Chapter 4 Quiz PDF

PART TWO El Camino This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Memo y Lucho en el camino, Desierto de Sonora, Agosto 2009. Photo by Ángel....

PART TWO El Camino This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Memo y Lucho en el camino, Desierto de Sonora, Agosto 2009. Photo by Ángel. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CHAPTE R 4 Memo and Lucho I lend myself to the social game, I pose, I know I am posing, I want you to know that I am posing, but... this additional message must in no way alter the precious essence of my individuality: what I am apart from any effigy. —Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida ¡VACAS MEXICANAS! I am laughing uncontrollably and can’t help it. The more I laugh, the more animated Memo gets. He has a captive audience and he knows it. If Cantinflas, the iconic Mexican comedic actor known for his humorous and satirical por- trayals of peasants, had a chubby brother who actually did real manual labor, it would be Memo. They both have round faces, dark mustaches, and conta- gious smiles. They both have sarcasm down to a science. The difference is that Memo doesn’t have the Hollywood look, unless your image of Hollywood involves the men who landscape the lawns of movie stars’ homes on Sunset Boulevard. His scarred arms, fractured teeth, and weatherworn face reflect a life of economic hardship and rough living, much of which has taken place for the past two decades in the fruit fields of Fresno, California. He embodies the habitus of the Mexican working class, which also includes being able to turn a tragic tale into a funny and ironic story. Memo reminds me of my now dead Tío Cruz, which is probably why I instantly liked him. Tío Cruz was born in the Mexican state of Zacatecas and spent most of his life living, working, and drinking hard in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. He loved to tell dirty jokes and is the person who taught me how to appreciate the important cultural role of Mexican chingaderas, the working-class verbal “play routines” that are laden with humor, sexually 89 This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 90. EL CAMINO charged double entendres, and expletives. This included referring to me only as pinche cabron for many years, until I turned nine and looked the words up in the dictionary. I bawled my eyes out when I read one of the literal translations and thought that my uncle had been calling me a “goddamn bastard” for close to a decade. I still remember the smell of cigarette smoke and his cheap cologne when Cruz sat me on his bony knee and said, “Don’t be sad, Yason! It just means that I love you, you little bastard!” At almost forty years old, he might not have movie-star good looks, but Memo has the cadence, mannerisms, and timing of a seasoned joke teller. This includes knowing when and how to appropriately call someone a cabron for comedic effect. Memo’s partner in crime is Lucho, who is seven years older, a foot taller, and twenty pounds lighter. Lucho is dark-skinned with an unbe- lievably mellow disposition. He always seems to have a slight grin on his face. It’s as if he is in on some secret that he wishes he could tell you but can’t. Lucho has also lived and worked undocumented for more than thirty years in various manual labor jobs in California and Arizona, but has managed to keep a per- fect set of teeth and doesn’t show the physical wear and tear that Memo does. From first appearances, he also seems the more serious of the two. However, as soon as Memo starts in on his story, Lucho adopts the role of comedic foil, interjecting colorful details and infectious cackles. Their tandem storytelling is effective: I am laughing hard, even though it feels inappropriate to be carrying on like this in a shelter for recently deported migrants. Memo: Supposedly he knew the route. Lucho: He didn’t know nothing! [laughs] Memo: He had passed two or three times, right? Lucho: No way, he’d never been. Memo: That’s what he said. Lucho: Then why did he get lost? Jason: This is the person you crossed the desert with the first time? Memo: Yeah, García. He was an older man in his sixties that we met in deten- tion. We went with him because he said he knew the way. He said he had crossed there three years before. Lucho: We climbed this hill and then crossed a fence. It was getting dark and there were trucks driving by. Memo: It was near the Mariposa [border port of entry]. We crossed this fence and kept walking and walking. We walked a long ways and then finally sat down to rest. Then García says, “OK, we crossed over. We are here in the This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  MEMO AND LUCHO. 91 United States.” It was dark and hard to see. I said, “Are you sure?” He says, “Yeah, we are here. We made it. I crossed through here three years ago.” We saw cars going by and thought they were Border Patrol so we hid under a tree. Lucho: We sat there for a long time and waited. Then we saw this couple walk- ing by way off in the distance. We got really worried that they were lost. Memo: I started yelling at them, “Hey! Are you OK? Do you need some water?” I wanted to try and give them some water because those poor things didn’t have anything with them. No backpack or anything. They stopped for a second and waved at us. I kept yelling at them to give them water but they just waved. I started getting really scared for them because they could get robbed by bajadores. They didn’t seem worried, though, and just kept walk- ing. We got up and kept going. A little while later we came across a bunch of trash piles. I said, “García, are you sure we are in the US? This place is filthy! I don’t think gringos are this dirty.” He kept reassuring me that we had crossed. Lucho: [snickering] Then we walked pass this corral full of cows. Memo: When I saw the cows, I started getting really suspicious [laughing]. I said, “Hey García, these fucking cows are skinny, man! Look how ugly these cows are! Gringos have fat cows! Gringos have good-looking cows! You bastard! These goddamn cows are Mexican! [¡Oye cabron! ¡Estos pinches vacas son mexicanas!] What the fuck! We are still in Mexico!” [all of us laughing] Lucho: That’s why that couple didn’t stop to talk to us. We were on the Mexi- can side and they thought we were crazy. They were on a date and he was walking her home or something! Memo: What a fucking adventure! We were lost all night on the Mexican side trying to hide from trucks crossing into Mexico [laughs]. We finally figured out where the fence was and crossed over. We eventually ran out of water and a few days later García got sick from drinking from a cattle tank. He was vomiting and had bad diarrhea. Lucho: They caught us in Agua Linda [Arizona]. We spent like five nights in the desert. García couldn’t walk anymore, so we turned ourselves in. We weren’t going to leave him behind. We left Nogales together. We had a pact. If someone can’t go on, we would turn ourselves in. No one would get left behind. For example, if one of us gets sick, we turn ourselves in, or I would run to the store to find a pay phone to call 911 to say that my friend was dying or that he was left behind. This is what happened with García. He got really sick. His stomach was bad. [Tone changes to serious.] We came back and took him to the hospital in Nogales. He went back to Mexico City after that. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 92. EL CAMINO When I first heard this story, it had happened only a few weeks before. Memo and Lucho had returned to Mexico with García, and the two of them had then attempted a second desert crossing and once again failed. Both of these events were recounted to me with a great deal of laughter. These humorous reframings of a tragic story, however, were not unique instances. Over many years of interviewing hundreds of people, joking was commonly used to describe difficult or painful border-crossing experiences. For many of my male interlocutors, humor played a complex role in storytelling and remembering, which some outsiders might erroneously reduce to stereotypical macho behavior or refusals to appear vulnerable to the researcher. As Latino studies scholar José Limón points out, these linguistically spir- ited moments are “dynamic forums that interactionally produce meaning, mas- tering anxiety by inverting passive destiny through active play.” The humor, expletives, subtle forms of irony, and self-deprecation that color many people’s stories, which are often referred to as chingaderas or pendejadas, are key ele- ments of Mexican working-class subjectivity, as well as important forms of resistance and migrant identity construction. The seemingly light moments that characterize some of the tales that Memo, Lucho, and others tell in this book should be taken seriously. This humor reflects an understanding of people’s own precarious social positions and at times func- tions as a “weapon of the weak” as migrants discursively resist the power of the US federal government to deter them from crossing. Border crossers may not always have a deep understanding of the complexities of state power or immigra- tion enforcement strategies, but as individuals they experience both on a daily basis, either when attempting to cross the border illegally or while living undocu- mented in the United States. The joking that occurs on many occasions described in this book happens within, and is shaped by, not just “Mexican working-class culture” but also the systems of federal immigration policy and capitalism. Migrant humor can highlight the tensions experienced during various parts of the crossing process, soften the blows of border enforcement and social margin- alization in Mexico and the United States, and help people stay positive and focused. As one of Manuel Peña’s informants in his study of Mexican fruit pickers in Central California remarked, “We carry on like this—taunting and joking—to make light of things for a moment, to forget the problems of life for a moment—the toil, the struggle.” I realized early on that being a male researcher from a working-class Latino background often influenced the ways people interacted with me and how This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  MEMO AND LUCHO. 93 they recounted their crossing stories. Many of the men I spoke to told their hard-luck tales through the lens of chingaderas because they knew that I would understand the nuances of this linguistic frame. This included peppering their narratives with expletives, sexual innuendos, and jokes at my expense. However, these chingaderas were not intended to insult me, but rather functioned as a form of speech play that signaled the confianza and respeto that the men I interviewed accorded me. In this contexto, to be the butt of your male interlocutors’ sexual jokes signals trust and also softens the division between worlds. It is not surprising that graphic and sexually charged Mexican humor in the context of often traumatic border crossings has been largely ignored by social scientists. This is likely the result of the cultural and class differences between researchers (who are predominantly middle-class, white non-native-Spanish speakers or educated middle-class Mexicans) and their informants. Either border crossers have been speaking to researchers and journalists using rela- tively formal language, or the jokes have been going right over people’s heads. My sense is that a combination of both of these factors has tended to paint crossing stories as completely serious endeavors devoid of humor or irony. This effect could also be complicated by the tendency of some researchers to paint their subjects as noble creatures who don’t swear or crack anal-sex jokes at the drop of a hat. Moreover, many of those who have written about chinga- deras, at least in the classic literature on border culture, have tried to delegiti- mize its cultural importance and reduce it to simple linguistic manifestations of sexual anxiety, humiliation, and macho aggression. I do not mean to say that being a Latino gives me privileged insight into the plight of border crossers, but only that many of the people I interviewed felt comfortable enough to dispense with linguistic formalities and knew that I had the cultural competency to understand their use of pendejadas in various contexts. The tension between my roles as an insider (Latino male) and as an outsider (a university professor) allowed me to share in the “thickness” of border-crossing culture without foolishly thinking that my ethnicity alone would somehow give me an emic perspective into the desperation required to enter the desert. When I asked Memo once about his joking and his attempts to stay posi- tive, his response included a mix of humor and sorrow: Memo: Imagine that we are walking on a giant mountain. You can’t start think- ing this mountain is going to be too difficult. I tell people you have to be This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 94. EL CAMINO positive; be energized to keep moving forward. You have to pretend that you are on a picnic. I just say, “Let’s go climb this little hill!” You have to have jokes while you’re doing it, to keep going, to persevere, to stay energized. I just say, “We are going to keep going” and stay happy and positive. Some people will ask me, “Hey, aren’t you exhausted?” I tell them of course I am exhausted but we need to stay positive.... Imagine how good tortillas taste when you have walked that far. They are cold, hard, but so tasty [laughing] when you are starving. People will complain and say, “I want warm tortillas.” I just say, “They may be hard, but they are still delicious!”... I mean it’s something so ugly and so sad. I don’t know. I remember sometimes walking with incred- ible hunger and thirst. My hands and my feet [were in pain].... I have faith in God. I’ve met a lot of people in the shelter: kids, women. Poor things. Even pregnant women. I always ask God to protect the people who cross walking; the families, the kids. HISTORIAS I met Memo and Lucho in July 2009 at a migrant shelter in Nogales, Mexico, called Albergue Juan Bosco (discussed in more detail in chapter 5). This shel- ter houses recent deportees for a maximum of three days, but these two men had convinced the owners to let them prolong their stay in exchange for help- ing with cooking, cleaning, and supervising the large numbers of migrants (anywhere between twenty and two hundred people) whom this nonprofit organization assists daily. I didn’t know it at the time, but these two who had me laughing about pinches vacas mexicanas would soon become key informants. My first impression was that they were lifelong friends who were trying to cross the border together. They had such an easy rapport with one another, I was shocked to learn that they had met only a few weeks before I showed up at the shelter. They were amigos del camino whose friendship blossomed one night as they sat in federal detention and were then sent to Nogales the follow- ing day. These men quickly bonded over their need to survive deportation to an unfamiliar border town and their shared desire to cross back into the United States. They also had similar life histories. Both came from working- class families and had migrated to the United States in the 1980s with little difficulty. Memo: I was born in 1969 in a small town on the border of Jalisco and Micho- acán. I moved to Veracruz when I was little and basically grew up there. Life was very beautiful in Veracruz but the thing is that they paid very little. The salaries were low. The economy was in a crisis, like it is now in the This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  MEMO AND LUCHO. 95 US. There was only money to eat and barely dress yourself. If you had the chance to go to school, you did. If you didn’t have much money, you studied in the morning and then worked half a day. If you had no money, then you just went to work. What happened to me was that I was already working in the afternoons and just ended up leaving school in the fifth grade with about a month to go until graduation. After that, I just kept working and working. When I was in my twenties, I met a guy who invited me to cross the border with him. I didn’t know anyone who had crossed and didn’t really have any family over there in the US. My friend really wanted to cross, but he was afraid. He had a brother-in-law in California who he said we could stay with and who could help us get jobs. I said, “Let me think about it.” Four months went by and he still wanted to go. This was like 1988. I had two young kids at that time, but I had already broken up with their mother, so I was single. My friend was really pressuring me to go. He was saying, “Come on, come on. I spoke to my brother-in-law. He is waiting for us.” So I got together what little money I could and we left. We crossed through Agua Prieta [the Sonoran border town just south of Douglas, Arizona] and just walked a little bit up the freeway. It was only like three or five hours of walk- ing. I don’t really remember, but it wasn’t much. We crossed the freeway and a car came for us and took us to Phoenix. From Phoenix, my friend’s brother-in-law sent someone to come get us. That’s how I got to California. That was the first time I crossed. I was about nineteen years old at the time. Lucho left Mexico almost a decade before Memo, and his recollection of the trip was vague, despite my pressing. Lucho: I left Jalisco in 1980, when I was eighteen years old. I took a bus to Tijuana and then crossed in San Diego. It was really easy at the time. We crossed the fence and our coyote took me to Los Angeles, where my grand- mother and aunt were living. In subsequent years, both men would end up crossing the border multiple times, though in different ways and for different reasons. In general, Lucho benefited by leaving Mexico earlier than Memo and by already having a strong family support network in California. In 1986, the US Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which provided approximately 2 million undocumented people with Permanent Resident Status (i.e., “green cards”). Under this program, Lucho qualified for amnesty, which allowed him to travel back to Mexico to visit his ailing mother. Much to the chagrin of politicians hoping to stop the flow of undocumented migration by provid- ing amnesty to those already in the country, Lucho (like many others during This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 96. EL CAMINO that era) used his status to illegally bring his remaining family to the United States. Lucho: In 1987 I went back to see my mom in Mexico when she was dying. By that time I had my amnesty papers [Permanent Resident Status]. I brought my dad, two sisters, and my two little brothers back with me. I was with my brother-in-law, who was also a resident. He helped us get them across through Tijuana. We crossed through La Libertad. We crossed there and got to San Ysidro [California]. From there we piled everyone into a van and I drove us to Los Angeles. We were all afraid, but I said that I would drive because I had my papers. We got around the Border Patrol checkpoint and made it to Los Angeles. I had a good job in California at that time and was able to take care of my siblings and my dad. In 1994, Lucho moved with his US-citizen wife to Tucson, where she had grown up. She helped him petition to get his residency renewed, but he had failed to file the proper paperwork on time and lost his legal status. This forced him to keep a relatively low profile and avoid immigration officials. A few years after arriving in Tucson, Lucho was picked up by Border Patrol and deported. He then ended up crossing the border illegally through Nogales with relative ease. Lucho: They caught me when I was working one day. They kicked me out because I didn’t have papers on me. They caught me on a Friday afternoon and sent me to Mexico that night. My wife went to Nogales to find me. I was going to try to cross by myself that Friday night, but it was really dark. It was like 10 at night when I got to the border, and I said to myself, “No way!” Can you imagine trying to cross through Río Rico [a mountainous part of southern Arizona] alone? I was afraid. [laughs] I told my wife that I couldn’t cross that night but that I would try on Sunday. I told her to meet me at the entrada [Nogales-Grand port of entry] where they check pass- ports and where cars pass through. I was in the line to walk across and I tried to sneak past the agent. I started walking past him, and he yelled, “Hey! Get back in line!” I tried to keep walking and they grabbed me and sent me to the end of the line. I said, “OK,” and just when he turned his back again, I snuck right passed him. [laughs] I just walked by really quick when he wasn’t looking. I got through and started running. I ran over to the little stores [wholesale stores in Nogales, Arizona] on the US side. You know the ones owned by Asian people? I got to the traffic light and ran into a store. The Border Patrol were driving by slowly looking for me, and I was looking at them through the glass from inside the store. I waited and then my wife drove by. I ran out of the store quickly while she was at the traffic light. I This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  MEMO AND LUCHO. 97 jumped into the car and she started screaming, “What did you do?” I told her to just start driving. We went about three blocks and then we got pulled over by a cop. He asked where we were coming from, and I said Nogales [Mexico], because my wife has her citizenship. I told him we were headed to Tucson. He asked whose car we were driving, and I told him it was mine because my name was on the registration. He asked for my license and my wife took it out of her purse. I showed it to him and then he wanted to check the trunk. That’s when my wife started getting scared. She was really nervous. I opened the trunk and they checked it and said, “OK. We just stopped you because the car was giving off a little bit of smoke. Just be careful and have a good day.” I was laughing and my wife was shaking! She was yelling, “What the hell are you doing? I’ll leave you here in Nogales!” I said, “No way! If anyone stays behind, it’s you because the car is in my name!” [laughs] I drove us back to Tucson. It was pretty easy because there was no checkpoint in those days on the freeway. I was back at work that following Monday. It was a quick cross- ing then, like it was nothing. After this event, Lucho was able to avoid apprehension by immigration authorities for more than a decade. In 2009, he was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol and sent to federal detention in Eloy, Arizona. Lucho: I got in trouble with the law in 2009. I was trying to get my citizenship papers fixed and I got arrested for a DUI.... That was when they sent me to Eloy. I spent three months there. I got a lawyer and I was able to get out on bail. I was fighting the case with my lawyer. We went to court three times. Finally the judge said that we were going to lose the case and that they were going to deport me. They gave me a card that was from ICE [Immigration Customs Enforcement] that said that I needed to present myself with all of my possesions because they were going to deport me. But I didn’t go. I was like, “I ain’t going. They can come looking for me.” This resulted in... Well, I worked really close to the ICE office. Like five blocks from there [laughs]. Yeah, I’m telling you it was like three months later when I saw a car driving slowly past my work with someone looking around [mimics driving and peek- ing his head out of the window]. Later when I was working, there was a car parked out front with tinted windows. I kept asking about the car, but no one knew whose it was or who they were. Three days later, six officers arrived and grabbed me. A fuckload of them came out of nowhere. They threw my lunch down and everything and handcuffed me. They took me to the immigration office [detention center], and then they threw me out of the country. They tossed me into Mexico. That was when I met Memo. We spent one night together in detention and became friends. Jason: How did that happen? This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 98. EL CAMINO Lucho: You know, you start talking to people while you’re in there like, “Hey, where are you from? Where did you try and cross?” We just started talking and then became friends. The three of us [including García] hung out together when we got sent back to Nogales. Memo’s border-crossing experiences and run-ins with the law were far more harrowing and frequent than Lucho’s. Between the late 1980s and 2009, he lived in Fresno, California, where he periodically got in trouble with the police and was deported on numerous occasions. Unlike Lucho’s family, the bulk of Memo’s stayed in Mexico. Memo: After that first crossing in 1988, I went back to Mexico a few times. I made some mistakes. I got deported a few times in Fresno, usually for driv- ing without a license or with no insurance. The first time I got deported, in the 1990s, I went back to Mexico for three months to see my family, and then I returned to the US and went back to work picking grapes in Fresno. In those days we crossed the border pretty easily. There weren’t a lot of problems. Before, when I would get caught and sent me back, I’d be like, “Ni modo” [Whatever]. I’m going to try again.” However, after that second deportation, I didn’t want to go back home to my house in Mexico. I just called home from Tijuana and spoke to my neighbor and said, “Tell my fam- ily that I’m fine.” I never told my family that I had been caught. I didn’t want them to feel bad. It was like that for a while. I would get across, go back to work, and send money home when I could. I had a good job and nice salary in Fresno. Years ago, there weren’t a lot of problems with immigration. Crossing the border was easier. Following the escalation in security after the terrorist attacks on Septem- ber 11, 2001, Memo found it harder to migrate. After one deportation in early 2009, he made several failed attempts, each more dangerous than the previous. Memo: The problems really started after 9/11. When the towers fell, that is when things really got complicated and it was harder to cross. After that there were more checkpoints and everything. Now it is always a fight to cross.... I had a good job in Fresno, but I was drinking too much. That was my problem. I was picking grapes, working in the fields. I really liked my job. I got promoted to driving the tractor and it was a great job. The problem was I got drunk once in the afternoon and thought it was a good idea to drive the tractor to the store to get more beer. I was going slowly down the street on that tractor drinking a beer and waving at my friends. I was having a great time! I was getting crazy in those days! I got arrested that time and deported to Tijuana for drunk driving. Jason: How many times have you tried to cross the border? This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  MEMO AND LUCHO. 99 Memo: Like fifteen times. I have crossed by myself, sometimes with others. I have always told myself that I am going to keep trying until I get through. I crossed through Tijuana like five times. They were getting pissed. They said, “You’ve been caught here too many times. You know what? We are gonna send you someplace else.” Then they sent me someplace else. One time they sent me to Ciudad Juárez. When they caught me the last time in Tijuana, they separated me from my group and sent me to Sonoyta [Mexico]. In Sonoyta, I met a guy from Puebla who was with his wife. From there we tried to cross in a group of about ten people with a guide. We walked a long ways that time and got really close to the pickup spot. It was a... I don’t know how to tell you, we were so close and it was terrible when they caught us. We were inconsolable because we had gone so far and were beat up. It was just all blood. People’s feet were bad, and the group wanted to leave some behind, like my friend from Puebla and his wife. I told the group,“No way! I will stay with them and we will keep going slowly.” Anyway, they caught us that time and sent us back to Sonoyta. We tried right away to cross again and we immediately started struggling. I knew that my friend’s wife couldn’t do it, and I wasn’t really able to either. It felt as if we were going to get lost, but I kept saying to the group, “We are not going to die. We are not going to die.” God gave us the strength to keep going and not die. I just kept saying that we needed to keep going. We found some water, but my friend’s wife’s feet were really bad because we had walked for eleven days. We spent eleven days and nights in that desert with the guide, and they just kept taking us all over the place until we finally got caught. Jason: How did you feel after eleven days? Memo: Relieved to be caught because who knows if we would have even made it. We were close to dying. Border Patrol gave us suero [electrolytes] and water. We kept drinking water and I had cramps from trying to drink. After that, they took our fingerprints and stuff and then they separated us. One of the Border Patrol agents said to me, “You know what? You have crossed a lot of times. Why don’t you rest for a bit, because you can die out there. Look, don’t try again right now. Take a little break.” Jason: La migra said this to you? Memo: Yeah, he said, “Take a break. Like a year, because we have your record here and you have tried to cross a lot of times recently.” I said, “No way, I am going to try again.” He told me, “Not here you’re not. We are going to send you to Nogales.” I said, “Fine, but I am going to try again.” The agent said, “OK, I think it is easier to cross in Nogales than here in Sonoyta.” I said, “Well, if that is your recommendation. Fine.” They sent me to Nogales. He was being honest with me, and I figured I would talk to him truthfully as well. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 100. EL CAMINO He said, “You know what? Try again, but take a break first and next time bring a lot of suero. Bring a gallon of water or three. And bring a lot of suero.” Jason: The agent said all of this? Memo: Yeah. Jason: Was the agent white or Mexican? Memo: I think his parents were Mexican. He was like a Latino. He told me that if I was going to try again, that I should rest for a bit and take a lot of vitamins. He also told me to take vitamins with me in the desert. He said, “I understand your case because I saw your entire record. All the places you have been struggling to cross the border. Why are you trying so hard to get to the US?” I said, “Well, I am trying to support myself. I want to do something. I’m working because I want to buy a little piece of land in Mexico. I want to build some small rooms that I can rent out and with that I’ll ask God to help me get ahead.” I told the agent not to hunt me down because I didn’t want my family to suffer, my wife and my kids. I’m suffering by myself. It’s no problem to do it alone. But I can’t sit waiting in Mexico with my wife and my kids, watching them suffer and me struggling to make money. He said, “You know what? We are going to send you to Nogales. It is much closer to cross than Sonoyta, but it is dangerous. There is danger everywhere there. You have to be careful of rattlesnakes and who you cross with.” At that time, I guess there were a lot of bajadores. He told me, “If you have money, it’s better to give it to the bajadores. That way they won’t kidnap or kill you. Just give them your money. That’s what I can tell you to help you get across.” I said, “Instead of advice, if you want to help me, why don’t you just give me a ride? Instead of locking me up, drop me off down the street.” [laughing] Jason: What did he say? [laughing] Memo: He said, “¡No, cabron! What do you want me to do? Drive you around and help you find a job too?” [laughing] Man, what adventures I’ve had. After that, they deported me to Nogales. Well, first they sent me to deten- tion in Tucson. That is where I met Lucho. That was the first time I came through Tucson. When they deported us to Nogales, we had already started hanging out together in detention. It was clear after my first conversation with Memo and Lucho that both were determined to get across the border at any cost. Neither of them consid- ered staying in Mexico to be a viable option. Despite having different life expe- riences and social networks in the United States, both were habitual border crossers who had significant knowledge regarding how to overcome border security and live under the radar of immigration enforcement. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  MEMO AND LUCHO. 101 BORDER MYTHS One of the major misconceptions about immigration control is that if the gov- ernment spends enough money on fences, drone planes, motion sensors, and Border Patrol agents and makes the crossing process treacherous enough, peo- ple will eventually stop coming. Close to two decades of research has shown that boundary enforcement efforts play only a minimal role in discouraging people from attempting to cross the border and that social and economic fac- tors are the key determinants of trends in migration rates. During his State of the Union address on February 12, 2013, President Barack Obama perpetu- ated this misconception when he argued for heightened security as a way to slow undocumented migration flows: “Real reform means strong border secu- rity, and we can build on the progress my administration has already made— putting more boots on the southern border than at any time in our history and reducing illegal crossings to their lowest levels in 40 years.” Rather than linking the slowing of migration to “putting more boots on the southern border,” President Obama would have been more correct had he connected the decrease in unauthorized crossing rates to the effects of the economic crisis that began in 2008, which included a reduction in available jobs for undocumented people and rising anti-immigrant sentiment. Such reasoning would of course have been an unpopular framing of the side-effects of US economic trends and would have contradicted the problematic perception held by many Americans that if the border can be secured, immigration can be stopped. The year before I met Memo and Lucho, the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego, published findings on how views of the perils associated with border crossing influenced people’s decisions to migrate from three Mexican states: A multivariate regression analysis [of data from Oaxaca]... reveals that per- ceptions of border-crossing difficulty and dangers have no statistically signifi- cant effect on the intent to migrate in 2008, when we control for the effects of age, sex, marriage, educational level, previous migration experience, and the number of family members currently living in the United States. We have per- formed the same analysis of responses to the same survey questions in three previous studies (done in different migrant-sending communities in the states of Jalisco and Yucatán), getting the same results. In sum, seeing the fortified border as a formidable and dangerous obstacle course does not deter would-be migrants. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 102. EL CAMINO These data suggest that people know that the geopolitical boundary is more dangerous than ever before, but that this knowledge has relatively little impact on their decision to undertake a crossing. The authors of this report also note that the success rate of people was astonishingly high: “In four... studies, we found that fewer than half of migrants who come to the border are apprehended, even once, by the Border Patrol.... [T]he apprehension rate found in these studies varied from 24 to 47. And of those who are caught, all but a tiny minority eventually get through—between 92 and 98 percent, depending on the community of origin. If migrants do not succeed on the first try, they almost certainly will succeed on the second or third try.” These findings support Peter Andreas’s argument that the security in place between the United States and Mexico has always been relatively ineffective at keeping people out. Regrettably, such statistics are generally ignored by poli- ticians and federal agencies invested in using the fear of foreign invaders and the image of a porous border as both a political smokescreen to distract the American public from other economic and foreign policy issues and an easy way to systematically generate funds for their war chests. “NOTHING TO GO BACK TO” Lucho and Memo bonded over their shared desire to reenter the United States, but their motivations for crossing and their recent migration histories were quite different. When he met Lucho, Memo was in the midst of a long cycle of repeatedly trying and failing to get across the border using multiple routes that included California, Arizona, and Texas crossing points. Memo has a cousin in Fresno, but his primary reason for crossing is economic. After two decades, he has become fully integrated into the undocumented labor force in the United States and sees returning penniless to his family in Mexico after years of being away a failure. Because of his limited education and the lack of economic opportunities in his country of birth, Memo chose for years to continue working undocumented and crossing the border illegally when- ever he was deported. His desire to stay in the United States so that he could send money home to his children came at a high cost. He hasn’t seen his kids in more than ten years, and it is clear that his status as a serial border crosser is a source of shame and embarrassment for him. Jason: What did your family think about your crossing? This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  MEMO AND LUCHO. 103 Memo: They thought that I passed fine with documents. But later I told them the truth, that I had crossed walking. My kids were worried. They said, “No Dad! That is very far to walk. Something could happen to you!” I said, “No, don’t worry. Everything is fine.” I called them when I got there. After I was there for a little time in California, they wanted me to go back to visit. They would call me to ask when I was coming back. I would always say, “I’m not sure, maybe tomorrow.” But I never said I was leaving that day to go visit them. Never. I didn’t want to lie. Sometimes I would just get deported to the border and go right back to the US. I don’t want to go back there to Ver- acruz unless I have some money. Jason: Do you think it is hard to live in the United States by yourself and with- out papers? Memo: No. Well, it’s hard because you don’t have family, but not really difficult because you find ways to get work and keep moving forward. But I think it is a lot harder to live in Mexico than the US. For ten dollars you can eat for three days in the US. You can’t do that with 100 pesos in Mexico. That is like food for one day and very little food at that. Then if you have a family it doesn’t last for nothing. In the US there are more possiblities to do things. You can survive. Unlike some migrants who are able to accumulate capital and return to Mexico to start small businesses or buy pieces of land to farm, Memo has never accrued any substantial savings. Moreover, he has no identification card and thus can’t open a bank account. He has lived hand to mouth for most of his time in the United States and has long been subject to the fluctuating demand for undocumented labor. When work was plentiful, he could send some money home. When work was hard to come by, he scraped by on odd jobs and with the help of friends and neighbors. He wants to visit his family but not until he has money saved up. The experience of being caught between the pull of a semi– living wage working in the often exploitative US undocumented labor force and the shame of returning to Mexico penniless is common for many male Mexican migrants. Lucho, on the other hand, has significant family roots in the United States and, prior to meeting Memo, had not attempted a border crossing since before 9/11. Right after I first heard the cow story, he and I were sitting outside the Juan Bosco shelter talking about why he was trying to get through the desert. Lucho: I’ve lived in Arizona for a long time and have spent almost a month now trying to get back across. I have a house. Well, it’s a trailer, but I have lived there for a long time. I have two cars and all my stuff is there. My This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 104. EL CAMINO girlfriend and family are also there waiting for me. Almost all of my family is over there now in the United States. I have nothing really to go back to in Jalisco. Me and Memo have been trying to get across for almost a month and have been caught twice. I thought they were going to throw me in jail because I had already been deported. I have a friend whose son works for immigration. She said, “I talked to my son about your case and he says be careful because if they catch you they may throw you in jail for two or three months. I have some brothers there [in Nogales] who can help you. You can rent a room and they can help you with the rent. You can sleep there. If nothing else, it’s a job.” Jason: But really, it sounds as though you don’t have a lot of options: stay here in Nogales, or try and cross again. Lucho: I have no one here. It’s all over there in Arizona. Crossing is my last option. My only chance. JUAN BOSCO My relationship with Memo and Lucho developed over the next several weeks. During the day I would hang out on la linea conducting interviews with recent deportees, usually in front of the Grupo Beta Office or in the nearby cemetery. In the evenings I would walk the three miles back to Juan Bosco and often arrive just in time to help with dinner preparation and last-minute cleaning duties. For several weeks, I spend every night with Memo, Lucho, and the other shelter workers and do what I can to help out. This usually includes handing out soap and toilet paper, explaining the shelter rules to recent arrivals (e.g., no smoking, no loitering outside because the neighborhood gang likes to rob migrants), and serving meals. I make a lot of small talk with migrants but don’t do any formal interviews in the shelter itself. When people arrive there, they are often tired, starving, and in desperate need of a shower and clean clothes. The last thing they need is someone shoving a voice recorder in their face. I have always imagined the shelter as one of the few places where migrants are relatively safe and not in danger of being exploited or mistreated. Over many years, though, I have observed other researchers bullying exhausted peo- ple into participating in their study and journalists aggressively trolling the mass of deportees for “good” stories. I vividly remember overhearing a famous television journalist telling his camera man, “We need to find a mother that has been deported and lost her kids. We need to find someone with a really fucked-up story. That’s pure gold.” This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  MEMO AND LUCHO. 105 Rather than using the shelter as a site to conduct interviews or troll for “fucked-up” stories, I spend the majority of my time trying to be helpful to the staff and explaining to guests that I am an anthropologist writing a book about migration. The shelter becomes a place where I make my face familiar to peo- ple who will likely see me the following day on la linea. Over five years of research, the bulk of my interviews are conducted on the streets the day after I first meet someone in the shelter. That being said, Juan Bosco does become an important place for me to meet potential interview subjects; observe how deportees are treated by the Red Cross, various humanitarian groups, and other agencies; and learn about migration from the shelter workers, all of whom have border-crossing experience. Guests at Juan Bosco generally shower and eat between 7 and 11 P.M. Once the first group of women, men, and children have been fed and assigned beds, there is usually a lull in activity. This is the time when all of the workers retreat to the kitchen area to hang out, watch television, and play cards. I soon found that the period between 11 P.M. and 2 A.M. was an important time for talking to the staff, including Memo and Lucho, about their lives and experiences migrating. These men also proved crucial in helping me understand the interview data and field observations I was collecting during the day. Although alcohol was forbidden, Memo was adept at sneaking beers into the kitchen to lubricate our late-night games of baraja (Mexican poker). These moments are some of my fondest memo- ries from that first season of fieldwork. I learned about the lives of the shelter workers, and their friendship helped me fight some of the loneliness of research. They were happy to have a new target for their chingaderas. I focus on the crossing stories of Memo and Lucho for a few reasons that warrant brief explanation. Out of the hundreds of migrants I have known over the years, they were the two with whom I spent the most amount of time on the Mexican side of the border. When I first met them, they were at Juan Bosco for weeks, and their role as temporary staff meant that I had a significant amount of access to them at night and could follow them closely as they prepared to cross. Other migrants that I subsequently watched prepare and enter the desert were people whom I knew for only a few days at the most and with whom I rarely had the opportunity to socialize. Because Lucho and Memo were able to stay at the shelter for weeks as they prepared to cross for the third time, the two of them had their days relatively free for hanging out. We often ate lunch together, went to baseball games, and did other normal activities. The other migrants I knew from la linea were typically rushing to undertake another This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 106. EL CAMINO crossing. If they stayed in the shelter, they were forced to go to sleep at 11 P.M. and were not able to fraternize with me or other staff. If a person had exhausted their three-day stay at Juan Bosco, they were likely hiding out in the Nogales cemetery or someplace else where they wouldn’t be robbed at night. I want to point out that Memo and Lucho are not unique examples of migrants, outside of the fact that they put up with me. They are in most ways fairly typical examples of undocumented border crossers. They are male, lack formal education, have crossed the border multiple times, and have been fully incorporated into the US undocumented labor force for years. Both have spent most of their lives living in the United States, and neither sees returning to Mexico as an option. In addition, by the time I met them, they were inti- mately familiar with the dangers of the Sonoran Desert hybrid collectif and determined to be part of the “92 to 98” of those who eventually get past the many barriers along the US-Mexico border. By providing insight into their lives, I seek to put faces to immigration statistics and show that their crossing stories are just two of the hundreds that occur each day in southern Arizona alone. The events described here are just a few of the millions of crossing attempts that have happened in the region since 2000. This content downloaded from 97.124.39.228 on Fri, 02 Oct 2020 06:57:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms