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  Advance praise for Luis Alberto Urrea’s

  ACROSS THE WIRE

  “Luis Alberto Urrea’s fine and passionate book about the Mexican poor is nothing less than a travel book to the strange and enduring territory we call the human soul.”

  —Richard Rodriguez,

  author of Hunger of Memory

  “Across the Wire tells of a poverty so immense—it carries over generations, crosses borders, follows lives beyond death, and will haunt your sleep.”

  —Ana Castillo,

  author of The Mixquiahuala Letters

  “Across the Wire graphically portrays life on the trash dumps of Tijuana, a life Luis Alberto Urrea shared with los de abajo, those who scratch out a living in the nightmarish world of the dompes.

  “Those interested in the U.S./Mexico border should read this vivid portrayal of the people who survive in this cesspool which society has created, then forgotten. Urrea has written a work full of despair, yet with flashes of hope, a story which will continue to haunt us. Those forgotten people, Urrea reminds us with compassion, are fellow human beings.

  “Urrea deserves recognition for his work among the poor, for reaching out to help the families and the children, and for having the guts to write the story.”

  —Rudolfo Anaya,

  author of Bless Me, Ultima

  “Across the Wire takes you across the cold, objective language and reality described by political discourses into the human tears and laughter that make up daily life at the U.S./Mexico border. I applaud Luis Alberto Urrea for daring to think, speak, and write with emotion … for daring to feel in a time of reason.”

  —Laura Esquivel,

  author of Like Water for Chocolate

  “Like its title, Across the Wire is a book that stands at the border between tenderness and anger, death and life. It is an examination of love at the center of devastation, a work of witness, compassion, and finally, of hope.”

  —Linda Hogan,

  author of Mean Spirit

  “Perhaps only Luis Alberto Urrea could have written this book. Not only because he is a bilingual Chicano, born in Tijuana and raised in San Diego, but also because he is genuinely driven by compassion. Urrea never thinks of the poor as a stereotypic ‘they’; he never lets us forget that humor, devotion, and even love can coexist with the most desperate circumstances. A more simplistic writer would anesthetize us to these lives by letting us imagine the poor as dehumanized; Urrea shows us that full humanity persists in situations we would not know how to endure. Across the Wire is mostly a book about human suffering, but it never loses hope, and that hope is earned because it is grounded in no illusions. As Urrea says in the end, ‘you do what you can’—and he has done what few could do in writing this book.”

  —Lowry Pei,

  author of Family Resemblances

  “Whether in Egypt, Manila or Tijuana, families who live among garbage—the most abject human living conditions imaginable—are a testament to the spirit of survival. Urrea captures this spirit in his inimitable fashion: straightforward, with plenty of humor, but no gratuitous pity. We learn about life on the U.S./Mexican border, and we learn about ourselves.

  “I recommend this book for the general reader, but also for undergraduate students in sociology of poverty, community studies, U.S. and Mexican anthropology and history, and border studies.”

  —Evelyn Hu-DeHart

  Director, Center for Studies of Ethnicity

  and Race in America (CSERA),

  and Professor of History (Mexico and

  Latin America/Caribbean), University of Colorado at Boulder

  FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, JANUARY 1993

  Copyright © 1993 by Luis Alberto Urrea

  Photographs copyright © 1993 by John Lueders-Booth

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  ANCHOR BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  The stories in this collection are true. Some names and identities and, especially locations have been changed. In all cases, accuracy has been preserved in spite of considerations of security.

  Most of the pieces gathered in this volume originally appeared in the San Diego Reader, many of them under different titles. They include “Los Cementeros,” “Christmas Story,” “Father’s Day,” “Good Friday,” “Happy Birthday, Laura Patricia,” “The Last Soldier of Pancho Villa,” “Meet the Satánicos,” “Negra,” “Pamplonada,” “Tijuana Cop,” all the sections of “Sifting Through the Trash,” and, finally, portions of the Preface and Prologue.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Urrea, Luis Alberto.

  Across the wire: life and hard times on the Mexican border / Luis Alberto Urrea: photographs by John Lueders-Booth.—1st Anchor Books ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Tijuana (Baja California, Mexico)—Social conditions. 2. Tijuana

  (Baja California, Mexico)—Economic conditions. 3. Mexican-

  American Border Region—Social conditions. 4. Mexican-American Border

  Region—Economic conditions. I. Title.

  HN120.T52U77 1993

  972’.2—dc20 92-12680

  eISBN: 978-0-307-77374-6

  www.anchorbooks.com

  v3.1

  For Von

  … you were as responsible for everything you saw as you were for everything you did. The problem was that you didn’t always know what you were seeing until later, maybe years later, that a lot of it never made it in at all, it just stayed stored there in your eyes.

  —Michael Herr,

  Dispatches

  PREACH WITH YOUR LIFE

  NOT WITH YOUR MOUTH

  —Hand-painted sign

  near the Okefenokee

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Preface

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One • Sifting Through the Trash

  Chapter Two • Negra

  Chapter Three • Los Cementeros

  Chapter Four • Happy Birthday, Laura Patricia

  Chapter Five • Good Friday

  Chapter Six • Pamplonada: A Fire in Tecate

  Chapter Seven • Tijuana Cop

  Chapter Eight • The Last Soldier of Pancho Villa

  Chapter Nine • Meet the Satánicos

  Chapter Ten • Father’s Day

  Epilogue: Christmas Story

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  PREFACE

  There is a joke told on the border, and it is relished or denounced with equal levels of resignation. It is either a witty take on Cold War rhetoric or a racist epithet politically incorrect in every way. It refers to the hopelessly tattered yet imposing borderline, where thousands of Mexicans pour across every week under helicopters and infrared night-scopes. It refers to the obscure secrets that fester behind the wires, the dastardliness of Mexico that grows into popular myth in our imaginations.

  They call the border “the Tortilla Curtain.”

  ———

  This is a book of fragments, stories of moments in the lives of people most of us never see, never think about, and don’t even know exist. It seems to me that statements such as “There is a problem on our doorstep” or “The Mexican border is where the third world meets our world” are vague at best. The “huddled masses” ostensibly welcomed by our Statue of Liberty are, specifically, people.

  I offer an introduction to the human value in these unkno
wn lives, a story of hope in spite of horror and pain. What you read here happens day and night; the people you meet here live minutes away from you. Learning about their poverty also teaches us about the nature of our wealth.

  I do not intend to offer a “balanced” view of our friendly neighbor to the south. Tijuana’s boosters always maximize the many wonders of the Borderlands: industry, tourism, bullfights, jai alai, mega-tech discos, duty-free shopping, charming trinkets and baubles, friendly people, even nice beaches on the coast. Any American or well-off Mexican family can see this—all we have to do is drive into town.

  Nor is this book a portrait of “the Mexicans.” I hope no general inferences are made about the nation or the people. This book is as much an overview of Mexico as a tour of the South Bronx is representative of the entire United States.

  Across the Wire deals with my experiences in parts of the Borderlands that no tourist will ever see. It is subjective and biased, and I believe that is the way it should be. I have avoided presenting the people who live there as “noble savages.” Poverty ennobles no one; it brutalizes common people and makes them hungry and old.

  Most of the people in these pieces urged me to tell their stories. They believed that if you knew where and how they lived, then they wouldn’t simply fade away, relegated to as pointless a death as the lives they had been forced to live.

  Although there are missionaries here, and their roles often make them heroic in the context of this book, it is not my intent to offer religious homilies. There will be no altar call at the end of the book. However, it has become obvious to me that the role of missionaries is a subject of serious question on many counts. I cannot speak for any other missionary group’s agenda or actions; this is not intended as a sweeping overview of spiritual service or anthropological damage. Rather, I focus on the activities of one basically decent and slightly renegade group.

  Most of this manuscript was wrung from about fifteen hundred pages of notes gathered on my travels with the missionaries from 1978 to 1982. Several times during 1982-85 I returned to the Borderlands from an East Coast teaching position. Finally, I researched the region anew as a writer for the San Diego Reader in the summer and winter of 1990. The Reader gave me the opportunity to disseminate these dark secrets to hundreds of thousands of people in California. Always surprising to me was that San Diegans, living right beside the border, had no idea what went on there. If they didn’t know, the rest of the world knew even less.

  More startling was that Mexicans didn’t know, or pretended not to know. My Mexican family didn’t know. This, in spite of having always lived in Tijuana, of seeing the shacks in the hills, of deflecting the beggars, the shoeshine boys, and the gum-selling girls.

  I have come to believe that when something is this bad, we look the other way, or we hope it’s better than it looks. I trust this book will put a face on the “huddled masses” who are invading our borders. I want you to know why they’re coming.

  Luis Alberto Urrea Boulder, Colorado 1992

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book grew over a long period of time—from 1979 to 1992. Clearly, I did not create it alone. Many hands tended to it—and to me—over these long years. I owe thanks to those both named and unnamed, and I hope the latter will forgive any lapses on my part.

  I must begin by offering my deepest gratitude and respect to the people of Tijuana and the border region; their honesty, goodwill, and faith stay with me always. In particular, I owe a debt to Ana María Cervantes Calderón—La Negra—who has taught me much about courage.

  There can’t be enough thanks for my wife, Barbara Urrea Davis, for her fearlessness as a border rat and an editor, and for her companionship and support.

  To Pastor Von: I owe this book to you, Von. Thank you for more than I can express here. I also must thank the good people of Spectrum Ministries, Inc., San Diego, California. All the workers and missionaries and adventurers who came and went over the long haul are far too many to name here. A blanket “thank you” will have to suffice. However, two co-conspirators, Victor Harris and Steven Van Belle, must be mentioned. Also, of the Mexico Crew, thanks especially to Judy Frye, Cindy Harris, Steven Mierau, Judi Mills, Clara Norris, Mike Sliffe, Sharleen Turner, Kyle Wiggins. And a special greeting to Efren, Mary-Alice, and Javier.

  Thanks to agent provocateur Thomas Hart for unflagging faith. To my editor, Deborah Ackerman.

  To 91X (XETRA-FM, San Diego). And to the Worst Deejay on Earth: the Mighty Oz. Thanks and love to Cynthia Jeffery. And thanks to the Trash Can Sinatras; Country Dick Montana of the Beat Farmers; and Chas, formerly of Madness. Also, deepest thanks to Jim Holman and the San Diego Reader. Thanks, also, to the glorious Jeanette King; and to Sue Greenberg, Linda Nevin, Leslie Venolia, Jeanette De Wyze.

  To César A. González-T., mentor and teacher; and to Michael R. Ornelas, good friend and homey. While I wrote the first batch of these notes, I was employed by San Diego Mesa College Chicano Studies Department, and Mike and César allowed me every Thursday, most Tuesdays, most Fridays, and far too many Mondays away from work.

  To the cast members of the UCSD Hispanic Theater Program/Teatro Máscara Mágica, who bravely entered the dumps and barrios, then offered these stories back to the public: Peter Cirino, Sol Miranda, Armando Ortega, Raul Ramos, Carmen Elena Sosa, Michael Torres, Luis “Wilo” Tristani, Wanda Vega. Laura Esparza and Roberto Gutiérrez. And thanks to director José Luis Valenzuela and producer Jorge Huerta—for insight and vision. Finally, to Nancy Griffiths, who started the ball.

  To my late mother, Phyllis, who worked ceaselessly for the Mexican poor. At Harvard: to brother Jack Booth, photographic genius. At U. of Colorado, Boulder: to Lorna Dee Cervantes, Jay Griswold, Salvador Rodríguez del Pino, Linda Hogan, Marilyn Krysl, Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Peter Michelson, Rick Williams. And, especially, to the indispensable Janet Hard.

  A final riot of thanks—“propers” due to so many who lent a hand. To Patricia Ammann, Rudy Anaya, Judy Bell, Duane Brewer. To Becca Carmona, Diana Casebolt (née Whitney). To the Davis family—especially Peg for her proofreading assistance. And to Bertha Edington and Rick Elias: thanks a lot.

  To Chancellor Auggie Gallego of the San Diego Community College District.

  To John Garwood, Jock Gaynor: the movie men. Thank you, Bette González. To Cindy Hanes, Margaret Hart. To Ursula K. Le Guin, with lurve. To Mike Lowery, Richard Marius, Michele Moore, Haas Mrue, Simone Muench. To Lyn Niles, for everything. To Mad Dog Lowry Pei. To Darcy Peters, Jeff Schafer. For sanity, thanks always to Kenneth L. Sipe of Wellesley, MA. Special thanks to Suzy Tanzer for her kind generosity and friendship. And to Lily Tomlin—you brought me back to life.

  To los Urrea—Juan, Luis Octavio, Lety, Alberto, y Martha; Hugo Millan; and un abrazo fuerte para Sra. Emilia Zazueta de Urrea.

  To my good friend Jon Urshan. To Caty Van Housen. And to Shawn Phillips and his late father, Philip Atlee (James Atlee Phillips)—thank you.

  Finally, to David Thomson—when others fell away, you were the last man standing.

  PROLOGUE

  Border Story

  When I was younger, I went to war. The Mexican border was the battlefield. There are many Mexicos; there are also many Mexican borders, any one of which could fill its own book. I, and the people with me, fought on a specific front. We sustained injuries and witnessed deaths. There were machine guns pointed at us, knives, pistols, clubs, even skyrockets. I caught a street-gang member trying to stuff a lit cherry bomb into our gas tank. On the same night, a drunk mariachi opened fire on the missionaries through the wall of his house.

  We drove five beat-up vans. We were armed with water, medicine, shampoo, food, clothes, milk, and doughnuts. At the end of a day, like returning veterans from other battles, we carried secrets in our hearts that kept some of us awake at night, gave others dreams and fits of crying. Our faith sustained us—if not in God or “good,” then in our work.

  Others of us had no room for or interest in such drama, and came away unscat
hed—and unmoved. Some of us sank into the mindless joy of fundamentalism, some of us drank, some of us married impoverished Mexicans. Most of us took it personally. Poverty is personal: it smells and it shocks and it invades your space. You come home dirty when you get too close to the poor. Sometimes you bring back vermin: they hide in your hair, in your underpants, in your intestines. These unpleasant possibilities are a given. They are the price you occasionally have to pay.

  In Tijuana and environs, we met the many ambassadors of poverty: lice, scabies, tapeworm, pinworm, ringworm, fleas, crab lice. We met diphtheria, meningitis, typhoid, polio, turista (diarrhea), tuberculosis, hepatitis, VD, impetigo, measles, chronic hernia, malaria, whooping cough. We met madness and “demon possession.”

  These were the products of dirt and disregard—bad things afflicting good people. Their world was far from our world. Still, it would take you only about twenty minutes to get there from the center of San Diego.

  For me, the worst part was the lack of a specific enemy. We were fighting a nebulous, all-pervasive It. Call it hunger. Call it despair. Call it the Devil, the System, Capitalism, the Cycle of Poverty, the Fruits of the Mexican Malaise. It was a seemingly endless circle of disasters. Long after I’d left, the wheel kept on grinding.

  At night, the Border Patrol helicopters swoop and churn in the air all along the line. You can sit in the Mexican hills and watch them herd humans on the dusty slopes across the valley. They look like science fiction crafts, their hard-focused lights raking the ground as they fly.

  Borderlands locals are so jaded by the sight of nightly people-hunting that it doesn’t even register in their minds. But take a stranger to the border, and she will see the spectacle: monstrous Dodge trucks speeding into and out of the landscape; uniformed men patrolling with flashlights, guns, and dogs; spotlights; running figures; lines of people hurried onto buses by armed guards; and the endless clatter of the helicopters with their harsh white beams. A Dutch woman once told me it seemed altogether “un-American.”