CHAPTER 9
You Can’t Leave Them Behind
QUEENS
Roosevelt Avenue in the heart of Jackson Heights, Queens, is loud and eclectic. It carries the street urchin aroma that only New York City can unapologetically cultivate. It is also one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the United States and the epicenter of America’s Ecuadoran immigrant community. I told Christian that I would wait for him on the corner of 82nd and Roosevelt, just underneath the subway platform. I pace nervously and look for him in a sea of brown faces. We’ve never met and I don’t know what he looks like. I scan the passing pedestrians and try to envision him. Based on our phone calls, I imagine him as tall, in his late forties, and dressed like a construction worker. He should be wearing cement-stained coveralls and brown steel-toed boots. Ten minutes later a short raven-haired man in his early thirties approaches me. As he walks up, I can tell he is a bit apprehensive. I can’t say I blame him. I’m nervous too. Christian is younger than I expected, and I am a bit surprised to see that he is wearing a tight-fitting Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt and flashy tennis shoes and is wielding an iPhone. His aesthetic is not working-class day laborer, but rather urban Latino fabulousness.
I would soon learn that Christian was one of the hundreds of thousands of people who emigrated from Ecuador following the economic meltdown the country experienced in the late 1990s. A costly border war with Peru, combined with a decline in export revenue, increased debt, painful austerity measures, and political instability, led to the worst economic crisis Ecuador had seen in more than a hundred years.1 The poverty rate during this decade rose to 40 percent. An estimated 900,000 Ecuadorans permanently left the country between 1993 and 2006 to find employment in the United States, Spain, and other countries in Western Europe.2 As Jokisch and Pribilsky note, “In just two years (1999 and 2000) more than 267,000 Ecuadorians emigrated (net) and remittances increased to more than $1.41 billion in 2001 from an estimated $643 million in 1997.”3
Christian left in 2001 as part of the wave of approximately 137,000 Ecuadoran migrants who arrived in the United States between 1999 and 2005.4 He is one of the estimated 425,700 cuatorianos who live in the northeastern United States. Like many of his generation, he left his country to find work abroad when he was a teenager, leaving behind a pregnant girlfriend and a household living hand to mouth. For over a decade he has been sending money home to support an extended family, to build a house he has never set foot in, and to clothe, feed, and educate a son whose hand he has never held.5
These are details about his life that I will learn over the course of many phone calls and visits to New York. At this moment, though, we are still strangers.
Christian introduces himself. The combination of the rattling subway train passing overhead and the cacophony of daytime traffic force us to almost scream at each other to be heard. When I ask if there is someplace quiet where we can talk, he recommends a nearby Ecuadoran restaurant. Next thing I know I am staring across the table at him, struggling to properly explain myself. In an unsure voice I tell him, “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. This whole thing is a little strange. As I said on the phone, I got your number from the Ecuadoran consulate, and I wanted to meet you because I am the person who found Maricela’s body.”
Awkward pause.
I continue. “I guess I wanted to know who she was and how her family is. I wanted to tell you what happened when we found her and maybe answer any questions that you might have. I’m writing a book about what happens to migrants in the desert, and I wanted to ask your permission to write about her life and your family’s experiences when she went missing.”
Although he already knows everything that I have just told him based on our numerous prior phone calls, I am still unsure how he will respond in person. After just a few seconds, he looks me in the eyes and says: “I told them many times that it was difficult. I told them that I didn’t want Maricela to come. They thought that I didn’t want my sister-in-law to come here to work, but it was really because of what happened to me. I knew about the things that occur during the crossing when you are in the desert. It is horrible . . . You would never believe the things that happened to me. I didn’t want her to go through it.”
As bad as things can be in the Sonoran Desert for many non-Mexican nationals like Christian who travel to the United States undocumented (“por el camino” or “por la pampa,” as Ecuadorans say), that stage of the migration process is usually the end of an arduous journey that can last weeks and sometimes months.6 Cuatorianos and others may end up paying more than $10,000 to the pasador who arranges their clandestine travel across multiple countries.7 These Central and South American migrants, who accounted for 31 percent of all people deported by the US federal government in 2013 (a percentage that seems to be steadily increasing),8 pass through multiple borders using a variety of transportation methods. This includes walking or running for their lives, crossing rivers on rafts, and riding on the tops of freight trains,9 all before arriving at the US-Mexico boundary for the chance to try their luck in the desert. As he recalled the details of his crossing during our first meeting and my subsequent visits to New York, it became clear why Christian was adamant about not wanting his sister-in-law Maricela to migrate.
In what follows, I have chosen to present Christian’s migration story largely in his own words with minimal interference or interruption. My rationale for this discursive shift is twofold. First, his telling of the story is more realistic than any ethnographic translation or summation I could come up with. As I stress throughout this book, there is no appropriate substitution for an emic account of a border crossing. Second, by pushing his words to the forefront, I seek to rectify the paucity of first-person published accounts of undocumented migration, especially those of South Americans. In his recent book on the life experiences of migrants from Uganda, Burkina Faso, and Mexico, anthropologist Michael Jackson writes: “If we are to avoid the trap of becoming infatuated with our own intellectual-cum-magical capacity to render the world intelligible, then the vocabulary ‘we’ all too glibly project onto ‘them’ must be tested continually against the various and changing experiences of actual lives.”10 Although I have included some brief analyses and connective tissue in the text, sometimes embedded as footnotes, I largely use this chapter to let Christian’s words breathe and to provide him the opportunity to render his world intelligible to us.11
“YOU CAN’T LEAVE THEM BEHIND”
Christian: The day that Maricela left my country, I don’t know . . . I think she had the hope, the dream to get here with so many goals. She had a lot of dreams that she wanted to achieve. She was thinking about getting here and nothing else. But also, she was coming with a broken heart. It’s like when I left in 2001, it was really painful that first day. I never thought about coming to New York. My aunt was the one who wanted to go. Things were good with my girlfriend, the mother of my child. She was pregnant at that time and we were going to have a son. I was very excited. I wanted to get married, get a job, and work to support him. I wanted to be there and live with him. I was dreaming about all of this. When we decided to come here, my aunt was saying things like, “It is going to be better for your son and for all your family. For your dad and mom.” My mom was sick and my dad made very little money.
We lived in a tiny house made of adobe. Supposedly the government was going to build a big road through our neighborhood and they were going to take away what little we had. I was thinking about this. If this happens one day, what are we are going to do? Where will my parents go? Where do me and my siblings go? That is why I came here. To be able to build a house. My little sister, Vanessa, she is grown now. I loved her very much. I wanted her to study. None of us had ever gone to school because there was never any money. I was thinking about her. I wanted to have her quince años party. There were so many things that were never going to happen. I would never be able to do those things there. I was thinking about all of this, and then I said, “I’m going.” I asked my father to help me find the money. He asked my grandparents if they would let us use their land for collateral. And, yeah, I decided to leave.
Jason: What did you think when you were preparing to go?
Christian: I just had a lot of faith in God. I asked God for help. I told him that if I go, I am going for my parents and my son. After two or three years maximum, I would return to Ecuador.
I was sleeping. It was like 7 or 8 A.M. when the first plane hit. My grandmother came in and told me to turn on the TV. She said, “Something is happening in New York.” She was crying because she had two sons there. This was an enormous event for us there in Ecuador and for the whole world. This happened and my family didn’t want me to leave. I thought about it, but I also thought that there was going to be a lot of work. I thought that if I got there to New York, I could help clean up all the destroyed buildings because the only thing that illegales really do here are construction and cleaning and stuff. I figured that I would start working in construction. After September 11 happened, we departed a few days later on like the 16th or 17th.
It really affected Vanessa when I left because we were always together. I worked when I was there and I always took her out shopping. I bought her clothing, dresses. She was a little girl then. She was like the little princess in our house and I treated her like she was my daughter. I tried to give her everything I could. . . . The day that I left was horrible. I didn’t want to wake her. I left at dawn while she was asleep in her bed. I just gave her a kiss and left. I always thought about her while I was crossing. Once en el camino we got in a truck and I had to ride alone in the back because there was no room up front. We were going down the road and I saw her sitting right next to me. I imagined her. It was terrible and it made me cry. My son wasn’t born yet and she was the person that I loved the most at that time. These are things that leave a mark on you. You can’t leave them behind . . . I was seventeen when I left. I turned eighteen while crossing through Mexico.
POR LA PAMPA
Christian: We went to Guayaquil [Ecuador]. From Guayaquil we flew to Peru. From Peru we flew to Panama. From Panama we went to Costa Rica by bus. Then we went to Nicaragua, then El Salvador and then Guatemala. In Peru and Panama, they treated us well. We were in hotels. We were supposed to be tourists so we had luggage and were dressed nice so that no one would say anything. We had money in our pockets to look like we were on vacation. But in Costa Rica, man . . . I don’t know . . . We crossed a river in Costa Rica and then it got bad. I actually thought we were really close to [New York]. I was like, “We’re almost there!” We crossed a river and I thought we were in New York! [laughing]
When we got into Costa Rica, we ran through a field where they were growing sugarcane. Man, the snakes! Wow! We were running to a little house where we had to change clothes because we were dressed nice and stuff. They gave us new clothes and then put us into the trunk of a car. Six people in the trunk. This was how we got into Nicaragua. We were in the trunk for six hours. I would never do it again . . . Man, it was so scary how fast they were driving. If we had gotten into an accident, we would have all died. . . . My aunt and I almost never talk about this stuff now. Everytime I think back it affects me, makes me feel horrible.
I think we were in Honduras. They took us to a house in the jungle. We were there for a month and couldn’t leave. From there they took us to Guatemala. They started to treat us bad as soon as we got close to the border with Mexico.
They dropped us off at this woman’s house that was really nice looking. We thought we were going to stay in the house, but no. They stuck us in a chicken coop in the backyard. We slept in there with the rats. Everything was muddy. There were giant rats fighting under our bed and the toads were making all kinds of sounds at night. It was unbelievably hot. We couldn’t leave the chicken coop. We could see outside through the cracks in the wood where the lady was cooking our meals. We had to pay her for our food, for tortillas and beans. We slept there for two nights.
Then they dressed us like guatemaltecos [Guatemalans]. They put clothes on us like we were from there. The women put on blouses and long skirts and we walked down to the [Suchiate] river because it was really close. They said, “If someone asks, you are just out shopping.” We got in a canoe made of tires and they crossed us with paddles into Mexico, into Chiapas.
We ended up on the outskirts of a town where they put us in a building on the top floor. Wow, the heat was incredible. We spent the night and left the next day. Again they put us into a taxi; three and three in two taxis. They said, “If we stop and say, ‘Hide,’ you need to hide. We will pull the seat down and the three of you need to climb into the trunk.” When we crossed through a checkpoint, we had to do this. They also told us what to say. We had to know what the president’s name was, what the currency was, the national anthem. We learned Mexican phrases like chingada [fucked], odelay [right on], and chinga su madre [fuck your mother]. [laughs] Then they dropped us off in a place that was near the coast, but I don’t know where.
¡VIVA MÉXICO, CABRONES!
As the crow flies, it is more than 1,600 miles from Mexico’s border with Guatemala to Nogales, Sonora. Many of the non-Mexican migrants who make this cross-country trek will tell you that this expansive obstacle course is far more dangerous than what awaits them in the desert. Those, such as Christian and his aunt, who are fortunate enough to be traveling with a guide will find themselves handed off from one smuggler to another in a never-ending exchange of currency for bodies.12 These hypervulnerable undocumented migrants simultaneously embody illegality and the transformation of human beings into cargo to be smuggled by any means necessary.13 This clandestine passage typically involves weeks of checkerboard movements through an archipelago of “safe houses,” chicken coops, and dusty attics via a mixture of creative transportation methods and disguises. Along the way, people do their best to avoid falling in the shark-infested waters where kidnappings, robbery, physical assault, rape, and murder by locals, organized crime, and law enforcement are the norm. For Central and South Americans, Mexico is its own hybrid collectif of immigration enforcement.
Christian: In Mexico there was a woman who we stayed with who treated us really well in the beginning. I don’t know what happened later. Like a week and a half later she started treating us really badly. I guess our families or the coyotes didn’t give her any money. She had this enormous dog that wouldn’t let us leave the room we were in. We couldn’t go outside. Finally, it was like three weeks later when the day to leave came. The lady said, “They paid your passage. We are going to take you to the edge of the water where you can catch a boat. Then you will catch the train.”
Around this time they told us, “Look, you are all going to go on a boat, and we will give you life jackets that will save you if you fall in the water.” We were like, “OK, at least they are gonna give us life jackets.” Well, when we finally got to the edge of the water they gave us plastic trash bags. We asked, “What do we do with this?” and they said, “Those are your life jackets.”
At first, being on the boat was a really smooth ride. We were out in the middle of the ocean and we were content. I was only seventeen. I was at the front of the boat and putting my arms out like the film Titanic because the wind was blowing and stuff. [laughing] There was fresh air and everything.
But after about 6 in the evening another boat got close to us, like a patrol boat. They told us that they were thieves who wanted to rob us. The guy who was driving our boat was using drugs. He had some powder. He took a sniff. Made another line. Took another sniff. Made another line. The third time he took a sniff he just said [using Mexican accent], “¡Agarrense, cabrones!” and gave it everything he had. He yelled, “Those who fall overboard, fall overboard!” Boom! When he hit the gas, everyone fell on the floor. We were flying. Now we realized why we had the bags. The bags were to cover us because of all the water that was coming in. We were taking a bath in there. We were soaked. Everyone was screaming and crying and saying that we were going to die. We were yelling for him to stop, but he didn’t. It was horrible, horrible. We could see we were in the middle of the ocean. It was dark and suddenly the driver stopped the boat and said, “Get in the water. We are close to the shore.” We jumped in. When my aunt jumped in the water, she disappeared. She was nowhere to be seen. I was splashing around looking for her.
I finally found her and we made our way to the shore. But when we got there, it was really muddy and there were thorns all over the place. We didn’t have shoes on and had to come out running onto the beach. Our feet were hurt. The guide then told us, “There is a road that you will need to follow. You will come to a hut but don’t stop before that because there are many people who live around there who may rob or shoot you.” We ran until we got to that little hut, and there was an old man who they called “abuelo” who said we could hide there. We went in there to sleep. We were covered in mud. He told us that we would have to wait a little bit and that the train14 would come by at daybreak.
The old man took us to a place that was a five-minute walk from the hut where the train was going to pass by. “As soon as it stops,” he told us, “get on.” The area was full of mango trees. Abuelo told us to climb up into the trees to act as lookouts to see if people from other ranches were coming, or if immigration or the police were on their way. If we saw that the train was coming, we were supposed to jump down and try to get on it in any way possible.
My aunt was up in the tree crying. She cried on the whole trip. She was always nervous. She thought about going back, but was thinking about her kids in Ecuador and how she wanted to send them to school. This wasn’t going to happen until she got across. There were times when we did think about going back, but we also thought about the plata that we paid. It was $12,000 for each person. We didn’t have any money, so we had to borrow it against my grandfather’s land. If I went back, my grandfather would have lost his land.
A little while later the train showed up and we got on and hid. We got between the cars and sat there. Once we were hidden, the train started again. Everytime we came to a city or small town, we would duck down. They told us if the conductor stops the train and blows the whistle, we need to jump off and hide because there is a checkpoint where the police will search the train. The conductor stopped and blew the whistle, but he didn’t stop completely. He just slowed down but we were still going very fast. We had to jump off while it was moving.
In each place we were given to a new person. There was a kid that was with us on the train who was our guide. He told us where to go after we jumped off. We walked and walked and found a chicken coop and went in there all wet and dirty and covered in mud. Our guide said that we were going to wash up and then go to a pueblo at nightfall where they would give us new clothes and food. We walked to this town when it got dark. We were scared because there were a lot of people around that we thought were going to rob us.15 We got to a house and took baths and they gave us new clothes. The guide then said, “Eat and then at midnight we will take you to a bus station. You’re all going to Mexico, al DF [Distrito Federal, Mexico City].”
They took us to the bus terminal and said, “If someone gets on the bus to check, like the police, you should pretend that you are all asleep. If they ask, you are headed to el DF for vacation.” The guide told us that when we got to Mexico City, a taxi driver would be waiting for us. He said, “You will see a driver with a certain color hat. That is how you will know him. You will then get into his taxi.” This is exactly what happened. We got to Mexico City at dawn and got off the bus and the driver was there. We got into the taxi and he took us to his house. We ate breakfast and then he said, “You aren’t going to be here for very long. Someone else is coming for you.”
In the afternoon another man came and took us to a different house. We were locked up again for like three or four days. Finally, the man said to us, “You guys are going to a rancho.” The money had just run out, and we needed to give them more to keep going [north]. The man let us make phone calls to do this. I called my dad and said, “Please, the money is gone and I want to get out of here.” Then they took us to an enormous abandoned ranch. I thought we were the only people there, but when we arrived, they turned on the lights. Wow! There were more than three hundred people lying on the ground. They told us to grab a floor mat and find a place to sleep. This was where they kept all of their migrants.
An abandoned Mexican ranch where men in tight white jeans and alligator-skin boots wield cuernos de chivo16 while guarding three hundred kidnap victims from around the globe sounds like a lost scene from one of Robert Rodriguez’s Machete films. But for migrants crossing Mexico, this is a horrifying reality that has only gotten worse in the fourteen years since Christian’s crossing. In the wake of the Mexican Narco Wars, drug cartels have become more involved in human smuggling, and 70,000 to 150,000 Central American migrants have gone missing while crossing the country.17 These people have met any number of different fates, ranging from being held for ransom to being trafficked for sex and forced into working for the cartels.18 The bodies of seventy-two migrants who had been blindfolded and shot were found in 2010 in the northern border state of Tamaulipas, representing only a small fraction of the people who have been murdered while en route.19 The American public, including those who consume the drugs that fuel this violence, hears about these bloodbaths only when they are too brutal to be folded in with news of the other, everyday narcoviolence in Mexico that the United States has become accustomed to hearing about and generally ignoring.
For Central and South Americans who must pass through the literal and figurative Tierra Caliente on their way north, this country-turned-battleground is a vast, heterogeneous labyrinth where a wrong turn can get you hurled into a black void. The murkiness of the human-smuggling process across Mexico means that many will never know if their loved ones disappeared in the desert or had something far worse happen to them along the way.20 The mothers of missing Central American migrants who have spent years traversing the country looking for any sign of their children can attest that the Mexican hybrid collectif is capable of producing its own unique forms of necroviolence.21
As Christian’s story continues to unfold, we see that getting through the smuggler’s spider web often requires ingenuity and sheer luck.
Christian: There were a lot of people there from all kinds of countries. There were Chinese people, Brazilians, Salvadorans, Nicaraguans. Almost every country was represented. They had a kitchen and they made groups of us take turns cooking for all of the people. There were so many people . . .
I made some friends with migrants who had been there a month, a month and a half, two months. No one had come for them. We couldn’t leave because we were in a giant enclosure that was always being watched. They would see you trying to walk around and they would say, “Hey, what are you doing?” Outside all we could see were mountains surrounding us. There was nothing else. Supposedly I was going to get out of there soon. I was there a week and the guía still hadn’t come for me. They wouldn’t let me use the phone. After two weeks I was like, “This is isn’t right.” It was around this time that I came up with a plan. I had become friends with some women who I asked to help me. I said to them, “I am going to do something and I need you to cover for me.” I was walking around on the patio with my aunt and another woman when I pretended to faint and fell on the floor. The people who were guarding us came to see what happened. They called their boss to tell them that I had fainted. Then they called someone who had a car, and they took me to the hospital because I told them I was dying.
They had a doctor who helped them. He was like their private doctor. He checked me out and said that I had bad nerves and that I was anemic because I had already been en el camino for weeks. After the doctor left, a nurse came into the room. I told myself, “It is now or never” and I asked her to help me. I told her the whole story. I was crying. I said, “I have been away from my family for like two months. They have us locked up. My aunt is sick on a ranch and they won’t let us call anyone.” I asked her to help me communicate with my family so that I could tell them what was happening to me. She said, “I can’t. I don’t want to get mixed up in any trouble. Here everything is controlled by la mafia.”
I begged her. I cried and cried. I think she felt sorry for me. She said, “Don’t tell anyone I did this,” and then she brought me a telephone and I called my dad. He answered the phone and I said, “Papi, I don’t have a lot of time. Look, please go see Señora Alvarez.” That was the name of the pasador who arranged for me to leave Ecuador. She had all the contacts to get here. “Go see her and ask her where we are. Go with as many family members as possible when you talk to her. Ask her where we are, Papi. I don’t have much time.” Then I hung up. That was the only thing I said, and two days later they came and got the six of us out of there. From there they brought us to the desert, to the border. They took us to a place where we would cross into Arizona.
SONORA
The Border Patrol apprehended 449,675 people in the Tucson Sector the year that Christian migrated. In comparison, in 2009, when Memo and Lucho entered the desert, 241,667 people were caught and deported in the same area. This decrease in apprehensions is likely the result of the US economic downturn of 2008, which both lowered the number of jobs available for undocumented workers and ignited a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment that seemingly discouraged many potential crossers. Although there are some parallels between the two crossing narratives, it is important to note that Christian’s took place during an earlier era (before the post-9/11 escalation in security). During this period, distances walked through the desert were relatively short, and people traveled in large groups that ensured that at least some of them got through. There were also no measures such as the Alien Transfer and Exit Program or Operation Streamline in place to deter people from trying again immediately after an apprehension.
Christian: We got to the border and they took us to a house. It was the first week of December and it was freezing. The guía said, “We are really close to the United States but we can’t cross near here. We have to take a trip through the desert so that we can enter clandestinely.” They came for us in a car at like ten o’clock at night and dropped us off at the edge of a mountain. They said, “Everyone grab your two bottles of water. Grab whatever you think is necessary.”
Man, it was freezing. In Ecuador everyone was always saying that you will die from thirst in the desert so you need to take a lot of water. This is what we were all imagining. Each of us had two gallons of water when they dropped us off and we started walking. I swear, I’m not lying to you. After like fifteen or twenty minutes, we looked down and our water bottles were frozen! Frozen! It turned into a rock! Everyone was so scared. None of us from Ecuador had ever seen water freeze like that! [laughs]
The guide climbed a hill to check the area, and then he said, “We can’t cross here. There is a lot of surveillance. We are going to have to sleep here.” I said, “How are we going to sleep in the middle of the mountain when it is freezing?” There were like twenty-five people in our group. In less than five minutes we were all shivering from the cold. Someone finally said, “We’re going to make a group of women and a group of men so that we can sleep. We will put everyone together so that we don’t freeze.” We started to group people one on top of another on top of another so that we could warm up. That is how we spent the night.
At daybreak, the guide said, “We are going to keep going but we are only going to walk at the base of mountains, under cliffs, and in ravines.” So we walked and walked. Finally, we got to a dry wash and our guide said that we were going to cross in separate groups in case someone showed up like a plane or a patrol car. If that happened, they wouldn’t be able to see everyone because the rest of us could duck down and lie on the ground. The guide said we would cross tomorrow, so we all went to sleep again.
The next night we started walking, and after a while we passed some fences and got to a highway. The coyote said, “This is Mexico and on that side is the United States. If we cross that road, we have gotten through. This highway is hard to cross, though, because there are a lot of Border Patrol.” He made us line up, and I have no idea why, but I ended up the last person in line. I lost track of my aunt at this point. She was one of the first people in line. When we started crossing, it was totally dark. I don’t know who said “Run,” but I guess Border Patrol was there. We ran and I ended up alone with just one of my friends.22
We didn’t know where everyone else went, so we hid behind a tree. We could see the lights from Border Patrol. Our guide had told us to hide if la migra showed up. He said they would come look for us later. We could see that Border Patrol was using their lights to look for people hiding on the side of road. We hid and tried to figure out what to do. Right around this time a Border Patrol agent shined his light on us. He had caught us. Right then all the things that had happened to me en el camino came flooding back. I started thinking about terrible things. I started to cry. This was the first time that we got arrested.
We were always told that if we got caught, we needed to say that we were from Mexico, so this is what we told them. They gave us some papers and we signed them. They fingerprinted us and everything. We were detained for like an hour. They gave us a hamburger and we were content! A delicious hamburger! It was hot and everything! [laughs] After we ate, they put us on a bus, and I thought it was going to be a long ride. It was like five minutes on the bus, and then we were back at the border. I said, “So many days walking and five minutes later we are at the border?” We went back into Mexico and they took us to the same house as before.
The following night we tried again. We crossed exactly the same as before but in less time. This time it was only one day. It was all much faster. This time we weren’t twenty-five people, either. There were now like seventy people and four coyotes. They told us, “When we say ‘Run,’ you’ll run across the highway.” We started running, and right about when half of the people had crossed, Border Patrol showed up. Those who got to the other side of the highway kept going. Half of the people stayed back. I was one of those who stayed back. I grabbed my aunt’s hand and we started to run away. We escaped back to Mexico. Three hours later we tried again.
This time the guía said that the women would go first and then the men. They separated us and I couldn’t do anything. The same thing happened again. They caught the first group and I couldn’t do anything for my aunt. Once again I had to run back to Mexico. I saw my aunt get caught by immigration with the other women. I was sure she would tell them that she is Mexican and they would send her back to the border. I was 100 percent sure of this. I figured at least my aunt would get something to eat! [laughs]
We ran back and hid. At daybreak our guide said, “Border Patrol is positive that we’re going to try again on a different day, but instead we are going to try again right now.” And this time we got across. The guide took us to a safe house and said, “It is daybreak and we are going to wait a couple of hours for our ride to come for us.” I had to go to the bathroom, so I went outside, and when I did, I saw lights everywhere. People were on their knees. Border Patrol had us surrounded. The coyote yelled for us to run but there was no place to go. That’s how they captured us. I thought they would just send us back quickly like the last time. I told one of my friends, “Hey, let’s hurry! Let’s get on the bus and get something to eat!” They give you food in detention and we were starving. So we lined up and tried to give them our names ahead of everyone! [laughs]
They took us to detention and then things started to fall apart. They were looking for our fingerprints and asking us a lot of questions about Mexico like, “Who was the previous president? Where did you go to school? What was the name of your school? What is the name of the street where you live?” Man, it was hard. They asked if I had been to el DF and what the name of the street where the Basílica de Guadalupe was located. I didn’t know. [laughs] They asked us questions that we couldn’t answer. They were asking us this stuff, and then they said that we weren’t Mexican. They said, “Look, if you tell me where you are from, tomorrow you can go back to your country.”
I started thinking about it. It was mid-December, and I was thinking about how I would prefer to spend Christmas with my family and be able to go to mass. I figured I could try crossing again later. I don’t know. It had just ended like that, after all that time. After everything that had happened like being sick and missing my family and then it had just ended. I was thinking about Christmas and I decided it was better to go and be with them. So I decided to tell them I was from Ecuador and gave them all my information. They said they were going to deport me the following day and started taking more fingerprints and more photos. They stripped us naked. Then they bathed me and gave me an orange uniform. I started asking about my aunt. I was asking people who were detained if they had seen her, but they hadn’t. I was really worried about her. The next day they called me and I thought they were sending me back. They gave me a little bag to put all of my possesions in, and then they put me in a cell.
After all that I had been through, I felt so helpless. I was like, “Look at what has happened to me.” I never imagined that I would end up in jail. You go through all that stuff and end up like that. When I got on the bus, I thought they were going to take me to the airport and send me back to my country, but no. They took me to another prison. I asked them when I was getting out, and they said they didn’t know.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Christian: The other prison that they took me to was enormous. There was a giant room with a lot of beds. When I walked in and saw all of the people detained that I had been thrown in there alone with, . . . well, I just dropped my bag on the floor and started to cry in front of everyone. I was crying inconsolably thinking about my mom and dad and how much they were suffering thinking about me. It was horrible. Horrible. Horrible. Horrible. Everything that I had gone through. I had almost died. The starvation and everything and then in the end this happens to me. Sometimes it makes you lose faith in God. Like, there is no way God would do this to you. God is so angry at us, and all we wanted was to come here to work and nothing else. We had gone through too much. It was almost three and a half months of trying to cross to just end up in jail. All the money we had spent. Almost losing our lives. This made me cry that day and no one could console me.
I knew the phone number of my house in Ecuador and my uncle’s in New York. I called my mom and dad first. I started to cry on the phone with them. My dad was crying for me. He was going crazy not knowing what he could do. Then I called my uncle and he calmed me down. He said he was going to get me a lawyer to get me out of there.
I was only eighteen years old and was all alone. There was no one from my group there with me. I had never been separated from my family for so long. I spent three days in jail, where I wouldn’t eat. I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t want anything. The only thing I was thinking about was seeing my family. I made friends with a man from Guatemala who told me that nothing was going to happen to me and that I just had to wait until the judge decided when I could leave. Little by little, the days passed. A week went by, and I didn’t really talk to anyone. I just ate and slept. I was there for twenty days and still hadn’t left.
I spent Christmas in prison. December 24 was horrible. I called my parents and cried on the phone. My mom and dad were inconsolable. They said, “You are so far away and in jail and we can’t go to see you.” It was the worst Christmas my family has ever had. The judge still hadn’t called me. On December 31 I thought to myself, “This is going to be the first year that I don’t get to see the moon or the stars at sunrise on the New Year. I can’t let this happen.” So I decided to fake being sick. It was around 12:30 in the morning and everyone was saying, “Happy New Year!” I told the guards that I had stomach pains, and they put me on a gurney and took me to the infirmary. I knew that the infirmary was really far from our cell and that they would have to take me outside to get there. I just needed to see the moon and the stars of the New Year. [laughs] I went outside and saw the stars and it made me happy. It calmed me down while I thought about my family and my mom and dad crying. They took me to the infirmary and they said that I was fine. They said that I might just have an infection or something, and then they took me back to my cell.
A few days later they called and told me that I had a court appearance and needed to be ready. It was now January. My uncle had gotten a lawyer to represent me. They took me to court and told me stuff, none of which I understood. Everything was in English. I only spoke with my lawyer, who was on the phone. She said things were going to be OK and that my family had given her money to pay my bond. A few days later they told me to get my stuff and that I could leave.
They gave me some papers and then dropped me off at a bus station. There was an official who spoke Spanish and I asked him, “Where am I supposed to go?” He said, “I don’t know. That’s your problem. You can go to New York where you family is.” I didn’t really have any money. I had twenty dollars. I called my aunt who had gotten out on bail before me and told her that they let me out. She asked me to find a Western Union, and luckily there was one in the terminal. She said, “I’m going to send you money so you can buy a bus ticket to New York.”
When I left Arizona, I was still wearing the same clothes that I went to jail in. My clothes were filthy when they arrested me. They smelled bad and that is how they stored them in plastic bags. I was wearing these dirty clothes and my hair was long. I met nice people on the bus at every stop, though. I met a Mexican lady who asked me what was wrong. I told her everything that had happened to me. It was freezing, and she bought me some clothes, sneakers, and a blanket. Then she gave me twenty dollars for the trip because it was three days to get from Arizona to New York. I met other people who bought me food. There were really good people who helped me.
I went through all of that and arrived here! I thought New York was going to be different. I was thinking about big beautiful buildings in Manhattan and people living the good life. I got to the bus station in Times Square. It was really incredible, all of the buildings and the lights. But then I took a car to Queens. [laughs] I was like, “This is it?” There was trash all over the ground. It was really noisy because of the train.
I always thought that my uncle lived in a nice apartment. When we got to the building, it was really great. I was like, “Wow!” Then he took me around the back and I said, “Why don’t we go through the front door?” It was because he lived in the basement [laughs] in a tiny room where you could barely turn around. He lived there with seven other people. I went through all of that for this? It was like someone threw a bucket of cold water on me. When you see New York on the Internet and in movies, it is incredible. All the people are fair skinned and there is no trash. That is what you think New York is like. Also, the photos that my family members sent me from here were when they were out having fun, not when they were working! They send photos of nice places. When I got here to Queens, everything was dirty! All of that happened. And from the day that I got here, I started working. I started paying off my debt. I owed $21,000 for the trip including interest.
Christian. Photo by Michael Wells.
Despite the high drama, Christian’s incredible narrative should not be considered atypical. Hundreds of thousands of women, men, and children from various Latin American countries who work their way north every year to reach the United States have similar or worse experiences. Rape, murder, beatings, robbery, kidnapping: these are the leitmotifs of the argonauts who cross Mexico. For many like Christian, the US-Mexico border may be a relatively minor component of their violent journey; the desert hybrid collectif is just the last in a series of hurdles to survive and overcome. It is easy to see why he tried to discourage Maricela from coming to New York.
“THEY SAY THAT EVERYONE HAS THEIR OWN LUCK”
Six months after my first meeting with Christian, I find myself back in Queens. It is close to midnight on a Saturday, and Christian, Mike Wells, and I are sipping on beers in a neon-lit bar. Electronic dance music blares on the house speakers while scantily clad men and woman gyrate on the overhead television screens. Christian is busy thumbing text messages to friends whom we are going to meet up with later that night when we head to a Latino club that he likes to frequent. Cuenca at this moment feels a world away. After more than a decade since he left home, it is obvious that Christian has done his best to make a new life for himself in New York. He shares a modest apartment with extended family members and a long-term partner and gets by on various construction jobs. When his schedule permits, he takes English classes and works on getting his High School Equivalency Diploma. He and his aunt spend their weekends at a nearby park playing with his nephews and nieces. Still, despite the many liberties, experiences, and economic opportunities he has enjoyed during his time in the United States, Christian is always cognizant of the high personal cost he has had to pay in order to support his family back in Ecuador. The tension of being caught between two disparate worlds is the source of much pain.
Jason: How do you feel about the crossing after more than a decade?
Christian: Well, I feel like now it was worth it, because thankfully I got through. It really helped me to go through all of that. It makes you value life more. You feel like you were born for a reason and with a purpose. After going through all of that, my perspective changed. I wanted to live my life for me. I guess perhaps it all happened to me for a reason. I don’t know, though. Sometimes it is not worth it, because you leave your family behind. Supposedly, I was only going to be here for two or three years maximum. In two or three years, I was going to work to get some money together and then go back. But after you have been in this country awhile, you start to get accustomed to making dinero, and later your family over there gets used to living a better life. We were really poor when I left. I mean, we are still poor, but at least now my family can eat every single day. They have food. They live in a place that is much safer and more comfortable.
My son is about to turn twelve, and his mom [who is also currently in New York] wants to bring him here por el camino. I told her that I don’t want that. He is a kid and I don’t know what would happen to him. It is better to help him there in Ecuador so that he can study. I am not against people who try to bring their kids here; I just don’t want to bring my family here. I got through, but my family could die en el camino, get raped, get assaulted. I know that the most important things are the love and affection of your parents, but this is our situation. At least my son has people to take care of him there, to give him food. He can get an education in Cuenca.
Thank God, things are going well. I have worked so much. Right now things are better. At least for my family in Ecuador. Here, it is more or less. I mean, here, without documents, you can’t really do much. You do what you can do. With documents it is much better. There are better jobs and you can do what you want. But whatever, thank God it has gone OK. I am not bad off. My only fear is that one day I might get caught by immigration and they will deport me. I don’t know what is going to happen. But I want to go back so that I can finally know my son. That is where I am at now. I want to go back. To finally meet my son. To see him grow up. [sighs]
Jason: Did you tell Maricela about all of this?
Christian: Yes, but no one believes. They think they will make it. They say that everyone has their own luck. There are a lot of stories about so and so who got through . . . or those who made it after two or three days. Or those who made it here in two weeks and nothing happened to them like what happened to us. But other people have it worse than we did. In reality, I never want to go through that again. For example, my fear is that if I go back, everyone says that when you return to Ecuador or whatever country you are from, you are no longer accustomed to life there. You are not used to the economic crisis you have to return to. My fear is that I will go back to Ecuador and then want to come back here and have to go through all that stuff again. I was thinking about all this before Maricela left. Before this thing happened to Mari, I thought about going to Ecuador. I wanted to go there and tell her how it was in person. I always thought that when I got there, I would tell my sister-in-law just what it was like, all the things that we went through. And now look—it never happened. People risk everything, sometimes for nothing. Many come here for their family, but only encounter death. My aunt always tells me that we are alive because of a miracle. Maricela came with the same idea that I had. She came here because of her kids. She wanted to give them what they needed. They couldn’t get ahead in Ecuador.