there—
qué bueno
—and once there he ordered a full meal. He sat in a booth with his food for an hour, and then a while longer. He couldn't stand the thought of leaving.

“I love Juárez,” he tells me. “I just love Juárez.”

With their membership in the Primera truly in the balance, the Indios come out with a passion they should have tapped a lot earlier in the season. They look great, right away. Every time there's a fifty-fifty ball, meaning possession is up for grabs, an Indio seems to end up in control. Edwin, always a feisty scrapper, is battling harder than ever. Gabino's game plan, clearly, is to retreat into a shell, to concentrate on defense. Our few chances come on counterattacks. As time runs down on the first half, Kong misses a great opportunity, a breakaway he totally flubs. The reporter next to me in the press box snorts. No score at halftime.

ON LEAVING: AT least 160,000 families have abandoned Juárez in the past three years—if not for El Paso, then for other cities in Mexico. At halftime I talk to a young woman wearing an Indios jersey. She caught my ear with lusty cheers every time an Indios player touched the ball. She's a Juárez native, she tells me. She's been living in Cancún for a couple years, ever since the violence inspired her parents to sell their Juárez properties and sink the proceeds into an oceanfront hotel, which they run.

“Nobody ever thought we'd make the Primera, and still we did!” she says when I bring up the team's likely descent. There's that Frontera optimism I've come to know, that found silver lining. Juárez, she tells me, remains in her heart. She still has lots of family there, including her grandmother. The people are warm, the city is generous, et cetera—all that. Yet when I tell her that life seems softer in Cancún, she quickly responds with “Definitely!” When I ask if her family will be going back, she answers even more rapidly.

“Never!” she shouts, startling me with the force of her reply. “I still go up to visit my grandma, but Juárez is so violent. I saw a car get jacked right in front of me at a red light!”

THE INDIOS LOOK a little tired after the break. Road trips are grueling, as I've learned. Especially with a cross-country flight like the one the team took only yesterday. The humidity isn't making anything easier. The biggest factor has to be their play in the first half. It seems to have depleted them. They've given Atlante their best shot, and it didn't produce a goal. It's going to be hard to play with that same intensity, yet now is when they really need it. They cannot afford even a tie. Because they must play for the win, Gabino relaxes the defense a bit, telling his players to make more runs on net. It's a risky tactical decision. With the midfield and the forwards pushing ahead, the Indios are vulnerable to a quick counterattack, which is what Atlante pulls off perfectly. Ten minutes into the second half, the home team scores a goal: 1–0.