On Guard in Palomas
Tightening the border with the National Guard hasn't made the underlying problems go away.
You still can see them in Palomas. Four, five or six guys walking together like a gaggle of geese along the sidewalks, feeling out of place in this town away from their rural home and kind of nervous because they're getting ready to brincar, "hop" across the border.
They are all carrying backpacks, duffle bags or plastic bags, and tend to look more Indian than most Palomas residents. They almost all wear visor caps.
Ever since the arrival of the National Guard last summer, there have been fewer illegal border crossers than there were one year ago. Far fewer of them are sitting or sleeping in the plaza in Palomas or staying in the hotels. The yellow ex-school buses that depart from the plaza for Chepas to the west, where many used to cross, are almost empty when they leave. People in Columbus see fewer border crossers passing their houses.
The crossers now are much more tight-lipped than they were before. I asked one man squatting on the sidewalk near the plaza in Palomas with a few similar-looking friends, "Where are you from?" and he said, "I live here," with a big smile on his face. I can't get anywhere with most of them.
Although thousands of people pouring illegally across the border is an unhealthy situation, the presence of the National Guard is not something I can feel enthusiastic about, because I know how it's affecting Palomas residents. The drop-off in crossers is taking a deep gouge out of many legitimate businesses. The owners of the supermarkets and restaurants I've talked to say they've lost from a third to two-thirds of their business.
Businesses have had to lay off workers. This is affecting Palomenses quite profoundly. Some people are leaving, but there's also more unemployment among those who are staying. It's not easy to pick up and leave when you have a house to sell and family members nearby.
Some Deming businesses are also suffering, especially those belonging to Mexican-Americans. The owners tell me it's because even middle-class Mexicans who come with visas to shop are not coming as often now, either because they feel they're being harassed more at border checkpoints or as a kind of protest against the harsh new border rules.
Whether these owners are being less than straightforward about the number of illegal crossers among their usual customers, I'm not sure. But there's resentment on both sides of the border against the way the US government can so lightly make decisions that weigh so heavily on their lives.
And of course it's the poor who are suffering the most extremely. On the streets of Palomas there are more hands held out for money. This is partly because more Tarahumara Indians have decided to migrate there, but they aren't the only ones begging. There are several other little kids asking for money, and I even had an adult Palomas man ask for money for a taco a few days ago.
There's now an organization called Desert Humanitarians set up in Palomas by Americans to help migrants. The volunteers strongly suspect the majority of the 50 or so people they feed in the days they're open are Palomas residents.
A driver of one of the buses to Chepas said to me with a quick smile as we parted, "See if you can get rid of the gringos, because there's hunger here. Get rid of the soldiers." I told him, sure, I'll take care of it.
When I wrote an article about border crossers in Palomas several years ago, I did a very informal survey of 40 people, mostly in groups, in the plaza or in the hotels. Quite neatly half of them, mostly from rural areas, said that they didn't always eat three meals a day, and in fact some went for days at a time without eating. The other half said that hunger wasn't really an issue—that they were crossing partly because they wanted new clothes instead of always wearing used ones.
For that article I asked one man from Madera, Chihuahua, how often he ate, and he said jokingly, "Un dia que si, y el otro tampoco"—one day yes, and not the other day either.
I don't think there's enough awareness in the US of the level of hunger in Mexico. A teacher I had at a language school in Zacatecas a decade ago said that for one year when he was growing up, his family had eaten nothing but nopal cactus. I said, "Without even chile or onions?" and he nodded, "Si."
Last fall I talked to a man from Creel, near the Copper Canyon, who was explaining to me why they cross when it was so dangerous. "It's so bad [where he's from], it doesn't matter if you die." He wore a broad, friendly grin on his face.
Always a smile. We humans try to poke holes in our problems by poking fun at them. I grew up reading classic cartoons in the Saturday Evening Post of people crawling through the desert, dying of thirst. Like the one of a woman on hands and knees following a rough wooden sign saying "1/2 price sale" instead of the one pointing to "fresh water."
This scenario always seemed like something so inconceivably far from the secure middle-class world I lived in, but now it is happening in my back yard, or a matter of few miles from my back yard.
The number of border deaths is down, mercifully, because of the tightening of the border, but they're still happening. A few border crossers died from exposure to cold this winter, and a woman in a group of migrants was hit by a car on the highway between Lordsburg and Deming not too long ago.
Neither the National Guard nor the US government is the cause of all the problems of Mexicans. Sometimes I feel like kicking the Mexican government, collectively, in the pants for not doing more to provide for its own people. But to cut people off from coming to work in the US without coming anywhere close to providing a legal channel for the workers our economy depends on is a distorted, unfair policy
There are fewer border crossers dying, but I've heard that the upcoming summer is predicted to be a hot one, like this spring is. So there will again be a toll in human lives. You can Google up Desert Humanitarians on the Internet to find out how you can volunteer to help distribute food, water and medical help to border crossers.
Borderlines columnist Marjorie Lilly lives in Deming.