by Mark Gimenez
"I would."
"They do. Mexicanos have always been drawn north, for the pull of America acts like a magnet on their souls. They think the stars shine brighter on this side of the river. Perhaps they do."
He stared at the river a long moment then held a hand out to Mexico, to the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo and the vast desert beyond.
"All this land was once Mexico, and Laredo straddled the river. After the war, Mexicanos moved south across the river and began calling that side Nuevo Laredo. But families still straddled the river, and all through my childhood, we crossed this river daily as if it were a neighborhood street instead of an international border. There are still footbridges up and down the river, from the old days. It was nice on the border back then."
"What changed?"
"Drugs. All that was nice was washed away in the blood from the drug war. This is now un rio de sangre… a river of blood. Forty thousand Mexicans have died in the last four years. It is violence we fund, with our appetite for the drugs. One pound of heroin on that side of the river is worthless. On this side of the river it is worth one hundred thousand dollars. Our drug money has made Nuevo Laredo the bloodiest place on the planet. But we think, Oh, it is their problem. But it is just there, on the other side of this shallow little river. How long before the violence is here, on this side of the river?" He pondered his own words. "Six nations have flown their flags over this land, but it is the cartels that now claim sovereignty over the borderlands."
He squinted at the sky and seemed to contemplate the endless blue.
"We have put a Predator drone over the border, as if this is Afghanistan. Perhaps it is."
"This is not what I expected."
"No. The borderlands is not like the rest of Texas. The land and the people are brown, the language is Spanish, and the culture is Mexican. And we are burdened by history. In Dallas and Houston and Austin, people look to the future. Here, they look to the past. Wrongs beget by wrongs, so many wrongs over so many years, that there will never be a right. Not on the border."
Lindsay turned and looked north toward the wall in the distance. Then she turned back to the river.
"The wall is there and the river here."
"Yes, we are on the American side of the river but the Mexican side of the wall."
"These people, they're trapped by the river and the wall."
"They are trapped by much more than that." He held a hand out to the colonia. "They fled Mexico, hoping for a better life in America. But the wall blocks their path into America. And that is their dream, Mrs. Bonner, to live beyond the wall. But for now they must live here in this no man's land, neither here nor there-neither Mexico nor America."
The congressman took her arm and escorted her toward the colonia as if leading her into a fine restaurant. He was thirty-four years older than her with thick white hair that contrasted sharply with his wrinkled brown skin and thick in the middle and short, but she felt secure next to him, like a girl with her grandfather.
"Come, you are safe with me."
He pulled his coat back to reveal a gun in a belt holster.
"You carry a gun?"
He shrugged. "Of course. It is the border."
The congressman led the governor's wife into Colonia Angeles. Ranger Roy made a move toward them but retreated when she held up an open hand to him. They walked down the dirt road past shacks and shanties, small and odd-shaped and pieced together with corrugated tin sidings and cinder blocks and scrap wood with black plastic tarps for roofs and wood pallets stood upright for fences and seemingly held together with wire and gravity. They continued past lean-tos and huts with thatched roofs, lopsided travel trailers embedded in the dirt with sheet metal overhangs, and abandoned vehicles that lay as if they had been shot from the sky and left to die where they landed. A yellow school bus sat buried in the dirt up to its wheels; it was now a home. Clothes hung over droopy lines and flapped in the dry breeze. They heard babies wailing and Spanish voices. Small children splashed in dirty water that had pooled in low gullies, women and girls cooked and washed outside, and boys played soccer on a dirt field.
"Don't they go to school?"
"No. The buses do not come to this side of the wall. The bus drivers, they are afraid to come in here, and the mothers, they are afraid to take their children out there, afraid they will be detained and deported if they go into Laredo."
"Don't the truant officers come looking for them?"
The congressman chuckled. "No, they do not come into the colonias."
"But there are so many children."
"Yes, the colonias are like child-care centers, except no one cares about these children."
The congressman pointed at large drums sitting outside some residences.
"Water tanks. Fifty-five gallons. The water truck comes each week. They buy non-potable water-they call it 'dirty water'-to wash clothes and cook, and clean water to drink, in the five-gallon bottles."
"They don't have running water?"
"Oh, no."
"How do they take baths?"
"In the river. But it is contaminated, with raw sewage. That is what you smell."
The air was as dry as dirt, and the stale breeze now carried a foul stench.
"Raw sewage? From Mexico?"
"From both sides. There is no sewer system in this colonia, so they dump the waste in the river. And many of the American-owned maquiladoras, the factories on the other side, they dump their industrial waste into the river."
"But that's illegal."
"In some parts of the world. But as I said, Mrs. Bonner, this is another world entirely. Cancer rates are quite high, and the children, they always have the open sores and many illnesses from the river-hepatitis, dysentery, cholera, tuberculosis, even dengue fever. You have had your shots?"
"My shots?"
Lindsay Bonner had seen poverty before, in the rural counties and the inner cities. But she had never before seen anything like this. Colonia Angeles looked like a scene from one of those "feed the children" commercials on Sunday morning television. But this wasn't Guatemala or Africa. This was America.
"How did all this come to be?"
"These colonias, they began appearing along the river back in the fifties and sixties. But during the eighties and nineties, the population exploded with the immigration boom, some say because Reagan granted amnesty and citizenship to the Mexicans already here, so more followed, also hoping for citizenship-if not for them, at least for their children born here. They know the law, too."
"My husband, he calls those children 'anchor babies.' "
"Yes. He does. Anyway, this is flood plain land, worthless for regular development. So the owners sold off small lots to Mexican immigrants, just pieces of dirt, with no roads or utilities. They built their homes with whatever scrap material they could salvage, piece by piece, what the sociologists call 'incremental construction.' Not exactly the American dream, as you can see. But it is all they can afford."
"In Austin, these places would be bulldozed as unfit for human occupancy."
"This is not Austin, Mrs. Bonner. This is the border. Travel up and down this river, and you will see nothing but colonias outside the cities, two thousand at last count. The state says four hundred thousand people live in the colonias, but I think there are many more, perhaps one million. How can the state know for certain when the federal government cannot even get an accurate count for the census?"
"So they live without running water, sewer…?"
"Electricity."
"I thought the state had funded services for the colonias? "
"Yes, ten years ago, the state issued five hundred million in bonds to provide utilities to the colonias, and about half now have them. This colonia does not."
"So when will these people get utilities?"
"They will not. The money has run out. Most of these people will die without ever having turned on a light or flushed a toilet."
"We need more money."
"But, Mrs. Bonner, your husband vetoed more money for the colonias."
"He did? Why?"
"He said the federal government should pay for the utilities since these people are illegal immigrants. Squatters, I think he called them."
"They're human beings. And they shouldn't have to live like this."
"Tell your husband."
"I will."
"But to be fair to the governor, we need billions, more money than the State of Texas can provide, to keep up with the people coming across the river and the children born here. The borderlands, it is both the poorest and the fastest growing population in all of America. That is why we must count them for the census, so the borderlands can get its share of federal funds."
"But they're not citizens."
"That does not matter. The census counts everyone living in America, legal or not. Funds and seats in the House are divvied up by population, not citizenship. If only these people will fill out the forms and be counted, Texas will get three, maybe four more seats in Congress and billions more in federal aid. Each of these residents is worth fifteen hundred dollars, if we can get them counted."
"My husband wants to send these people back to Mexico, but he sends me down here to get them to fill out the census reports so Texas can benefit from their presence here?"
"Odd, is it not? But we need federal money to do what the state cannot afford to do. The problem is, we are asking these people to come out of the shadows and be counted while ICE conducts raids right here on the border. They do not trust the government. And, of course, they did not receive the census forms."
"Why not?"
"No mailing addresses. The colonias do not officially exist, at least as far as the Postal Service is concerned. So the Census Bureau must send workers in, to go door to door, to count the residents. But they are too afraid."
"The workers or the residents?"
"Both."
"We have boxes of forms in the back of the Suburban. We can give them the forms, and they can fill them out and mail them in."
"Mrs. Bonner, these people do not go to the post office, and most cannot read or write."
"The forms are printed in Spanish, too."
"They cannot read or write Spanish or English."
"But we've got to try!"
Lindsay Bonner prided herself on being a positive person who never lost hope-not when volunteering at the food bank or the AIDS clinic or even the homeless shelter in Austin-but the heat and the stench and the filth now seemed to suffocate her spirit that day. She fought back tears.
"We can try."
The congressman offered a grandfatherly squeeze of her shoulders and a sympathetic expression.
"Yes, Mrs. Bonner. We can try."
They walked down the dirt road and stopped at a shanty with a covered contraption sitting above an open fire like a cookout. The congressman leaned over the pot and sniffed.
" Tesguino. Homemade corn liquor." He called into the home."?Hola! "
A hand appeared and parted the blanket that served as the front door. A young Mexican woman peeked out; she held an infant in her arms. Lindsay smiled and spoke to her in Spanish.
" Buenos dias, Senora. I am Lindsay Bonner. We need you to be counted for the census."
" No habla, Senora. No habla. "
The woman pulled the blanket shut in Lindsay's face. But, of course, she did habla. They walked down the dirt road, deeper into the colonia. Lindsay approached every woman she saw, but she received the same reception. No habla, Senora.
"I travel all over Texas, and people always want to talk to me. But not here."
The congressman patted her shoulder as if consoling her.
"Do not be offended, Mrs. Bonner. These women, they do not know you are the governor's wife. They do not even know who the governor is. They have no television, no cable news, no English newspapers. These people do not live in our world. Here in the colonias, you are just another Anglo whom they fear."
"Where are the men?" Lindsay said.
"Gone. For good or for the day. They come and they go, leaving pregnant women behind. The men who do stay leave before dawn and return after dark. And you do not want to be in the colonias after dark."
"How do they get through the gate, with the Border Patrol?"
"They do not. They came here to work construction in Laredo, but the wall prevents that. So now they work for the cartels in Nuevo Laredo."
"Where do these people get food?"
"Across the river."
"They work and shop on that side and sleep on this side… This is just a suburb of Mexico."
The breeze blew stronger, and she gagged at the foul smell from the river. The congressman held out a white handkerchief to Lindsay. She took the handkerchief and covered her mouth and nose. For a moment, she thought she might throw up.
"Perhaps we should go back?" the congressman said.
"No."
She removed the handkerchief from her face and marched down the dirt road to a shack constructed of old garage doors for walls, a black tarp for the roof, and a dirty blanket for a door. A clay flowerpot with a single yellow sunflower sat outside.
"?Hola! "
A small brown face peeked out. A child's face. A haunting dirty little wide-eyed face. Lindsay smiled at her, and the child smiled back. Lindsay reached into her pocket and pulled out a peppermint from breakfast at the hotel. She stepped closer and leaned down and held the candy out to the girl. The child hesitated but took the candy. Then she was gone. Lindsay stood straight and faced the congressman.
"We've got to get these people counted, so we can get that federal money. So we can help them."
"But I am afraid that they do not trust us."
"Is there anyone here they do trust?"
"Yes. There is such a person."
"Who?"
"The doctor."
FOUR
"Is your mama a llama?" I asked my friend Jane.
"No, she is not," Jane politely explained. "She grazes on grass, and she likes to say 'Moo!' I don't think that is what a llama would do." "Oh," I said. "I understand now, I think that your mama must be a… Cow!" ' "
Bode Bonner felt about as goddamn stupid as a grown man could possibly feel, reading Is Your Mama a Llama? by Deborah Guarino, a story about a little llama named Lloyd looking for its mama llama. He hated these events, but reading to elementary school kids had become a ritual for politicians these days-a ritual usually performed by this politician's wife. But she had bailed for the border that day. So the governor of Texas found himself facing twenty-four kindergartners.
He'd rather be facing twenty-four Democrats.
He flipped the book around so the kids could see the picture. A collective "Aah!" went up, and one boy said, " Vaca," which Bode knew from his experience working cattle on the ranch with the vaqueros meant "cow." The kids started chattering in Spanish, which made him wonder if they even understood the words he was reading. Tacked to the wall were colorful posters with numbers and colors and shapes and explanations printed in English and Spanish, just like the state's official documents: uno /one… dos /two… tres /three… blanco /white
… rojo /red… azul /blue… circulo /circle… rectangulo /rectangle… cuadrado /square. He wondered how many of these kids had just come up from Mexico with their parents for spring harvest. Back when Bode was growing up in the Hill Country, Mexicans worked the ranches and farms, but their children did not attend public school. They couldn't. He didn't think about such things back then; that's just the way it was. But he thought about such things now.
Because he was the governor.
And the most difficult job for the governor of Texas-for any of the fifty governors, all of whom faced massive budget deficits in this Great Recession-was figuring out how to pay for public schools. Which is to say, how to pay to educate the state's poorest children. During his tenure in office, at his wife's relentless urging, he had doubled the K-12 budget to $50 billion- $10,000 per student — but S
AT and achievement test scores still hovered near the bottom among the fifty states, just ahead of Mississippi, not exactly a bragging point at the annual governors' conference. Most politicians blamed the teachers for the failure of public education-the first rule for politicians being, Blame someone else before the voters blame you — but the statistics made the job seem utterly hopeless: five million students in Texas schools speaking a hundred different languages but almost two million unable to read, write, or speak English; the highest teenage pregnancy and dropout rates in the nation; the lowest literacy and graduation rates; and the fourth highest poverty rate. And fully one-half of the nation's child population growth over the last decade had occurred in Texas. All poor children.
How the hell was the State of Texas supposed to educate so many poor, pregnant, non-English-speaking kids?
But the law required the state try, so Texas schools didn't just employ 330,000 teachers; they also employed 330,000 cops, social workers, nurses, counselors, ESL (English as a second language) facilitators, tutors, administrators, school bus drivers, janitors, and cooks. Schools now served free breakfast, lunch, and dinner, administered achievement tests and flu shots, supplied textbooks and toothbrushes, offered classes in math and parenting, and provided pregnancy counseling and childcare. Public schools had become social agencies sucking billions from the state budget. But the education activists-including his wife-wanted even more money. "Educate or incarcerate," she always said, and he knew in his heart that she was right. But he also knew a harsh political fact of life: there was no more money for these children.
The State of Texas was broke.
He turned back to the book and read another passage-the little llama named Lloyd now thought a kangaroo might be his mama-then again showed his audience the picture, which evoked another loud "Aah" and " canguro " from the kids. They were bright-faced and wide-eyed and seemed to be enjoying themselves, English-language skills notwithstanding. A few listened intently, but most were too busy eating peanut butter crackers and sucking on juice boxes to pay attention. At the back of the classroom, two cameras captured the moment; one was from a local TV station, the other from a private production studio. These kids didn't know it, but they would soon be starring in a "Bode Bonner for Governor" commercial.
