Hunting Season

by Mirta Ojito

  When he was nine, Loja had a vision that changed his life. He was playing with his brother Pablo, then seven, outside their grandfather’s stone house. An uncle had died and the family had just returned from the funeral. The adults were inside, tending to their elderly and setting out the food. Eventually stars became visible in the twilight. The brothers looked up, marveling at the beauty of the sky, at the sudden way the sun had disappeared behind the regal mountains of the Azuay province in the highlands of the country, where some peaks reach fifteen thousand feet above sea level.

  It was quiet but for the faint sounds of sobs coming from inside the house and dogs barking in the distance. Suddenly, it seemed to the boys, the brightest star exploded and its light traveled down to where they were playing, illuminating a spot a few steps from them. It shimmered and flowed, like the river in summer afternoons. Loja wanted to touch it but held back. Open-mouthed and paralyzed by fear and excitement, the boys saw an image of Jesus Christ take shape in the light. The figure, which appeared to be floating and looking directly at them, wore a white tunic; the arms were extended, and the pale hands were pierced and bleeding, just like in the countless images of Christ they had seen in church. Pablo took off running to get his parents, but Loja stayed put. After a few seconds, the image went up with the light, leaving behind a thick curtain of fog and a boy who, from then on, felt special, protected by a divine force.

  Later, after he had become a star athlete, Loja had no doubt that God had been illuminating a path for him. Later still, after he had survived a desert passage and made it to New York in a nineteen-day journey, he felt indebted to God. With God on his side and his well-honed athlete’s instincts, he felt invincible, an indispensable feeling for a dark-skinned Latino to have in Suffolk County at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

  Every Latino in Suffolk County knew that gangs of youngsters roamed the streets looking for immigrants to harass or beat. Some people were even afraid to go to the library at night for the free English classes because they knew that, upon leaving, thugs could be waiting for them. Loja and Lucero had heard the stories, but they thought the attacks happened mostly in Farmingville, a nearby community where tensions between Latinos and non-Latino residents had made news for almost a decade.

  They had heard about the two Mexican day laborers who in 2000 were lured with promises of work to an abandoned building in Shirley, about fifteen minutes from Farmingville, by two white men who beat them savagely. More recently there had been reports of beatings and confrontations in other towns in Suffolk County, and they knew that Patchogue was not immune.

  From his kitchen window overlooking a parking lot, Loja once saw a Latino man being attacked by a group of white teenagers. The youngsters pushed the man down, made him kneel and brace himself as if for a rough landing in an airplane, and then ran their bicycles over his back. The teenagers took off on their bikes and the man got up, dusted himself off, rubbed his face with his hands, and left the parking lot before Loja had time to react. Loja, if not Lucero, knew that Patchogue too could be a dangerous place.

  The improbable road that had taken Loja from the streets of Gualaceo to a courtroom in Suffolk County, New York, started in 1990, when, at eighteen, he decided that he could no longer be a burden to his parents. It wasn’t an original thought. At that time just about every able teenage male was leaving Gualaceo for the United States, especially New York, and even more specifically Patchogue, where Gualaceños had begun to settle years earlier. In Gualaceo going north was a rite of passage for young men.

  In August 1994, Loja thought his time had come, but first he had to visit the mountaintop shrine of El Señor de los Milagros de Andacocha. Before setting out in the long and difficult journey north, virtually every emigrant goes to that shrine to pray for guidance and help, ascending a steep hill of 2,780 meters, or almost two miles in altitude. Some drive or ride horses but many more walk, and a few get on their knees and crawl for at least part of the way. Loja drove for about an hour in punishing, uneven, and twisting country roads before he got to the salmon-colored building with the wooden door that remains open almost around the clock, always ready to receive migrants in need of hope.

  The veneration of El Señor de Andacocha began in 1957 when a drunken farmhand found a tiny image of Jesus Christ, about an inch long, in a cross in the ground. He picked it up and kept it for a few years until, the locals believe, he had a dream in which God told him to give a Mass on His behalf.2

  That dream eventually led to the building of a small chapel, and then, in 1974, the current one, where Loja found himself in August 1994 kneeling on the cold tiled floor below the imposing altar, asking for a miracle: to arrive safely in the United States and prosper. From where he knelt he could hardly see the image of Jesus found by the farmhand. It is nestled inside a glass case at the center of an enormous metal cross that is surrounded by dozens of vases with flowers. Behind the cross and to its sides, large stained-glass windows allowed the first scant rays of the sun as Loja quietly prayed.

  He knew that El Señor would listen to his prayers, not only because Loja was deeply religious but also because when he looked around he saw the smiling pictures of young men and women, people like him, who survived their journeys and had sent pictures from the United States. Under his breath, Loja recited the Prayer of the Peregrine:

  Lord, Jesus of Andacocha, accompany me every day, from dawn to evening. Give me strength and courage for my journey. Guide me in the path of goodness and virtue. Fill my mind and my spirit with love and patience to forgive and forget. Give me intelligence to face all the adversities of life and to face pain with a smile. Give me faith to walk in high spirits and with hope in my heart. Señor de Andacocha, do not allow failures to make me weak. Protect my family always. In my plans and work, bless me. In my studies, give me wisdom and perseverance. If I fall, pick me up. If I’m sad, give me hope. If I’m lost, find me a way out. If I’m ill, give me health. If I’m alone and old, you be my company. If I migrate, guide me to the goal. If I’m happy, bless my happiness, Señor de Andacocha: bless me now and always. Amen.3

  The next day, August 15, Loja left home early in the morning, after receiving multiple blessings from his parents. Along with a friend, he boarded a flight to a coastal city in Guatemala, where a coyote—a smuggler—guided them to a small room in a whorehouse. Loja had never been separated from his family and had never visited a brothel. He was uncomfortable but not afraid. If so many had followed this very route before him and lived to tell the story, it couldn’t be all that bad, he reasoned.

  For two full days they hid in the room with several others and took turns sleeping on cement beds with no mattresses. They were fed chicken, tortillas, and beans once a day. The heat was unbearable and so was the lack of information. No one seemed to know what would happen next. They had to trust handlers they didn’t know but to whom they had each given about $6,000.

  On the third day they were taken from the room to a port and ordered to board a boat to Veracruz, Mexico. Two dozen men and women crowded every surface of the vessel. For more than twenty hours they sailed silently over the treacherous waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Some, unable to control themselves, urinated where they sat or stood. Loja, who was hunched over for most of the voyage, could barely walk when they docked in Veracruz. His back was throbbing painfully.

  At the time, Loja’s journey by sea was unusual, but it quickly became common. Statistics show that between January 1982 and March 1999, the US Coast Guard caught only two Ecuadorians in the high seas. In March 1999, however, the Coast Guard intercepted a fishing vessel carrying 1,452 Ecuadorians, and in the following months other boats were also intercepted. From October 1999 to September 2000, the service found 1,244 Ecuadorians at sea, more than any other nationality.4

  Once in Mexico, Loja’s group stayed hidden for three days in a hotel. Eventually the group was split in two. About a dozen people, including Loja, were driven in a minivan for about six hours until they reached Matamoro
s, a border town across from Brownsville, Texas. For three days they walked in the desert, crossing the border, each carrying two gallons of water and some food. The food ran out almost immediately. The water did too.

  Loja was blinded by thirst. For the first time he thought that God had abandoned him and that he was going to die. Just as he was adjusting to the idea of not feeling God’s presence in his life, he found a pool of putrid water, brushed aside trash and dirt, and cupped his hands to drink. It tasted like poison, he thought, but it allowed him to go on.

  He dreamed of catching one of the buzzards that circled over the group as if knowing that a meal would soon be available. He wanted to tear one apart and eat it raw with his hands, without breaking his stride. He knew he couldn’t lag behind, not even for food. Instead he started to pull chunks of cacti from the plants he encountered on his way. His hands bled from their thorns and his mouth puckered with the bitter taste of the flesh.

  At some point he came upon a woman who had fallen in a pit and was moaning for help as men and women passed her, ignoring her pleas, afraid to be separated from the group. Loja stopped and pulled her out effortlessly.

  What’s your name? she asked.

  Angel, he said.

  Then you are my guardian angel, she told him.

  Loja liked the sound of that and began to feel responsible for the others in the group. His youth, energy, and athleticism gave him an edge over others who could barely walk. When an elderly, heavyset woman fell, Loja picked her up and carried her on his wide back until the woman started to complain that he reeked of cigarettes. He extricated himself and set her down. The woman then began yelling insults, but Loja didn’t say a word. He just kept walking and made a mental note of how fluid everything was, including gratitude. A man could go from hero to pestilence in a matter of hours.

  Loja had turned twenty-two a few days before leaving Gualaceo. He had learned more about the world in two weeks than he had during two decades at home.

  Sometime during the night, a van picked up the migrants and delivered them to a ranch in Houston, where for $40 each they purchased cheap new clothing from the coyotes, took showers, and ate ham-and-cheese sandwiches. Soon Loja boarded a bus to New York, and in three days, on September 2, 1994, he found himself in Times Square, with nothing but the clothes he was wearing.

  In Gualaceo Loja had memorized the phone number of relatives, and during his journey he would often review it in his mind to make sure he wouldn’t forget it, but when he tried dialing the number from a phone booth in New York, a recording indicated he had dialed a number that was not in service. Though he didn’t understand the actual message, he knew he had reached a dead end. Another young man from the group offered to take Loja to his brother’s place in Manhattan. Loja accepted and joined eight other men in a one-room apartment in the basement of a building on Thirty-fourth Street and Third Avenue; he found a place to sleep on the floor.

  The city did not intimidate Loja, who was used to traveling all over Ecuador for basketball tournaments, and he had also visited big cities with his father. The one thing that gave him pause was the subway system with its loud noise, dirty cars, and untold number of people riding next to each other with vacant eyes. Like millions of immigrants before him, he set out to conquer the city. First, he needed a job.

  He found one in two days, after someone told him a local Chinese restaurant was always looking for dishwashers. Loja went to the restaurant and as soon as he walked in, he was immediately ushered to a back room and shown an enormous column of greasy pots, taller than him, at five foot nine, and tottering perilously. Undaunted, he started, but he could never make a dent in the pile. The faster he washed, the faster the restaurant’s owner piled more pots on top.

  Hurry up, you lazy bum. Quickly, quickly. Where do you think you are? Work, work, work! the man urged him on.

  Loja didn’t understand English, much less Mandarin-accented English, but he understood the tone and asked another dishwasher to translate for him. At the end of the day, he took off his apron and walked out, without pay, never to return. Hard work didn’t scare him; the abusive language did. At home no one ever had treated him like this. He felt small and unwanted, but he figured that one Chinese restaurant couldn’t possibly thwart his idea of America or his plans to save enough money to help his family and to eventually go back home.

  He found a job at a Sbarro restaurant across from Madison Square Garden, making salads, and was soon promoted to cook. The job was good and steady, and it helped Loja to pay the $6,000 he had borrowed to make his way to New York. In two years, paying $300 every month, he canceled the debt, with interest. In 1996 he moved to Woodside, Queens, to live with a sister who had just crossed the border. Life in Queens, surrounded by so many other immigrants, many from his own town, was more tolerable than his lonely life in Manhattan had been.

  After six years at Sbarro, where he was making about $240 a week at a rate of $7.25 an hour, a friend mentioned that jobs on Long Island paid better. A man could make $400 a week working construction or picking up leaves from manicured lawns, the friend said. Loja didn’t think about it twice. He threw a few items of clothing in a bag and took the train, leaving his job and the city behind.

  It was late summer in 2000, and he was headed for Patchogue, where, his friend had assured him, a lot of Gualaceños had found jobs, clean and ample homes, and a measure of peace and contentment. A former shoemaker, the friend said, had paved the way.

  CHAPTER 2

  PAINTED BIRDS IN THE AIR

  From his window seat in an Aerolíneas Argentinas flight, Julio Espinoza could see the city, sprawling and twinkling underneath him, just like he had seen it countless times in the movies back home. Only now New York seemed more imposing, larger, and forbidden, even dangerous. He focused not on the lights but on the darkness.

  What don’t I see? he thought, and immediately covered his eyes because he had begun to cry again. The Argentine couple seated next to him ignored him, as they had for the entire five-and-a-half-hour trip. Almost three thousand miles away, at home in Ecuador, his wife, Ana, and three daughters, the oldest just seven, remained. He was traveling with a visa that allowed him to enter the country and return whenever he wanted. Because he was a businessman, the US government did not fear that he would want to stay. Besides, he didn’t look like someone who would need to stay.

  He was tall and good-looking with fair skin and a broad, open face that seemed trusting and therefore trustworthy. He had an easy smile and friendly eyes that narrowed to slits when he smiled; his straight dark brown hair was trimmed in the back and worn a little long in the front, lending him a boyish look. He wore his one good suit—dark, with a blue tie and an impeccably white long-sleeved shirt. Surely he was coming for a short visit, perhaps to make a business deal or to find new buyers for his seemingly thriving shoemaking business in Bullcay, a hamlet just outside Gualaceo, a place so small that even some Ecuadorians have trouble locating it on a map.

  Espinoza hadn’t lied to the immigration officers who checked his passport before he left the country earlier that day, August 15, 1981. He was indeed a businessman. What he didn’t tell them was that he was penniless and that he had borrowed the $1,200 in his pants pocket. He was coming to the United States not to visit the Empire State Building and have drinks at the Plaza with business associates, but to do what he had to do—wash dishes, sweep floors, mow lawns—to pay off a $30,000 debt that had placed him in an increasingly common but uncomfortable situation for many Ecuadorians of his class: the sudden need to migrate north to support a family.

  The debt weighed heavily on Espinoza, who was twenty-five. The oldest boy of a single mother who would eventually have six children, Espinoza had worked since he was six, when one sizzling hot day he realized that thirsty and sweaty young men playing volleyball in the park would buy anything fresh and cool brought to them. The only thing he could think of buying was fruit, so he bought oranges at the market, and then sold them at the endle
ss games in his neighborhood. On a good day, he could make 5 sucres, enough to buy himself a pair of pants, maybe even a pair of shoes. (The sucre was the official currency in Ecuador until January 2000 when the country switched to the US dollar.)

  Espinoza had an unhappy childhood. He didn’t know who his father was until, at eighteen, a man approached him and introduced himself as his father. By then, Espinoza was engaged to be married and had no use for a repentant father. His maternal grandparents had raised him and that had been enough for him. He loved his grandfather’s gentle character and the quiet, dignified way he provided for his daughter’s growing family without criticizing her choice of partners. As a child, Espinoza was not as forgiving. With every pregnancy, he would look at his mother’s swelling belly and ask why. Why do you keep having children when we don’t have enough for all? Instead of responding, she would whack him on the head.

  Pained and in tears, he would run away to relatives or a friend’s house. In a day or two, he was brought back, and his mother would hit him again. The cycle of shame and abuse was broken when the last baby was born—a fair-skinned girl with round, deep blue eyes. Without saying a word to anyone, he left the house and boarded a bus to Guayaquil, where he knew a friend of the family lived. The family embraced him and put him to work as an apprentice in a shoe factory. He was thirteen.

  He returned home two years later carrying a twenty-five-pound sack of rice because, even when he was angry, Espinoza understood that family came first and, like his grandfather, saw himself as a provider. Twenty-five pounds of white rice, he was sure, would last for a long time even for a family of nine. His mother was so relieved to see him that this time she did not beat him. Besides, he was now fifteen and a working man. His childhood was long over.