[opening of part two] jose the latin lover

Part Two.  The Border, East and West.

José was a wetback working in the United States, and he returned to his village in Mexico.

When he got back, all of his friends and family asked him, “hey, José, what did you think of the Americans?”

“The Americans?  They are a wonderful people!” José said.  “They all think that I’m a Latin lover.”

“A Latin lover, José?”

“Because every day after work, I went to this bar, and I’d walk in and they’d say, “look!  It’s that fucking Mexican!”

—My 89-year-old Mexican grandfather, a longtime resident of Nogales, Arizona

[opening of part three] dangerous to your health

[#] “Stay out of the water.”

Cyclist for Social Change, Retrospect.  Phoenix, Arizona, 3 July 2010.

The border between the United States and Mexico is 1951 miles long.  At the western end, fifteen-foot-tall steel beams wade out into the waters of the Pacific.  Seagulls perch upon their crowns, rolling tides eat at their sides, and children slip back and forth between them.  For two dollars, ice cream and elote vendors extend their hands through, with a smirk.  The beams are in on the joke.

In the distance, dolphins swim across the border into Mexico, illegally.  To the south, families whack at beach balls.  And to the north, a sign reads “Stay out of the water: Dangerous to your health”. 

A Border Patrol agent tells me to stay away from the wall.  “They might throw rocks at you,” he says.  I lick at my popsicle.  Rice flavored. 

My girlfriend and I pull off Arivaca Road and search for a lay-up site, where migrants molt before moving on to cooler climates.  A Border Patrol agent pulls up behind us and asks what we’re doing.  We present sandwiches.  “Having lunch,” I say.  He doesn’t need to know any more than that.

“Well, be careful,” he implores.  “There are a lot of dangerous people out here.”

Minutes later I am driving up and down the highway, disoriented.  I pull into a local restaurant to ask for directions, and a woman in her mid-forties approaches.  Her shorts are too short.  She tells me that I need to turn around.

 “And watch out for the Border Patrol,” she says.  “They can drive real dangerous out here.”

The customs agent in Brownsville asks me what I’m doing so far from home.  She gives me the once-over, the twice-over.  Three times.  I lean my bicycle against the wall.  She asks what I was doing in Mexico.  How long I was there. With whom I was there.  Where I’m from, where I was born, if I speak Spanish, if I speak Spanish well, where I learned to speak Spanish, what college I attended, what my college’s mascot is…

I’m crossing back from Matamoros into the United States by car with three others.  The driver and shotgun passenger are dark-haired, dark-eyed Latinas, while the passengers in the rear, myself and another Latina, are lighter skinned.  The customs agents ask for our identification.  He doesn’t say a word to the two in front.

It’s late at night when I’m crossing back into Douglas, ready for sleep.  I’ve been giving out socks to migrants in Agua Prieta.  Lots of migrants.  Lots of socks. 

The customs official knows our group from our many trips back and forth. 

“So you’re helping the Mexicans?” he asks.

“Yep.”

“And I bet you think that you’re doing some good, aren’t you?”

I had cleaned out blisters on the migrants’ feet.  “Yep.”

“You know,” he says, “Americans need help too.  Maybe you should spend more time on this side of the line.” 

“Thanks,” I say.  “There’s a lot of work to do on both sides.”

Sometimes I think about buying an empanada cart.  I think I’d wheel it everywhere.  Barefoot, in the sand, right into the ocean.

[opening of part one] the bicycle story

Part One.  The Road and the Rio Grande Valley.

There was this guy.  Every weekend for years and years, he would ride his bicycle across the border into Mexico.  Suspecting that the man was up to no good, customs agents checked him from head to toe every time he crossed.  They were convinced that he was trafficking some type of contraband, but they could never find a thing.  The guy swore up and down that he wasn't a smuggler, just a cycling enthusiast on the way to visit family.

The man decided to move to the east coast.  By this time, he and the customs officials had struck up a kind of awkward, playful friendship.  On his last trip across the line, the agents promised that if he told them his decades-long secret, just this once, they would let him cross unchecked.

"So what was it?" they asked.  "What were you bringing across all these years?"

The man drew up a wry smile.  “Bicycles.”

—Roy, whom I met at a film screening in Tucson

[opening of part four] the dancing death

[#] “... And the more I feel my own scars forming.”

Cyclist for Social Change, Retrospect.  Phoenix, Arizona,13 September 2010.

A reporter accosts me outside of the convention center in Gómez Palacio, Durango.  She wants to know if I am an adherent to the Other Campaign.  “Yes,” I say. “I am.”

“But why?” she asks.  “Why you?  You’re not from Mexico, are you?” 

“No, but the philosophy behind the Otra extends beyond Mexico.  The Other Campaign is an initiative for all peoples, not just Mexicans.” 

The reporter cocks her head to the side, and the features of her face are drawn to her nose, in a wince.   “Pues, sí…” she trails off.  Marcos exits the building, and the reporter runs after him.  “Stay right here,” she shouts, “so that I can continue talking with you.” 

She joins the whirling mass of reporters, photographers and autograph seekers.  I return to my compañeros of the Karavana. 

I’m back in Phoenix for Luis’ birthday.  “El Potro”, they call him.  “The Colt”.  The young and rising leader, in his black hat and boots, kicking up the dirt of our outdoor dance floor.  Banda blares in the background.  The dark hair, dark eyes of the crowd are sweating, sweating, sweating.

An old friend introduces me to a friend of hers.  The woman asks me about my project—my life—and I explain.  “The border?” she asks.  “What would interest you about the border?  O sea, how Mexican are you?”

The day after, a visiting researcher from the Rio Grande Valley asks me the same question.  “Ohhh…” she says, nodding her head.  “Your project is… interesting.  So, is this just some kind of adventure for you?”

At the comedor in Dateland, we hunch over our bowls of albondigas and watch a cheesy Mexican, made-for-TV movie.  The protagonist is a latter-day Vicente Fernandez—big personality, big voice, straight from the campo.  He belts out a corrido for his misbegotten love.  Her family, of course, doesn’t approve of their relationship, and they whisk her off to Mexico City.  Ten minutes later we watch as Vicente, the singing cowboy-campesino, rambles door to door in a city of thirty million, looking for his one and only.

Suburbia isn’t that much different than the campo, I think to myself.  Are Vicente and I both just wandering the world, in search of a romance we will never quite find?

Where is my border?

Lauren was ejected from her car when the driver somehow lost control and veered from the road.  The car flipped several times before smashing into a median, and Lauren was eviscerated under the weight of the vehicle.

I know Lauren from college, and two of my cousins went to high school with her, in Nogales.  We attended her service.  One cousin has also lost her best friend, Danika, in the accident.  It’s been hard for her, and she’s spent a lot of time with family.  I should give myself more time to grieve—some time—for a love that never quite was.  But a Saturday night later, I am once again at the DeConcini port of entry. 

From behind the fence, I watch as beautiful women cross into Mexico, on their way to the clubs.  A group of five or six walks past, and I ogle, slack jawed.  Qué guapas, I think. Oooh… I look closer, and I spot my cousins.  They are all dolled up and gorgeous, and I am apparently attracted to them.  Shit.

I whistle—whirp, wroop—but they know better than to look over.  “Ladies!” I shout.  “Cousins!” 

They turn their heads. “What are you doing here?”

“You know… Food and water for people deported back to Mexico.  Medical attention.  Abuse documentation… Humanitarian aid stuff.”

“Oh… well…” they say.  “Cool.  That’s cool.  We’re going out on the town.  Drinks and dancing.  Um… Are you going to be here for a while?”

“I’ll be here all night.”

“Okay, then we’ll catch you on the way out?  Great…  Well, see you later!” 

At three in the morning, tipsy, they shout through the fence as they cross into the United States beyond—“yeah, cousin!  Whoo hoo!”  Their figures fade to laughter, then black, and the checkpoint’s florescent din fills the night. 

This dead man has really fucked me up.  I haven't had time to process it—seeing him, smelling him.  Bouncing back and forth between my favorite chemically contaminated community of Mission and then Tucson with their No More Deaths, I haven't taken time to let this all sink in—my life, these travels, this weight.  It has.

I’m going to give you something, and I don't think that I’m going to give it to anyone else.  No promises.

"All I want to do is shout and sing and laugh and cry and dance, dance, dance.  Dance.  Dance in full-on sweat. Dance with my face buried in some woman's hair, my body pressed against hers. Dance until the throbbing music becomes my throbbing body.  Boom.  Boom. Boom. Dance until my legs go tired, my arms go limp, my feet burn and I sit, wasted and euphoric.

I want my body to ache, and I want to be completely, utterly depleted.

I want to dance just to remember that I'm alive.

Jesus, what a privilege.  To be alive and to be healthy.  To have a family and friends who are alive and healthy.  Well fed.  Housed. Privileged."

It's not just the dead man: it’s the sick and the lawyers who take advantage of them.  It's the poor and the mother fuckers who ignore them.   It’s you and me and those who actually want to do something, anything, and those who just don't care.

I'm crying in the middle of a restaurant, and the waitress keeps asking me “if everything's okay”. “¿Todo bien?  ¿Todo bien?” she says.  How ridiculous.

The Karavanistas descend from the mountain and desert into what locals call “the Matrix”—a sprawl of industry, traffic and the thick haze of pollution.  As we mill about our few nights’ home at the house of Dr. Margill, “andamos muy tristes, todos”, an adherente says.  We brought sadness to Monterrey.

I wash dishes after a meal, away from the others. Ana is slender and tall, and her small breasts peer from her shirt as she bends over the washbasin to help me.  She talks with me in Spanish that I don’t understand.  I try to respond and the words choke up in my throat.  Ana leaves for a moment and returns with the diminutive healer, Giitanjali, four and half feet of braids and smile.  “We are going to steal you,” she says.  “Would you like to be stolen?”  The Sup has given us specific instructions not to leave the house.  “I am going to take you to a temascal,” Giitanjali says, but I don’t know what a temascal is.  I leave without a word to the others.

Ana walks me to the back of Giitanjali’s clinic.  “Take off your clothes here,” she says, closing the door behind her.  I disrobe and exit trembling, in a towel. Giitanjali is there to greet me.  She demands that I follow and leads me outside, to a cement-block sweat lodge. 

“Get in and try not to think,” she says.  I sit on a bench, and she bolts the door from the outside.  I wipe my face dry with my forearms and lick at the salt, waiting, waiting, waiting.

Giitanjali bursts into the temascal and directs me to lie upon my stomach.  She stands upon my back, the heels of her feet probing at first, and then depressing to several cracks.  She drops to the floor and holds my head in her hands.  She pops my neck to one side and then the other.  “There,” she says.  “Now it’s gone.”

Giitanjali exits and returns minutes later.  She orders me out.  I stand bare and smoldering in an open court.  She throws a bucket of water upon me, and I draw my knee to my stomach, in a perch.  She empties another bucket and then another and another and another.  I straighten.  She tosses me a towel. 

Ana.  I see Ana.  “And do you feel better?” she asks. 

“Yes, yes, I think I do.” 

But as we make our way back to the house, I still feel the weight within me. 

People warned me that I could go into a community and unknowingly tear open old wounds, exposing memories that some are trying to erase.  But the more I see, the more I am disgusted with the world around me and the more I feel my own scars forming.   

Bit by bit, I lose my sense of humor.  At times I want to vomit.  The world just isn’t as funny as it once was.  It can be crippling, and this is a day-to-day affair: some days, I can hardly speak.  I don’t want to speak because I know how little solace my words will bring.  But I know that I have to, if not only to bring others along this story with me.   

Maybe that’s the reason why I’m here: I’ve read enough garbage in the news and in books, and I hate everyone around me.  I see no hope, I read no hope, and I think that humanity is destined to run itself into the ground.  I have to believe that there is more our society than death and murder and chemical contaminations, and the miasma of industry and intolerance that hangs over all our heads.

Vicente gets the girl in the end, but the path isn’t so easy.  Someone helps him.  Anyone.  

dateland, sample chapter

Not for wider distribution.  Just a draft.  Comment freely.
--Riedel

[one of two] new old stuff. minutemanland, day 5 on

[#] “Looks like the wheels of justice will keep on grinding.” 

Cyclist for Social Change, “The Undocumented”. Three Points, Arizona, April 2006. 

[Day Five] While observing the arrest of the eleven migrants, I left behind a bag containing my wallet and passport—a lapse in judgment spurred on by the excitement of the scene.  The next day, Ray and I venture into the Minuteman of One base at the Veteran of Foreign Wars campground, in the hopes that they might have recovered my identification.  An angry volunteer approaches us.  “Fucking ACLU,” he mutters, shaking his head.  Fred greets us and the volunteer leaves, returning with an automatic rifle.  He points the gun at our faces.  Another volunteer grabs the rifle’s muzzle, puts his arm around the man, and leads him away.   Fred continues talking.  Ray and I leave soon thereafter, without the identification.

As a tribute to the Minutemen, legal observers also have their own radio handles.  Ironically, Ray now refers to me as “the Undocumented”.  Just miles from the border, I lack papers.

[Day Six] “They have their sidearms and camouflage,” the Israeli-American graduate student says of his time in the Minuteman camp.  “But for the most part they are normal people.  One guy I met was eating an apple, just like anybody else.  He was just using a big knife.”

[Day Eight] The Kings maintain a closed gate to non-Minutemen.  Legal observers respond by staging a roadside dance party, led by Arizona State Representative Kyrsten Sinema, also Ray’s partner.  99 Luft Balloons and California Love blare in an absurd and brazen attempt to alert immigrants of the Minutemen’s presence. 

[Day Nine] A Minuteman in an H2 Hummer whips by at 50 miles an hour.  The driver pops the emergency brake, skids to a rolling sweep of smoking tire, hits the gas, and takes off in the other direction. 

“Must have something to prove,” Ray says, laughing.

[Day Ten] “We found Javier hobbling around the desert, carrying a jug of his own urine from which he had been drinking for the day,” writes a colleague of the legal observers. “Only raw skin remained on his blistered feet. He was wandering about 100 yards from an encampment of Minutemen—an armed vigilante group on the lookout for migrants. We quickly helped Javier into a car and took him to a nearby migrant shelter for treatment.”

“I think I’m traumatized,” says Javier.  “I almost died out there.”

A native to the state of Guerrero, Mexico, he arrived in the United States at three and half months of age.  Fluent in English, he grew up in Chicago.  Javier was in his mid-20s when he was arrested, incarcerated, and deported for a domestic violence charge.  Had he been detained by Border Patrol, he would have faced a lengthy prison sentence. 

“It’s not our place to judge,” Ray says.  It’s not our place to judge.  Javier is one of dozens whom we will not report.

[Day Twelve] His name is elegant, crisp.  I want to remember it, but I don’t.  The most important details fade, even in the short term. 

Inocencio.

Inocencio knocks at the door of our two-room bungalow looking for water.  “Please,” he says, “I don’t come to bother you, but I need water.”  His eyes roll from the ceiling to the floor, from the ceiling to the floor.  Were I to push him ever so slightly, he would fall over and collapse upon the ground. 

He stays for the afternoon, although he’s welcome for much longer.  We give him fresh socks, food, a bed upon which to rest.  He calls a relative in Tucson, he says, for a ride. 

Four hours later, he smiles for the first time.  “Listo,” Inocencio says.  Ready.  And he walks off just as he came, back into the desert.

[Day Fourteen]  “You’re still on my property,” Pat (not King) says.  “What the fuck is wrong with you?”  He was a little drunk when I told him that the Minutemen had parked upon his land, adjacent to the blue flag of a Humane Borders water station on Coleman Road. 

Pat’s cell phone rings.  “Yeah,” he says to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.  “I got people on my property carrying guns.”

Stacey O’Connell and a Minuteman volunteer kick up dirt by their pickup trucks.  They had intended to stake out the water station for migrants passing through.  “That guy’s a real asshole,” O’Connell says.

“Move it.  Move it off my fucking property,” Pat reiterates.  “See that fucking flag down there, asshole?”  The man owns everything north of it.  “I’ve been here for fucking thirty-three years.  Get the fuck off my property!”

“I am!” shouts the volunteer, from across the street.

“Now.”

“No, no, not now.” He’s waiting on the police.

“Fuck the police.  And you.”

“We don’t even know if it’s this guy’s property.”

“I’ve paid taxes for thirty-two years, jerk tird fuckhead.”  Pat gets in the volunteer’s face.  “I want to cold-clock your fucking ass.  You fuckers are standing in Mexico, 1853!”

Stacey O’Connell goes to his truck and straps a firearm to his thigh. The Pima County Sheriff arrives, and the Minutemen finally leave the property.

[Day Fifteen] The Border Patrol detains three men along the roadside.  The Minutemen had called them in, and at that point, there’s not much we can do for them anyway.  If they’re along the road, they’re ready to go home.

A brown-skinned, Latino Border Patrol agent starts up his “perrero”, euphemistically named for its likeness to a dogcatcher’s vehicle.  “Make sure that you take care of them,” I tell him, thinking myself an idiot for such a naïve statement.

“Of course,” he says.  “They’re my people too.”  He raps twice at his driver’s side door, and rumbles off for the Department of Homeland Security bus stationed at Robles Junction, where the 86 meets the 286. 

“Do you believe him?” asks one of the legal observers.

“Yeah.  I believe him.”

[Day Sixteen] The dude sits outside of his trailer next to Minuteman camp.  He hasn’t shaved in a while, and his white mustache hangs low on both ends.  He wears a black, sleeveless t-shirt and blue jeans. 

He brings out his banjo and plays, not for us, the only people around, but for the breeze and the ocotillo and the jackrabbits. 

He nods to Ray and me.  We nod back.

[Day Seventeen] At approximately 6 p.m., a Range Resource Area Manager for the Arizona State Land Department informs the Minutemen that they need permits to be on state trust land.  Legal observers overhear reports on a Minuteman radio frequency that they had been informed by “someone from the state” to leave the land.  Chris “Too Tough” Simcox responds.  He has a permit but he’s not sure about everyone else.  The Minutemen refuse to leave.

A half hour later, the Range Resource Manager again informs the Minutemen of their unlawful presence.  He reported to legal observers that the lease holder, presumably Mrs. Pat King, is upset and that she is going to allow the Minutemen to stay on her private property. 

The Range Resource Manager remains on the land until midnight, when Simcox relays the following: “We are going to ignore them.  We are going to ignore them just like all the other idiots.”

[Day Eighteen] According to local reporter, O'Connell denies that an agent from the State Land Department told them to leave.

[Day Nineteen] The Arizona State Land Department now says that it was a mistake to send one of their employees out to inform the Minutemen they needed permits.  According the leaseholders, John and Pat King, the Minutemen have a contract to “work” on the state trust land.

One volunteer whom we refer to as “Chatty” brought out three bags of trash from King’s Anvil Ranch.  “You guys are sure trying hard to get us out of here,” he said.  “See, we’re doing our part.”

The state trust land still closed to everyone except for the Minutemen. The Minutemen continue with their immigrant watch.

“Looks like the wheels of justice will keep on grinding,” I tell Ray.

[Day Twenty-Three] I’m infatuated with one of our legal observers.  I’m young, but she’s younger.  The students of Prescott College choose to camp outside of a friend’s camper.  Inside the camper, I forgot my sleeping bag.  But she remembered hers.  “Wouldn’t we be warmer if we just put your sleeping bag over the top of us both?” I ask her.  My scruff bristles against her lips.  The coyotes yip in the distance.

[Day Twenty-Seven] At three o’clock on a sunny afternoon, legal observers overhear reports that Minutemen are attempting to block in a young married couple and their seven-month-old child.  “There’s a green sedan heading your way, posts eight through thirteen,” says a Minuteman, after the couple enters the state trust land.  “Whoever sees them, try to block them in.”

The reports continue: “To whoever pulled into the middle of the road to block that car in, pop open your hood.  Pretend like you’re experiencing vehicular difficulties.”  Minutemen, legal observers and the couple call the Sheriff’s Department.  A half-hour later, with no indication that the Sheriff’s Department would arrive soon, the Minutemen break the blockage.  The couple exit soon thereafter.

Both in their late 20s, the two tell legal observers that they initially came upon a Minuteman who demanded to know what they were doing and why.  They were on the state trust land to hike, they said.  The Minuteman told them that they were trespassing and that they must leave immediately.  The couple refused, and the Minuteman berated them as terrible parents for bringing their child out there”.  The two turned their car around to leave, only to confront another vehicle positioned in the middle of the road. 

When the Sheriff’s Department rolls in an hour later, the couple describes the event to the deputy.  The Minutemen could not block them from entering or exiting the land, the deputy tells them.  He offers to escort them back onto the land.  They decline. 

Legal observers offer the deputy pictures, recordings and written testimony for future investigations.  He declines.

“I know what the Minutemen are up to,” he says.

[two of two] new old stuff. minutemanland, final day

[#] “There’s no reason to be scared.” 

Cyclist for Social Change, “The Undocumented”. Three Points, Arizona, April 2006. 

[Day Twenty-Nine] On the last day of their April campaign, the Minutemen pull a quarter mile off their “Alpha Line”, Elkhorn Ranch Road, into the desert.  Legal observers arrive as a group of migrants approaches two Minutemen and their vehicles.  “We were trying to get to Arizona,” they tell legal observers, “but we got lost.  Is the highway close to here?”  The 86 is fifteen miles away.

“You have the right to keep walking,” Ray says, “but they’ve already called the Border Patrol…” One woman weeps.  Two men stare into the dirt, not saying a word. “Here’s more food and water,” Ray says.  “There’s no reason to be scared.”

“Why did you call them?” one of the migrants asks a Minuteman, perched on top of his SUV.  

“Because it’s our job.”

A mother carries her infant child swathed on her back.  The baby starts crying, perhaps dehydrated, and certainly agitated upon the arrival of a Border Patrol helicopter.  Repeatedly, the Minuteman directs Ray to "impress upon the mother" that, for the sake of the child, she should not cross the desert again. 

“How’s this baby going to make it?” ask the Minuteman.

“I imagine the way they make it every day,” Ray says.  “Why did you come to the United States?” he asks the group.

“For work.”

“Out of necessity.”

“To move forward.”

“Oh, I sympathize,” says the Minuteman.  “You can tell I speak a little bit of Spanish.  I didn’t get it from sitting around on my butt.  I worked with Hispanics all my life.  Toda mi vida.  I’m just concerned that a terrorist might cross the border.”

Ray shakes his head.  “Does this baby look like a terrorist to you?”

On their final evening shift, the Minutemen set up their Bravo Line out on King's Anvil Ranch, and another seven cars take off for their Charlie Line, Coleman Road.  When they set up at their usual position, three cars leave for a second location—“Charlie Two”.  Legal observers follow them until the lead cars turn down a narrow wash.  Pineapple Six and Scorpion, two of the Minutemen leaders, are in the third car.  They stop in the middle of the road and prop the truck’s hood.  “Oh dear,” giggles Pineapple Six.  “I don't know how to fix this.  I'm not a mechanic.”  He circumambulates his vehicle.  “Oh dear.”

After several minutes, the lead cars return empty of their passengers, and Pineapple Six’s vehicle starts once again.  The Minutemen leave, and we continue along the backroads just north of King’s land.  One legal observer hears the squawk of a walkie-talkie off in the distance.  He exits the car and mounts the hood of the vehicle, as though a tracker in the bush.  He spots footprints.  We ditch our vehicle and follow them under a barb-wire fence.  We’ve just crossed a line, and we know it. 

We hear a walkie-talkie at full volume and return to the north side of the line.  We scamper up the adjacent mountains for a better vantage point, and we sight four Minutemen in full camouflage.  We hear on their radios that they’ve detained four migrants.  We watch them until nightfall, but the foothills block much of our view.  We can’t see any migrants.  We can’t do anything.

A sheriff’s deputy waves us down from the mountain and tells us that we’re trespassing.  We have to leave immediately, he says. We know that we’re on the right side of the line, but Ray arrives and tells us to go home.  For a month, we hadn’t stepped foot on King’s property, but now…

“Go home,” Ray says.  “Go home.”

A Border Patrol vehicle entered the area but left soon thereafter, Ray tells us later, unable to find either Minutemen or migrants.