A Wetback in Reverse

by Frederick Martin-Del-Campo

  Furthermore, he had long since disavowed possession of his natal home, and refused to arbitrate ~ an action which would have resolved the feud between all sides, including the Rojas relatives. Thus I would leave, eventually, my newly acquainted cousins just like I’d found them ~ feuding. Meanwhile, problems were blurting forth all around cousin Mario over his small operation merchandise distribution business; it turned out that his employees, a couple of them nephews of Felipe Ramayo, had been using his transport vehicles to run contraband goods, and perhaps even illicit drugs, between state lines and occasionally the Mexico-U.S.A. border. Mexico checks only 10 percent of the quarter-of-a-million vehicles that cross the border each day, according to statistics the police, who had arrived to harass Mario, shared with us. By measuring the volume and carriage of cars to detect if they are unusually ponderous, and running out-of-state license plate numbers through a database of registered vehicles operating in questionable locales, the local drug-control enforcement agency hoped to trap more hidden contraband. Regrettably, Mario’s employees, for whom he was directly responsible, had gotten away with some pretty heavy stuff. If I recall properly, the American enforcers had long weighed and reviewed the license plates of incoming vehicles, but this measuring technology is relatively new to the Mexican officials who are now installing it at all border and interstate customs inspection-points.

  Since finding out about the dirty little habits of his workers, Mario had great cause for concern. One of them would admit, eventually, that they had been smuggling electronics, drugs (mostly marijuana) and even people for a few years now. Mario was aghast and on the brink of panic. What could I do but feel terrible about the whole thing; Mario was a genuinely sweet and trusting guy, and I’d hate to see any thing bad happen to him. An outstanding shipment, incidentally, was in transit from Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Texas, and the new technology, the police also informed us, had recently been installed at check-points thereabout. The three workers in question, one of their peers asserted, had gone intending to transport undocumented workers to the fields of Western Texas, but knew nothing about all this. To me, this was an irony par-excellence.

  Gathering details of this concerted effort to stem the tide of contraband goods and illegal drugs proved easier than I’d supposed. This systematized endeavor would be a troubling change: Inspections would now be mostly enforced by lights that alternately flash green or red. Regular border-crossers agree that they rarely see red, no pun intended. Inside the country, strict gun control regulations proscribe weapons sales with calibers above a .38 pistol. To purchase one, like Mario himself wanted to, all citizens must get a license from the Defense Ministry. North of the Texas border, notwithstanding, the narco cartels cheerfully pay straw buyers to receive pre-paid arms at gun shops, gun shows or flea markets, then resell the guns to dim-witted smugglers like Mario’s workers.

  It is said that officials have traced almost all of the arms procured at places of drug-related violence all over the country to American distribution networks. The said arms are usually .50 caliber or higher powered rifles and ammunition that can pierce the armor of Mexican police and soldiers ~ this fact really scared them.

  Prior to my undertaking this journey, guns like these were hardly seen in, let alone transported to, Mexico. Mario said he had known about the increasing troubles Mexico was grappling with, having previously dealt with the local bureau charged with controlling the flow of alcohol, fire-arms, tobacco and explosives. Yet, these dangerous and easily concealable guns had become the weapons of choice for these modern desperadoes.

  The modernization trials coincided with the Mexican government’s campaign to recruit hundreds more special agents to root out the narco thugs using drug-rooting dogs and sophisticated X-ray screening detectors to halt the illegal traffic and the spreading narco-related violence as well as contain the gun trading. The federal security agency and the law-enforcers were trying to step up their commitment to this containment and to reinforce the borders against out-bound as well as inbound delinquency. None of this, naturally, was comforting to a disappointed and brooding Mario.

  The Martin siblings worried that Sandro and Leandra would conspire with the snooping agents, much to the Martins’ humiliation. Moreover, Felipe Ramayo was rumored to be carrying out his long -desired coup against his nemesis by informing the Federales that Mario was guilty of what his nephews had done. This slander would rank highly in the annals of treachery! If he’d known I fully sympathized with the Martins, he would have ratted me out as well. Their presence was too close for comfort, and I squirmed every moment they were there investigating every detail, right down to Mario and Silvana’s underwear drawers.

  The stumbling police were skeptical about their prospects of retarding the illegal weapons traffic. Dedicated gun-runners easily transport thousands of arms in small quantities each time, breaking them apart and tucking them in valises or even inside household appliances, and no one would get hurt ... so they say.

  One of the officers warned Mario that, “If the vehicle has no criminal past, and is verifiably legal, it shouldn’t be stopped or inspected. Questions will be asked, though, so be ready to answer.” Contrabandists can also outflank inspection-points all the time, running weapons in other directions along the same desolate corridors that bring undocumented workers and narcotics north.

  While the crafty cartels get most of their high-caliber weapons from America, they turn to Central America for additional military-grade ordnance like bazookas and hand-tossed bombs.

  “You’re seeing truly military-worthy weaponry, like grenade launchers,” the officer said. “They’re not arriving from Gringolandia (America). The grenades they use, you’re looking at items smuggled in from Central America.”

  I had previously heard that the Mexican military, which is often outmatched and outwitted by the narco-traffickers, has not been an important source of weapons despite all of the corrupt soldiers known to have sold out to the cartels.

  Many of the cartels’ weapons could be spare-parts from Central America’s civil wars. Raymundo Francisco-Capote, an heir to the Juarez cartel, one of Mexico’s most despicable narco-trafficking empires, was snatched by the Federales as he jogged through a city park before I arrived in Jalisco. This came just a couple of days before Mexican and American ministers rendezvoused to coordinate interdiction of escalating narco-trafficking related murders and destruction.

  To my dismay, I later learned that one of Felipe’s nephews, Jose Arias, would inherit a top position in the Juarez cartel from the father of his recently killed comrade, Amado “El Lagarto” (the alligator) Francisco-Capote, brother of Raymundo. He bore the additional pseudonym “Pharmacist of the Friendly Skies” for sending jet-planes crammed with marijuana and crack-cocaine to American states. The father was considered one of Mexico’s top narco-traffickers when he died in 2000 during gastric-bypass surgery ~ he weighed over 350 pounds, but was only five-feet tall. Mario explained that the besieged remnant of his organization was still “one of Mexico’s most ruthless organized criminal gangs, which once controlled the primary transportation routes for illegal drug shipments into the United States.”

  Mario also informed me that this Francisco-Capote was second only to his uncle Venustiano Feliponcio Francisco-Capote in the gang, whose vicious fights with upstart cartels have spilled the blood of nearly 2,000 persons, innocent as well as guilty, in Juarez alone.

  During the week I was in Colima, Mexico’s government posted a 30 million Pesos reward for Venustiano Francisco-Capote and 34 other top gang-lord suspects. Another suspect on the list already had been taken captive, as had two alleged cartel runners facing less tempting bounties. Neither of them was a nephew of Felipe.

  During my third day in Tepatitlan I witnessed masked police officers wearing helmets and bulletproof vests haul off a number of suspects operating just a few hundred yards from Mario’s and Consuelo’s homes. The young men, looking a little like average college students (and probably
were) wearing square-framed glasses and a track suit emblazoned with “Abercrombie & Fitch,” showed little fear before the automatic weapons pointed at their faces.

  We’d all heard that something like this would happen, but were nonetheless surprised when we actually witnessed the proceedings. The whole shebang had been the local Chota’s (“cops”) way of aiming at ways to halt the smuggling across the border as well as original tactics for combating the cartels, which have promoted violence in both countries.

  Before we had a chance to finish our thick,Veracruzano coffee and Campechana cakes, we learned from a radio-broadcast that the “Tepa” police had apprehended Raymundo Francisco-Capote as he was trying to escape custody, and was shot through the chest. He was expected to recover, nevertheless. Apparently, he was heading for the mansion-lined neighborhood of Las Lomas, a very swanky area north of the city. No one could say what he was attempting, but most were relieved to learn of his bloody capture.

  Two weeks prior to the shoot-out with Capote, police had arrested Jacobo El Gavilan (the Hawk) Tamargo, a putative top- figure in Mexico’s Michoacan drug cartel. The government described Tamargo’s father, Ismael El Negro Tamargo as “perhaps the most crafty leader of cartels in Mexico.” Among his cronies at the scene was Arnoldo Ramayo, another of Felipe’s rascally nephews. Furthermore, he had been using an alias, Romulo Peralta Menendez, supposedly the name of his now deceased mentor in the contraband business. He was trying to pass himself off as a businessman, but his common, almost sleazy features raised many an suspicious eyebrow. A chota friend of Mario’s later confided to us that the local posse comitatus tracked down the rotten bums through their jilted girlfriends, who’d complained that their beaus owed them money for services rendered. The Tepatitlan rubes possessed records showing that the sister of Arnoldo had been married to Rodolfo Durazo Tamargo, a brother of the cartel leader. Interestingly, I’d also learned that Rodolfo was a convert to Judaism, and allegedly had paid to train with the Mossad, the national intelligence agency of Israel.

  Boy! What these desperadoes will do to secure and perpetuate their felonious organization, eh?

  How terrible ... How senseless! Before I ever set foot in Mexico I’d learned that over 9,000 people had been slaughtered in narco-related violence in Mexico since Presidente Felipe Calderon took office in 2006. What could come after he departs? Alas, better let the foxes take over the hen-house, Mario complained, “they’re already in there doing what they want, and all the stink about interdiction is just a front to keep the common herd complacent.”

  And, I would agree!

  JEWS IN MEXICO

  Jews have survived and thrived in Mexico since the dark days of the Inquisition. Today the community numbers over 50,000, concentrated mostly in Mexico City. Additional communities exist in the states of Jalisco, mostly in big cities like Guadalajara, and in prosperous sections of Culiacan, Monterrey, Veracruz, and the border town of Tijuana.

  There weren’t too many Jews in Tepatitlan, but the number of Jewish people in Guadalajara has been contracting for a long time. There are only about 250 families left. The remnants are made up of an equal number of Sephardic and Ashkenazy Jews. Beforehand, the two groups had their own synagogues and did not intentionally mix; in time the separate groups got together with the result that practically all of the younger families are presently composed of Sephardic-Ashkenazy unions. There is a community center similar to that of a Jewish Community Center in the United States, which is the center of Jewish activities in the greater metropolitan area. The center serves as a gathering place for family support in the midst of a sea of Roman Catholics, and also houses the synagogue. Because the Jews of Guadalajara rarely fool around with the non- Jewish community, most of the younger rakes and rapscallions who are only interested in sowing their wild Semitic oats are inclined to move to Mexico City, which has a larger Jewish community. This is the main reason for the lack of Jewish pornography in Guadalajara.

  In the last few decades the community became Modern Orthodox, which caused a sizable part of the community to separate and form a new Conservative temple and community center. This move to Modern Orthodox cemented deep divisions within the community, tearing families apart, and having them choose between the two temples, intermarriage and conversions are the principal problems irritating the divide. Among well known Jews from Guadalajara are actors, comics, producers, promoters, agents, singers and other entertainers who have enjoyed as much fame and respect in the Spanish-speaking world as they do in Hollywood.

  There are also some Mexicans who consider themselves descendants of so-called Conversos, or Jews who converted to Roman Catholicism to escape the Inquisition, but retained some Jewish heritage ~ such as burning candles on Friday nights. For example, the famous painter Diego Rivera was a Converso descendant. Another one who I never expected to be a Converso on his father’s side was Fulgencio San Roman. In a recent article I’d researched about him, he purportedly said back in 1945 after learning about the Holocaust: “The Jewish factor in my ancestry is the motivating element in my life. From this has flowered a compassionate understanding for the downtrodden masses which illuminates my imagination and all my art.”

  All of which brings up an interesting point about my object of fascination: Fulgencio had actually translated an edition of the MIDRASH in to Spanish during his college days, and the version is putatively still used in some campuses around Jalisco, and Estado de Mexico. This discovery just left me dumbfounded, and as I dusted off old archives in Jalisco I couldn’t help but wonder what he was doing in Tamaulipas!

  In the edition he translated he included a short list of questions he’d asked himself, using it as an introduction of sorts to the book:

  1. Were you brought up on the MIDRASH?

  2. What exactly is it? Is it worth getting into?

  3. What about Rabbi Hillel? Did his writings influence your way of thinking?

  Strangely enough, he didn’t answer his own questions. He simply included a personal definition in the prologue to the translation:

  ~ Definition of Midrash (according to Fulgencio): While the Talmud deals primarily with questions of Jewish law as deduced from the Torah, a parallel body of work developed at the same time, using the Torah as a source for homiletic discussions. The different works of the Midrash are generally (but not always) linked to specific books of the Bible. Thus, for example, the most important work in the field, the Midrash Rabbah (the “Great Midrash”), is a commentary, as it were, on the Five Books of Moses. While the Midrash does on occasion contain items dealing with Jewish law, its major purpose is homiletic, offering insights into both the Torah and human nature and giving guidance as to how a person should live and behave. ~

  That was concise enough, but as the curator of the film-art library remarked, “Jews learn some of this growing up in Sunday school. It’s been over 40 years since we’ve had actual Jews come in to borrow or study this book. I once read it, but it was so boring I don’t really remember it. I wouldn’t spend too much time on it.

  However, if you become wealthy or realize a dream of yours once after reading the Midrash, I think you should consider becoming Jewish because it will mean that Jewish prayers work!”

  Fascinating! Now I was thinking that I could make a good Scholar of Jewish Studies. If I were to convert, it would be to gain access to a considerable store of philosophy and knowledge ~ it wouldn’t be to get my own dreidel or a free circumcision. As I considered the issue more, I did want to study more. There is that rich tradition, from Philo, Josephus and Eusebius, right down to Hillel, Maimonides and Benedictus de Spinoza, that is inspiring. Thence-forward I would be hungrily taking in this fabulous, older documentary I’d found in the film archives that is presented and narrated by Fulgencio San Roman called CIVILIZATIONS OF THE AMERICAS AND THE JEWS. It was the most fascinating documentary work about the origins of civilizations I had seen since LEGACY-The Origins of Civilization by Michael Wood. After all, it can and should be said that both
Christianity and Islam are the wayward children of Judaism, right? Mexican Catholics are taught and are all too aware that Jews have made great contributions to Mexico’s society as well as to Christianity by its very meaning, existence and teachings.

  For me, therefore, it wasn’t a stretch of the imagination in the least. I just might feel very much at home in such an environment. After all, the Jewish ritual seems so much more akin to the Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox ceremonies that I’ve witnessed here in Mexico than that which passes for church-services amongst Pentecostal and Baptist Christians; weird gatherings that look nothing like something I would ever want to get involved with, and are filled with singing and screaming about casting out sin, ...just ridiculous. I know all this for a fact, having traveled with missionaries way back in the early 1990s!

  Once I get through my present challenge without the Federales ever finding out about my illegality, maybe I’ll check out what I can about furthering my Jewish Studies.

  And, if and when I return to California before getting caught, not only will it lend gravity to the power of Jewish prayer, but it will be the fulfillment of a great omen that my finding out about Fulgencio would lead to a meeting of, and with Destiny!

  Before leaving to attend a dinner hosted by cousin Consuelo, I pondered over the additional fact that Fulgencio’s distant Jewish relatives actually pretended not to be Jewish, but rather agnostic Catholics, if there is such a thing. A half-sister of his who had vociferously denied her Jewish ancestry, Celestina, sent the film-library an old letter with his deranged writing (or so she described it in an accompanying addendum) she’d found about a year before I undertook this journey, with the proviso that the curators never inform Fulgencio of its procurement. In the letter he talked about Mexican orphans in the Pacific Coast states of Baja California, Sonora, Sinaloa and Nayarit, which he loved to visit because of the fantastic fishing to be had, and the serene beauty of the topography.