Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Mexican Migrants (5 page)

“
Aaaah,”
said the big man.
“I see!”
That seemed, in his mind, to settle everything.
“Hermano,”
he said, smiling,
“I don’t care if you killed your own mother with a pitchfork, for one hundred and twenty dollars we can do business.”
Capitalism, I thought, in its starkest form: no moral considerations. Alonso and I agreed to the price. My fists, my shoulders, my legs relaxed a degree. With arrangements for a rendezvous shortly in the plaza, Alonso and I left the warm restaurant.

It was not either of our contacts who approached us half an hour later, but a third man. Cautiously we followed him down some side streets, Alonso whispering that I was about to learn about a “
mafia de los coyotes”
—one of the large smuggling organizations that controlled the illegal traffic in humans across the border. Several blocks from the restaurant, along a nearly empty street, the man pointed to a car and told us to climb in back; then he disappeared. Presently our two restaurant contacts climbed in front. The car was an old Chevrolet, its body trashed but the interior, oddly enough, luxurious, with crushed velvet upholstery, chrome trim, felt dashboard, and an excellent stereo. A plastic crucifix dangled on a chain from the rearview mirror. Saying nothing, the
coyote
with bad teeth revved up the car, adjusted the seat, and cranked up the stereo. Over this came loud music from an American rock station. As we pulled out it seemed clear that these men made a lot of money, but took pains not to look like they did.

Within about three blocks the shiny veneer of the tourist zone began to fall away, revealing a side of Nuevo Laredo unknown to people like me. Streets ceased to be paved, sidewalks disappeared, and the number of cars dwindled. At the same time the numbers of dirty kids, stray dogs, and broken windows grew rapidly. We passed a legless man on a scooter. The smell of sewage hung in the air. We were asked for the first half of our payment, and Alonso passed it over, as agreed.

Bad Teeth drove very arrogantly, making an old man on a bicycle nearly fall to avoid hitting the car, and rapidly braking in order to draw up alongside a shapely woman walking alone. As his disco-shirted partner rolled down the window to reach for her buttock, the car radio was blaring a romantic hit song by the Spaniard José José.
“¿Y qué, si nos llaman de todo, Y qué, si vivimos felices, tu y yo?”
(“So what, if they call us names; so what, if we’re happy—you and I?”) As he missed the grab, the
coyote
recouped by picking up the song just as it reached the refrain.
“¿Y qué?”
he sang plaintively to the woman, in perfect unison with the radio. Bad Teeth howled. Even the
contrabandistas
had time for a pretty girl.

We continued on to poorer and more remote parts of Nuevo Laredo. The town can’t go on much farther, I thought to myself, searching for landmarks along the nondescript roadside that would help me to find my way back—if it ever came to that. Bad Teeth was casual, not looking worriedly in the rearview mirror or over his shoulder. I had the feeling he had done this hundreds of times.

We turned off the main road into a dusty area sparsely dotted with little groups of houses of adobe, cane, and cinder block, through which the road ran a bumpy, indefinite course.
This,
I thought, is what you think of when you think of the worst of Latin American poverty. No trees, nothing green: all was dust, junked cars, mean dogs, naked kids; all was ramshackle. Everyone stopped to stare at the car, evidently an unusual sight. A big turkey was standing in the road; Bad Teeth gave it a little bump, but it managed to land on its feet. More laughter from the front seat, and Disco Shirt lit up a joint.

Presently the radio was turned down, and I caught snippets of conversation from the front seat. Eyes in the rearview mirror began looking at me.

Suddenly the driver turned around. “
You’re not a pinche
[fucking]
rinche, are you?”
I wasn’t sure how seriously he meant it, and besides I didn’t know what
rinche
meant, so I asked, “
What’s a rinche?”
and laughed a little. Experience had taught me that an ignorant question—asking the meaning of some slang word—always seemed to get a chuckle from Mexican guys. I tried to make it all a bit funnier by adding,
“If I don’t know what a rinche is, I guess I couldn’t be one, right? Ha, ha!”
That did spark some laughter, and at least stalled out that line of questioning for a moment. I turned to Alonso and quietly he told me that
rinche
is border slang for a cop, usually a Texas Ranger.

Bad Teeth began to make a number of turns, some to avoid bad stretches of road, once to avoid an official-looking car parked ahead. There were, of course, no street signs, and I became disoriented. But I wasn’t really scared until we pulled up in front of a mean, run-down house fronted by a half-collapsed picket fence. Our escorts climbed out of the car without a word and slammed the doors.

Evidently, the house was the
coyotes’
hideout, or headquarters, because scattered around its porch or “lawn” were about ten men, standing or lounging or sitting. Some were drinking and talking, one was whittling a long piece of wood. One was cleaning a pistol. All had watched the car pull up, and, after the big man in the disco shirt had said a few words to those near the front door, all seemed to stare long and hard through the open car window at Alonso and me. It was the same feeling I had had for a split second once in Panama City, when, strolling down a dead-end street I had been tricked into taking, I turned around to see five or six guys walking in formation just a few steps behind me: outnumbered. The guys around the house
looked
as tough as the Panamanians, but seemed to enjoy slightly better circumstances. Their watches reflected the sun, you could still see the pleats in their slacks, their tequila was the good kind. This, I thought, is where they’re taking me to rough me up, to find out if I’m really a
pinche rinche,
and, if they extract a confession, to make me wish I weren’t. As four of them sauntered over to the car window, bits of phrases drifted over:
“¿Es un gringo, no?”; ¡Mira al güero!”
(Look at the blondie!)
“Pinche gabacho.”

A guy poked his head in the door.
“Eres un gringo, ¿verdad?”

“
Cien por ciento,”
I replied, smiling grimly. A hundred percent. The man smiled back, a cryptic smile that I didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified by.

In an intimidating fashion, he and another man climbed in back on either side of Alonso and me. The friend had a bottle of rum, and smelled like it. Alonso they ignored like any other
pollo
(literally, chicken; in border slang it refers to the client of a
coyote,
who is also known as the
pollero,
the handler or seller of chickens). But I was a strange kind of
pollo
:
un pollo
gringo, a contradiction in terms! They were aggressive in their questions, but underneath seemed uncertain, ambivalent about exactly the sort of creature I was. Suspicion seemed to mix with fear, respect, and perhaps a strange sort of thrill at having an American client—a citizen of that powerful, enviable, arrogant country to the north—here at their mercy.

“
What are you doing here?”

“
Problems with the cops [rinches,
I say this time].”

“
What kinds of problems?”

“
My own problems.”
The
coyotes
smiled at one another.

“
Why are you so nervous?”
asked one.

“
I
...
I don’t know what waits for me over there ... what problems. Across the river.”

“
Give us some money.”

“
We gave you some money. We’ll give you the rest of it at the river.”

The
coyote
sat and glared at me. He pointed vaguely toward some trees, without moving his eyes.
“There’s the river,”
he said. I couldn’t see it, and started to say so.

“
Why don’t we give them another quarter of it?”
muttered Alonso to me, producing thirty dollars more. I said nothing. The
coyote
took it, still glaring at me.

About fifteen minutes later four new guys piled into the front seat, and, now loaded with eight of us, the car pulled out slowly. I couldn’t imagine—or didn’t dare to imagine—what so many were needed for, but it was not in the nature of the enterprise to ask questions, or to answer them. I was finally offered rum by the man next to me, a man who, judging by the way he stared, had never spoken with a
gringo
before. At first I declined, wanting very much to keep my head clear. But then I thought, what the hell?
“Coca-Cola?”
he asked, handing me the other ingredient of the
Cuba libres
they were drinking.
“No, gracias.”
I took a slug straight, hoping that would look macho, and passed the bottle on to Alonso.

He had been very quiet through all of this, probably glad not to be the center of attention. Perhaps he was praying I wouldn’t goof up, assuming that, if they decided to dispose of me, they would probably dispose of him as well. But it was out of his hands. Having constantly to imagine the possibility of being attacked, I wished Alonso were a bit larger than five foot three, 120 pounds or so. And I wished we could talk, but somehow it didn’t seem appropriate—either not properly submissive, or else unwise, should they overhear some detail we wished to keep private.

The
coyotes,
however, were very talkative, especially one who had just been ripped off on a run to Houston. It was a large group he had taken, and apparently the fee had been lowered to $200 apiece. But some hadn’t had it, and there hadn’t been anything he could do. Apparently he was a complainer, for after a few minutes two of the others told him to shut up. Then they talked of other things—such as the two Salvadoran girls they had hidden away in another house.
“What, can’t they pay?”
asked one
coyote,
laughing in an unpleasant way.
“They’ll pay. They’ll pay as soon as I get back,”
said another, making a gesture to indicate how the girls would pay.

One of the men turned and mentioned to me that recently they also had helped a Japanese man across, as well as a group of four Koreans, who’d successfully caught the bus to Houston. They hadn’t trusted the Koreans, though, because they couldn’t understand what they were saying to each other.

“
Have you taken other gabachos?”

“
You’re the first.”

We arrived at the shack in a swirl of dust. The
coyotes
in the backseat with us—the ones with the rum—walked us through a small settlement of shacks, pushed open the broken door of one that looked abandoned, and told us to wait inside. After collecting the final $30 of the $120 we were paying—this time I didn’t object—they shut the door behind us. The bright midday sun rendered me blind inside the dark shack; I was still unable to see Alonso when we heard the cars doors slam and the
coyotes
drive away.

*

Three or four hours after the
coyotes
left us, a trio of teenage boys came through the door, blinding us again. As my eyes adjusted, I recognized one as the guy we had spied on earlier, making passes at the girl; the two others bore a resemblance to the
coyote
with the rum, and I guessed they must all be brothers. They chatted tentatively with Alonso, who was bending over backward to be pleasant, and stared at me when they thought I wasn’t looking. They weren’t filling the gaps in conversation with Alonso very effectively, and I was not helping. There were silences.

Not many Americans passed through these parts, said one finally. No, I wouldn’t guess so, I agreed. Then they, after a silence: Why are you crossing this way? Why not use the bridge? What are you in trouble for? You’re not a cop, are you? ... questions like the ones that had been shot at me for the better part of the day. With the first barrage I had realized that, if I didn’t feel like talking about it, there was no reason they could expect me to answer. This was purely a business deal; they had agreed to take me, and that was that.
“Amigos, es asunto mío,”
I told the kids—my business.

They frisked Alonso and checked through his ditty bag for weapons, but left me alone—or so I thought, until one of them “discovered” a long loose thread coming out of his jeans. “
Perdón,
would you cut this off for me?” he asked me.

“
Sorry, no knife,”
I answered.

“
Then what is that in your belt?”
he demanded angrily.

He had noticed the form of a tear gas canister I had carefully hidden there. I glanced down—my sweater hadn’t caught on it; it wasn’t immediately visible. Yet somehow, this street-smart kid had seen it.

“
It’s something else, not a knife,”
I said.

“
It’s a cuete,”
offered another kid. That was tough talk for “pistol.”

I let that one sit for a second.
“No, it's not,”
I said firmly. They glared at me, but then the kids finally left, possibly more respectful and certainly more curious than ever. I had won a round.

One Mexican I had met told me he was ferried across the Rio Grande in the overturned hood of an old car. Others floated across on inner tubes. Expecting a shiny speedboat, hidden under the branches of a weeping willow, I was a bit chagrined when the kids dragged an old inflatable yellow raft in through the door of the shack.