The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [36]
Two of the group were driven into a ravine. One of them tried to climb up the steep cliff but lost his footing and fell when he was only a meter from the top. Manuel saw the shadowy figure fall and disappear from view and heard the scream that ended abruptly.
Perhaps the patrol unit was satisfied with two Mexicans in their net, for the brothers and four others managed to get across the border, reach highway 94E, and thereafter set their sights on Dulzura. They were in California. Angel laughed and suggested they rest for the night, while Patricio wanted to push on. If he had been allowed to set the pace they would have made it to Oregon before sunrise.
Their father had worked in Orange County, and this was also the brothers’ destination. It was no better or worse than anywhere else. They picked fruit and planted new fruit trees that would in the future be harvested by new generations of young men from Mexico and Central America.
Manuel realized, once they had reached a broccoli farmer where they would build an irrigation system, how many of his fellow citizens had come north. The farmer, who was the best one they had encountered, would come by in the evenings, sit outside their barrack, open a few beers, and talk.
“Half a million a year, at least,” Roger Hamilton said and smiled. “There are twenty-three million people in this country with Mexican heritage.”
He held out a beer to Manuel, who took a swig and tried to imagine this amount of people, unsure of what he was expected to say.
“It is because of your own government,” the farmer continued. “They do not want to keep you.”
Manuel had heard similar arguments at home. In the headquarters of the farmer organization in Oaxaca they had discussed NAFTA, the free-trade agreement between Mexico and the United States. For Manuel, and most others in the room, it was too big. He did not understand the implications of NAFTA. Not until cheap surplus corn from Alabama and Georgia started to flood the country.
The villages shrank and everything old broke up. Who wanted to celebrate when the village was being drained of youngsters? For many young men, the move north was a kind of rite of passage. Manuel thought that was one of the reasons why Angel and Patricio were so insistent that Manuel bring them along to California. They wanted to become men.
The broccoli farmer would also bring them food. “To save you the trouble,” he said and smiled. He smiled often. He also smiled the last time they saw him. That was when he had tricked the brothers out of their remaining salary, over five thousand dollars, and then given them up to the police who picked them up outside the barracks.
During the trip back, in a specially constructed van, they sat without speaking. They got off in Tijuana. During the trip Manuel had decided that they would never again leave Mexico in order to work in the north.
“Only one in a hundred has any success,” Manuel objected when, after only a month or so, Patricio and Angel started to talk about returning to the United States.
“But not everyone is tricked,” Angel said.
“Most of us remain wetbacks, despised by everyone. Many of us get sick. Look at your hands!”
Angel had broken out in a rash of large boils that burst and became infected and Manuel was convinced that the cause was the pesticides they had used in the field.
Manuel stood his ground, but could not stop his brothers from going down to Oaxaca several days later. What should he have done? Struck them down and bind them to the plow?
Angel and Patricio had been tempted by the bhni guí’a, “the man from the mountains,” an old term that the brothers did not want to admit to knowing, but one that was familiar to all Zapotecs. He was the one who came down from the mountains above the village, dressed in western fashion, shining shoes, and swinging a cane with a silver handle. He offered money and took your soul.
This man carried no cane but he did have a bundle of green dollar bills. He was large, almost bald, introduced himself as