Across the Wire Read Free Page A

nowhere for you to go in the glittery sections where the
gringos
flock. You stay in a run-down little hotel in the red-light district, or behind the bus terminal. Or you find your way to the garbage dumps, where you throw together a small cardboard nest and claim a few feet of dirt for yourself. The garbage-pickersworking this dump might allow you to squat, or they might come and rob you or burn you out for breaking some local rule you cannot possibly know beforehand. Sometimes the dump is controlled by a syndicate, and goon squads might come to you within a day. They want money, and if you can’t pay, you must leave or suffer the consequences.
    In town, you face endless victimization if you aren’t streetwise. The police come after you, street thugs come after you, petty criminals come after you; strangers try your door at night as you sleep. Many shady men offer to guide you across the border, and each one wants all your money now, and promises to meet you at a prearranged spot. Some of your fellow travelers end their journeys right here—relieved of their savings and left to wait on a dark corner until they realize they are going nowhere.
    If you are not Mexican, and can’t pass as
tijuanense
, a local, the tough guys find you out. Salvadorans and Guatemalans are routinely beaten up and robbed. Sometimes they are disfigured. Indians—Chinantecas, Mixtecas, Guasaves, Zapotecas, Mayas—are insulted and pushed around; often they are lucky—they are merely ignored. They use this to their advantage. Often they don’t dream of crossing into the United States: a Mexican tribal person would never be able to blend in, and they know it. To them, the garbage dumps and street vending and begging in Tijuana are a vast improvement over their former lives. As Doña Paula, a Chinanteca friend of mine who lives at the Tijuana garbage dump, told me, “This is the garbage dump. Take all you need. There’s plenty here for
everyone!”
    If you are a woman, the men come after you. You lock yourself in your room, and when you must leave it to use the pestilential public bathroom at the end of your floor, you hurry,and you check every corner. Sometimes the lights are out in the toilet room. Sometimes men listen at the door. They call you “good-looking” and “bitch” and
“mamacita,”
and they make kissing sounds at you when you pass.
    You’re in the worst part of town, but you can comfort yourself—at least there are no death squads here. There are no torturers here, or bandit land barons riding into your house. This is the last barrier, you think, between you and the United States—
los Yunaites Estaites
.
    You still face police corruption, violence, jail. You now also have a wide variety of new options available to you: drugs, prostitution, white slavery, crime. Tijuana is not easy on newcomers. It is a city that has always thrived on taking advantage of a sucker. And the innocent are the ultimate suckers in the Borderlands.
    If you have saved up enough money, you go to one of the
coyotes
(people-smugglers), who guide travelers through the violent canyons immediately north of the border. Lately, these men are also called
polleros
, or “chicken-wranglers.” Some of them are straight, some are land pirates. Negotiations are tense and strange:
polleros
speak a Spanish you don’t quite understand—like the word
polleros
. Linguists call the new border-speak “Spanglish,” but in Tijuana, Spanglish is mixed with slang and
pochismos
(the polyglot hip talk of Mexicans infected with
gringoismo;
the
cholos
in Mexico, or Chicanos on the American side).
    Suddenly, the word for “yes,”
sí
, can be
simón
or
siról
“No” is
chale
. “Bike”
(bicicleta)
is
baica
. “Wife”
(esposa)
is
waifa
. “The police”
(la policía)
are
la chota
. “Women” are
rucas
or
morras
. You don’t know what they’re talking about.
    You pay them all your money—sometimes it’s your family’s lifelong savings. Five hundred dollars