D  e  s  e  r  t   E  x  p  o  s  u  r  e        January 2008

Life on the Edge

Can a new Japanese-owned factory fix the problems in Palomas after the US border crackdown?

Story and photos by Marjorie Lilly

The 42-year-old wrinkle-faced woman stands on the Palomas side of the new metal fence on the border that looks like the giant teeth of a comb. When I ask what she thinks of the fence, she pauses gravely and says, "They don't want us any more," echoing word for word what others in town say.

Children in Palomas playing in front of a border fence.

She has worked for years on the Johnson farm on the Columbus side, brincando (hopping) daily across the border without papers with about 20 other people living on the same street. She earned $35 or $30 a day, sometimes $40.

Now she and her co-workers are driving down to work in Colonia Victoria, a half-hour to the south. In these fields she earns between $40 and $80 a week. She has a 13-year-old daughter to support, and says they don't always eat every meal.

When I ask for her name, she says each part quietly and firmly: "Luz. . . Simental. . . Anchondo."

The arrival of the National Guard in July 2006 radically affected the economy of Palomas. This dusty border town used to be a launching point for Mexicans crossing illegally into the US to work or transport drugs. Now it is generally agreed that there are virtually no polleros, or human smugglers, in Palomas, and there are fewer drug traffickers than before.

The US Border Patrol recorded about 40 percent fewer arrests of border crossers in New Mexico in 2007 than in the previous year. Besides the arrival of the National Guard, the New Mexico border now has 4.7 miles of pedestrian border fencing and 22.5 miles of vehicle fencing; the US-Mexico border has a total of 285 miles of fencing.

Heightened border security affects not only those who once worked in the US, but it's also taken a deep gouge out of nearly every business in Palomas — grocery stores large and small, restaurants, hardware stores, hotels, car-repair shops and roadside sellers of jackets, hats and shoes. Mario Gonzalez says his grocery store, Abarrotes Olonos, has 50 percent or less of the business it used to have.

There's also massive underemployment. Raul in a second-hand store says there are two women in his church who used to clean house for middle-class homes but are now scrambling for other work. Many Palomas residents worked for the polleros and have been left high and dry. Esther Valdez Monje says her husband used to earn $100 day fixing cars; he now earns about $100 a week.

There is a layer of resentment in Palomas over the way ordinary citizens are pawns in this political and economic game. "It's a disaster," says Lucero Palacios, a teenager who grew up there.

In a separate phenomenon, the oculists, dentists and pharmacists who have thrived on the patronage of Americans for years saw their business take a nose-dive last spring when a couple of shoot-outs by drug traffickers in daylight hours on Palomas' main street got widespread attention in the US press. In one case, three men died at 10 a.m. and in the other, two men died from a shooting that took place at 9:15 a.m. Shootings from time to time at night have always happened in Palomas, but nothing like this had ever occurred.

By now, the American clients seem to have forgotten about this violence, but are befuddled about the new ID requirements taking shape at the Port of Entry. On Jan. 31 a driver's license and birth certificate will get you back into the US, or a passport if you have one. Before, no IDs were required. I heard several mistaken versions of these rules among business owners in Palomas.

Most of the professional offices still haven't recovered. The dentists and oculists can be seen sitting in chairs in the afternoon waiting for customers. Ironically, though, some new buildings have gone up near the Port of Entry, and the business scene appears at first glance to be more dynamic than ever. But these businesses are not major suppliers of employment.

The small contingent of Tarahumara Indians who beg and make crafts near the Port of Entry has grown a bit. There are about four more Tarahumara Indian women with their children begging in the streets this year, according to one of them named Marcelina. They went back to their remote hometown in the Sierra for a late harvest, but because of drought there were no beans and they had to buy food at stores.

The most important sign of hope to appear in this whole scene occurred in October. That was when a factory employing 200 people opened up on the west side of town. It's a Japanese maquiladora called AAMSA that assembles electric cables for car parts.

Townspeople are well aware that the $60 a week the AAMSA workers are earning is hardly enough to get by, but they also agree, smilingly, that this pay is better than nothing.

A new Palomas mayor, Tanis Garcia, took office in November. In his spare-looking office in the brick city hall west of the Port of Entry, he says that his first priority is "salarios." "The salaries aren't sufficient to pay daily expenses," he says.

Garcia eagerly discusses the possibility of new maquiladoras, or assembly plants, moving into town. He talks about maquiladores from Japan and the US ("mostly the US") that might build to the east of Palomas. "They have bought lots and lots of land," he says, emphatically.

For years people on the border have talked about this possible economic development, allied with the proposed development across the border from the Santa Teresa Port of Entry, called San Jeronimo. They also talk about a new road being built from Juarez to Palomas.

The streets within Palomas are what concern Mayor Garcia, who lists streets as his second priority after salaries. There are only a handful of paved streets in the town, and the rest are deeply rutted from mud seasons. "Ascension doesn't help us with anything," he complains, as Palomas mayors before him have done. The town of Ascension is the administrative seat of the departamento (county).

Garcia's third priority is security. After the flare-up of violence in April and May, he says, federal police and army units as well as state police (referred to by the acronym CIPOL) were sent to Palomas. These security forces used no gunfire, he insists, but merely patrolled the streets. "And it was all over," Garcia says. "There weren't as many problems."

The mayor of Palomas represents no party and has no budget other than the $6,000 per two-week period authorized for salaries of his office personnel, the police and public works crews. He seems to spend most of his time trying to get funding for whatever projects he can, such as a $2 million landfill project funded by the North American Development Bank.

Garcia has been negotiating with officials in Columbus, Las Cruces and El Paso to get needed squad cars for the police station. New Police Chief Emilio Perez, who's been there only since Nov. 14, has only one patrol car for nine policemen, including himself. It's a '98 Chevrolet pickup with a shell on the back. "We're always repairing something," he says.

The police station is a cement-block building with no carpets and few furnishings.To verify the dates of some of the violent incidents last year, Perez leafs through a neatly hand-written spiral notebook for daily records on a desk that's so disorganized it's inadequate to the task.

Perez says there is less drug violence now, but it's clear his job is still dangerous. When asked certain questions, such as where he's worked before, the police chief gives a blank look. He won't allow any photographs of himself.

Public offices may look bare, but the concern of Palomas residents is too often hunger. Pilar Martinez, who runs a stand called Gorditas Pily in front of the Catholic Church on the plaza, is caring for six grandchildren and says, "Sometimes we don't have anything to give them." She says they sometimes eat three times a day, or twice, or only once.

It's no wonder the new maquiladora has no trouble finding workers. Most employees at AAMSA are young, single men and women supplementing their family's income.

The AAMSA engineering manager, Arturo Ramos, from Ascension, arrives for our interview after the five-minute exercise period for workers, typical of Japanese companies. He is young, bright and friendly.

Ramos was educated in Casas Grandes, and is obviously enjoying his job. He says AAMSA has factories all over the world, in Asia, Europe, Africa, as well as about 10 plants in Juarez. The company opened a plant in Palomas because so many Palomenses had been commuting to the Ascension plant after the economy bottomed out.

The factory floor is modern and light-filled, like most maquiladores. One difference between the personnel here and in Juarez is that the gender balance is about equal in Palomas, while in Juarez the typical worker is female. "There aren't as many women here," is Ramos' explanation.

The figure of $60 per week is somewhat deceptive because of the generous benefits workers receive, especially the medical benefits. They receive comprehensive medical care, and spouses and children are included in the plan, although "the great majority of the employees are single," Ramos says. Workers get Christmas bonuses and six days of vacation.

When I remark that $60 a week still isn't very much, Ramos rolls his eyes and grins disarmingly. "It's what all the maquiladores pay," he says. Others comment that AAMSA pays a little more than the small furniture factory in town owned by Philip Skinner, an American who lives in Columbus.

During a meal break at 6 p.m. there were five groups of people outside AAMSA selling burritos, either on the sidewalk or in nearby locales that had just opened up. The tiny wooden booth to the right of the door is run by Manuel Miranda, who complains that the sellers on foot haven't bought a license as he did, and they drive down the prices.

Miranda was deported from the US in 1992 after being falsely charged with drug trafficking, he claims. He grins broadly to mask the pain while he tells his story. He lost a $30,000 construction job he'd held for years, his wife and kids, and his house. He says he returned illegally in 2000 and was jailed for four years. That's when he came to Palomas. He now has a new wife and kid and is selling burritos for 50 centavos each.

Deportees are all over the place in Palomas, some sent back for working without papers, others for involvement with the drug trade. Raul Acosta, now selling second-hand items from a flatbed truck near the park, says he was deported after doing agricultural and construction work in Arizona and Denver. "A lot of people are selling second-hand things since they closed the border," he says. It seems as if used clothes flower on every other block on fences and on racks.

For deportees, the jolt of returning to the Mexican economy is hard. The pay is abysmal, yet the cost of living is not much less than in the US. The cost of food made in Mexico is substantially lower, but the cost of electricity can be much higher. Miguel Hernandez at Burritos Jazmin says he used to pay $30 for a two-month period for electricity in his very small store, but the price leaped to $140 for the same period in the fall.

As in the US, the cost of food is rising, perhaps most dramatically for wheat flour, with which many northern Mexicans make their staple tortillas. It's recently risen from 55 cents a kilo to 90 cents, says Antonio Rubalcaba of the Super Vasquez grocery store. Corn flour has risen just from 85 cents to 90 cents. Rubalcaba says the prices of milk and oil have risen, too.

One place that distributes food to people is the Casa de Amor, whose primary purpose is to care for children of prostitutes or drug addicts. There are big burlap bags of potatoes in the living room that a church woman in Las Cruces brought. "Many more people come asking for food since the closing of the border — about twice as many," says Manuela Vasquez, "house mother" at the refuge.

Palomas clearly stands at a crossroads. No one really knows whether the population will continue to fall from the 2005 census figure of 5,748 people or whether it will become a maquiladora boomtown in a decade.

There are some energetic people who can get ahead even in the stagnant economy of Palomas, like Carmen Magallanes, who with some other women has started a daycare center called Los Colores with federal money. They sold tamales to raise money for trips to Juarez to get funding.

Other people, like Esther Valdez Monje, whose husband's car-repair business dropped so drastically, say they'll probably move back to Casas Grandes. "It'll be better there," she says assuredly.

But it is not an easy winter in Palomas for so many people used to some of the former perks of life on the border.