La Doña likes to approach migrants like a mother at first, sometimes even offering them a free tlayuda. She tells them that her sons are coyotes and will give them a good price, but then she pulls out a pistol and forces them into a truck.
El Chilango says that the day before yesterday La Doña came out of her stand just as he was getting off the tracks. “Hey, you son of a bitch!” she called to him. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
El Chilango says he’s sure they had their eyes on him the whole time on the train. La Doña screamed at him to follow her so they could ask Don Fito what he wanted to do to his rebel coyote.
But catching La Doña in an inattentive moment, El Chilango grabbed his group of migrants and dove into a taxi. They sped to the bus station where they caught a bus to Oaxaca, and then caught another to Ixtepec. And here we are, under a tree outside the shelter. His migrants are resting inside, hoping not to get caught in the crossfire between El Chilango and Don Fito’s people.
“What the hell were you thinking?” I ask him.
“I don’t know, man, I don’t know. It’s that these migrants still needed to pay me for the trip. And I knew that if we didn’t get out of there Don Fito was either going to beat the shit out of me or kill me,” he says, his voice trembling up and down with each word.
“Stupid idiots,” he says. “I worked well for them, but the boss just wasn’t giving me any pollos. I have two women with kids I need to send them money. The stupid idiots!”
“And so what now?” I ask.
“Now,” he says, still trembling, “I’m going to get on this train, avoid Coatzacoalcos, and see if I can get to the US. And I’m going with my pollos. And if I get there, I’m gonna stay. I know how it works here, that all the other coyotes working for Don Fito and El Abuelo already have a kill order on me. Plus all the spies that ride the trains. Stupid idiots.”
I tell him that his plan is flat-out dumb and isn’t going to work. They’re going to find him, and it’ll be his fault if his pollos get killed as well.
“Can’t you talk to anybody from the army for me? Tell them I know where all the Zetas kidnappers are, that if they give me witness protection I’ll give them all up. I’ll give up the coyotes that work for them too, plus the spies, the whole lot of them.”
He shows me the list of contacts on his two cell phones. In one of them there are three numbers for “Doña Coatzacoalcos.” In the other there are numbers for “Don Fito” and for “El Borrego” (the Sheep), the famous Zeta chief of Tierra Blanca. I agree to consult the head of the shelter, Alejandro Solalinde. His idea isn’t crazy, I tell the pollero, but Solalinde rather than me would know who to approach in the army. I ask him to let me talk with the Hondurans, his pollos, saying that afterward I’d call Solalinde and tell him what’s going on. El Chilango accepts. We exchange numbers and he takes off.
~
Once in a while, to turn yourself in as a witness offers a way out of the game, but I have a bad feeling that El Chilango is going to get killed, that there’s no way out for him.
I decide to spend the night looking for possibilities.
El Chilango, I learn, had first come to the hostel the day before. He was supposedly loitering around outside of its gates. He walked up to Solalinde once, but never said anything, and never actually set foot inside the shelter.
I won’t say who I spoke with, but they’re people I trust, who I’ve known for awhile on the migrant trails. Two of them told me that El Chilango is a typical coyote, hard to deal with and a pain just like the rest of them. They said that he had two run-ins with Don Fito. First, when he lost five migrants in Tierra Blanca because he was drunk while waiting for a train and his migrants decided to go on alone. The second incident was more serious. El Chilango wanted to fatten his wallet a little and stole two migrants from another of El Abuelo’s coyotes. This is a serious violation in the coyote world. Each boss pays his pollero by the number of pollos he tends while they’re in his zone. Stealing two migrants is what got El Chilango in trouble, and put him out of work. Don Fito himself had to call him and force him to give up all of his pollos in restitution.
They tear each other up. Coyotes fighting coyotes. Hardly any of them follow the rules anymore. They attempt to pacify the narcos, but it’s like trying to tame a tiger in the jungle. They know what they’re up against, but money keeps driving them. And El Chilango’s case isn’t unique.
UNKNOWN TERRITORY
In Ixtepec I was introduced to another coyote, Alberto. It was January 2008. Alberto was from San Miguel, a neighborhood on the east side of San Salvador, but had since moved to Monterrey in the northern state of Nuevo León, Mexico.
He was part of a network of luxury coyotes who don’t work with impoverished migrants overland. His clients paid as much as $7,000 per trip. The way it worked was that these migrants gathered on a designated day and hour in the central plaza of Tapachula. From there a driver picked them up and took them to a house to spend the night. At dawn the following morning the same driver would take them to a hidden runway in a remote canyon region. From there the migrants would fly to Monterrey, which is within a short drive of the Texas border. And that’s where Alberto’s work began. He would collect the migrants at the runway in Monterrey, arrange them in groups of no more than five, assign one coyote per group, and tell them the rules and the route they were to use in crossing the border.
The coyote group Alberto worked for would earn $35,000 for every five clients successfully ferried across. And they would usually cross at least four groups a month. Last month, however, they didn’t make a single trip. Mexican authorities, in agreement with the US government, started trying to control the airspace around Tapachula in an effort to slow the flow of Colombian cocaine being flown in from Central America. Usually the smuggling flights are accomplished with Cessna aircraft, which can fly low and fast, and land on short runways.
Alberto, suddenly without income, said he couldn’t wait around for the skies to calm. He went back to his former life and started riding the rails again. It had been three years since he had last worked as a standard coyote, and back then Los Zetas didn’t exist. When I met him he was guiding three Salvadorans north on The Beast.
He was passing himself off as a migrant and seemed to me to be doing it pretty well. He gave instructions to his clients as we were playing soccer, like he was just giving them game strategies. Nobody suspected him of anything.
“It’s because if another coyote sees me, I’m fucked. I’m not paying the taxes of the road,” he explained to me when we were alone.
I remember thinking he was crazy. If they found him they weren’t just going to reprimand him, or ask him to pay a fine. Los Zetas only educate with pain. A few months after talking with Alberto, I met a Guatemalan coyote who showed me his cigarette burns and the scar on his lower back where Los Zetas beat him nearly to the bone with a paddle.
Coyotes already live on the edge, and yet they push their luck, risking everything.
HELP ME
I tell Father Solalinde about El Chilango’s predicament. He says there might be something we can do. But then El Chilango doesn’t show up again. He told me he’d stop by, and yet at dusk there’s still no sign of him. We sit down for dinner. Maybe tomorrow, I think.
We can hear the train starting up, whistling its departure for Medias Aguas. For the past hour the conductor has been backing into unhinged cars and securing them onto the rest of the train, and now it’s finally time to leave. It’s a small group today, only about forty migrants. They’ll all be able to find a spot on the lower platforms, which means they’ll get some sleep and will be relatively comfortable. They’ve each also just finished a bowl of chicken soup, so they won’t be traveling on empty stomachs. The priest, the other volunteers, and I have sat down to eat, but before finishing the meal I get a call. It’s El Chilango.
“What happened? I was waiting for you all afternoon,” I say.
“I couldn’t swing it. The shelter i
s hot. Just wanted to call you before I lose the signal. I’m gonna take off on this train.”
“But what if they keep following you?”
“That’s why I’m splitting. There are at least three Zeta spies hanging around the shelter. And I know they know I’m somewhere here. Now they’re looking for me.”
“And the Hondurans?”
“They’re coming with.”
“But you’re putting them in danger.”
“Gotta run, man, before I lose the signal. I’ll call you from Medias Aguas to see if we can arrange you know what. They’re following me. And you know who they are.”
I can see it clearly: I’ve just spoken to a man with a death wish. El Chilango has written his own epitaph: here lies a coyote who was killed by coyotes.
At dawn the shelter is empty. No trains arrive in the night. I don’t expect a call from El Chilango. If he really wanted even the slimmest chance for witness protection, he wouldn’t have left. But maybe he does have a chance. Maybe he can make it to the United States with the Hondurans, get paid, and then stay put a while up north.
Around noon my phone rings. I answer and hear the din of a market. Voices, the sound of something dragging along the ground, white noise.
“Heeey …” I hear. It’s just a whisper.
“Chilango?” I say. “Chilango?”
“Heeey … Help. They got me. We’re here in … Hey. Help …”
The call ends. I dial the number. It rings but nobody picks up. I try again. Try ten more times, then finally get a recording telling me that there’s no signal, that the number I’ve called is out of service.
For the next year after that encounter I ask my contacts about El Chilango. I ask about him in each of the shelters, all along the trail, asking coyotes, migrants, prostitutes. I describe him, his huge jaw, his thinning gray hair. But nobody has answers.
In November 2009 I make my last trip along the migrant routes. I travel to Ixtepec on top of a train from Medias Aguas, to see if the shelter and the surrounding area are still hot. I ask again about El Chilango. Nobody has seen him. I try his number again, just in case. It doesn’t even ring. There isn’t even a voice to tell me it’s out of service. There’s nothing but silence.
8
You Are Not Welcome in Tijuana: Baja California
Finally, far from Tijuana, after searching for the once classic northward passage, we come upon a place where we can cross without paying a narco tax, without confronting desert bandits, and without being surrounded by the Border Patrol. And yet what we find in this desolate place frightens us. We left walled Tijuana behind, we passed by Tecate, Tijuana’s wayward child, and then we stumbled upon the deadly trails of the undocumented. And we began to understand that even a border this long doesn’t have space enough for everyone, much less for those who are last in line.
“I come here at least twice a week,” Epifanio tells me, not breaking his melancholic gaze away from the tops of the tall San Diego buildings, which he can see through the bars. We’re on the beach in Tijuana and Epifanio, a migrant originally from Oaxaca, has spent the last three months trying to get out of here. He wants to get over there, to the base of those San Diego buildings he can see in the distance. He wants to get with his family. Hugging the salt-corroded bars, he hardly has anything left to do but look. For to cross over, to walk a few hours up the beach … and give a hug to his brothers, Epifanio has come about twelve years too late.
The changes began back in 1997, when they started building this wall. Epifanio, still skinny even in his thirty-third year, could easily slip through these bars. Yet he doesn’t risk it. While we silently watch the horizon, a child crosses over to retrieve a ball that was kicked over the wall. On the other side of the bars there are train rails buried vertically in the sand, the milky-coffee-colored surf of the ocean, and then the distant view of the city. It’s a beautiful view. A view that Epifanio has come to see at least once a week since he’s come north in his attempt to cross.
He’s imagined it dozens of ways. Some are simple: slip through the bars and race all the way to San Diego. Others are more complicated: take a deep breath, jump in the water, and swim for it. Or jump on a horse and gallop. Or ride a scooter over the bumpy desert and look to meet up with the hordes of other migrants on their way north. But he never works up enough courage. And he never will. Not here.
On the top of the nearby hillock, from what used to be called Friendship Park, at least two US Border Patrol agents keep an eye on the beach around the clock. There are also cameras, aquatic sensors, and horseback agents with binoculars. A child can slip over and get a ball, no problem. But to walk even fifty feet into their country, not a chance.
Places to hop over, like Epifanio had been expecting, don’t exist in Tijuana. They used to exist, but not anymore. There are photographs from the 1980s in which migrants scaling the fence are received by Border Patrol agents in Santa Claus outfits. The Santas were handing out gifts to the kids, letting the migrants pass. In one photograph you can see migrants in what was then known as Zapata Canyon. There was another photo of migrants on the US side, eating chicken’s feet in the dining hall known as “The Illegal.” They filled their bellies and then moved on, another forty-five minutes or so to San Diego. There was simply no wall back then. In the pictures, it seemed, everybody was smiling.
According to a photo study done at Tijuana’s Colegio de la Frontera Norte, in which borderline mounted cameras snapped pictures every few minutes, around eighty persons an hour would pass through this area back in the 1980s.
“I’m going over tonight,” Epifanio says, snapping back from his daydream. “I’m going to give it a shot outside of Tecate.”
Epifanio has been here for three months, day-working as a bricklayer to make money and constantly on the hunt for the best spot to cross, asking around. Where is it safest? Where can you steer clear of bandits? Where do the drugs go over? Where can you avoid getting kidnapped by the narcos? Where is there a spot left with no wall, no robbers, and no narcos?
Nobody has been able to answer this last question. So tonight Epifanio is going to try to cross outside of Tecate, where there is indeed a wall, where there are indeed robbers, and where there are definitely narcos.
He’s going to risk it because after having been gone from Oaxaca for three months, he’s starting to understand frontier reality. How the wall and new security technologies have enveloped and overtaken this border in the past twelve years. How everybody who wants to cross or get something across (migrants, narcos, and bandits) have been funneled to the few areas left where there are no walls and it’s not too far to run to a city or a highway on the US side. This means that many (migrants, narcos, and bandits) are crossing at the same points. It’s a game of chance, this border. Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don’t.
Tijuana is where the wall starts its 1,800-mile trip. This wall is crossed by Mexicans, Central Americans, South Americans, and even Chinese. From here to Ciudad Juárez there are nearly 400 miles of walls, bars, or vehicle barriers, that funnel these people into the deserts. In Tijuana is where the routes that lead to some of the most violent cities in the world begin. And everybody (at least every migrant) is asking this one question: where is it safe to cross? And the answer is: nowhere. The US government has made sure of that.
Epifanio, without a word, turns again to stare at the gray buildings in the distance. Then he exhales and pushes himself away from the bars.
“Yeah,” he says. “Tonight. I got to get moving.”
It’s his farewell.
He goes up the ramp to the sidewalk that runs along the beach, but there he stops. As I start walking away, I see him sit down on a bench and turn to look back again over the wall. He doesn’t seem to notice the hubbub of the family picnicking beside him. Maybe he just wanted to get away from me, calm his thoughts, think of another way to get over without having to cross outside of Tecate. It’s a nice thought, but it’s an illusion.
TIJUA
NA—THE WALLED CITY
With the wall always in view, always snaking alongside the highway and climbing up the hills and flashing out between buildings, you have the feeling like somebody is turning their back on you. That somebody doesn’t want you around. The wall in these parts has two variants: a flat metallic fence, and a tall prison-like parade of parallel bars.
The shorter sections of the fence were constructed in late 1994 with scrap metal left over from the Gulf War. Broken tanks, downed helicopters, pieces of whatever material was blown to shreds while US missiles rained down on Saddam and his troops. It was in the new spirit of recycling: converting war trash into something useful, like a border fence.
These short fences are only about six feet tall, which means they’re pretty easy to jump. The barrier was installed to mark the sea change of border politics, stating that this is where one country ends and the next begins. And we, the fence also says, are those who control what and who crosses over. It was meant to slow, not stop, the crossing of migrants and drug mules, and to signal a permanent end to the era of Santa Claus Border Patrol agents.
But by 1997 politicians started realizing that a merely symbolic fence wasn’t effective: the symbol needed to be reinforced with reality and technology. That was when the modern wall was born. Fourteen miles of twelve-foot-high bars, between which not even the head of a child could slip. It was an actual obstacle this time, not just a symbol. They also built a concrete canal for the Border Patrol trucks to drive through, plus stadium lights and cameras that are always on the watch. And still—the symbol intact—they left the old Gulf War fence in place.
The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail Page 16
