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By Root 504 0

fishermen couldn’t catch enough protein in the sea. The cane cutters couldn’t cut enough cane. The small peasant farmers couldn’t get good enough prices to cover the costs of planting and harvesting their coffee. Even the marijuana growers were making meager wages once the narcos took their hit off the top and the cops got their mordidas (bribes). But it was mostly the collapse of the coffee prices. Locals will tell you that even ten years ago, the surge of illegal immigration to the north hadn’t affected them. Rather than going away, they were willing to stick it out, and various waves of semiprosperity affected the region. Coca-Cola and Pepsi hired workers, the fisheries and growing tourist markets took them to the coast, and the region was fertile—crops were variously in favor. In fact, the only illegal immigration that greatly affected Veracruz back then was the unwanted horde of aliens coming north to sample the good life in Mexico: illegals from Guatemala and Salvador were taking all the low-paying jobs in the cities, Panamanians were making tacos and fireworks, Nicaraguans and Colombians were sweeping streets and cleaning toilets. Hondurans in the schools.

Prices kept rising, and all families, mestizos and Indian, Mexican and illegal, Protestant, Catholic, or heathen, were able to afford less and less. Food was harder to come by: forget about telephones, clothes, cars, furniture. Even chicken feed, being maíz, was expensive. Pampers, milk, baby formula, shoes, tuition, tools, medicine.

Families continued to grow. The gringos and the missionaries and even the government representatives from Mexico City told them to stop procreating. It was simple: too many mouths caused hunger. But the Pope ordered them to continue being fertile —even condoms were wicked. And in the economy of hunger, which the fat men of the governments did not understand, more mouths meant more chances to survive. With a high rate of infant and childhood mortality, the lower castes, the workers, and the tribal people of the Third World tended to rely on their own procreative gifts for survival. If one out of five died, that still left four to grow up and begin to work. When Madre y Padre became old, ill, infirm, it was only the family that would protect them. No AARP or Medicare in the jungle. Four children, with children of their own, might suddenly represent a small army of twenty, all working, all pitching in, all offering a tithe of food or money or water or tequila. True communism, on a family level.

You’d think that at least there would be beans to eat, but the great Mexican bean-growing industrial farms sold much of their crop to the United States. It was easier for a Sinaloa farm to get the beans to California than to Veracruz—and more lucrative. These beans were poured into folkloric Mexican-looking burlap bags, shipped to Los Angeles, then resold to Mexican distributors. Worn burlap sacks, with their colorful portraits of Mexicans and donkeys and Aztecs, were eventually recycled into useful fabrics in the tropical homes of Veracruz, bean sack curtains for homes that could no longer afford beans.

Between Americanized prices for their frijoles, and the unpredictable spikes in the price of tortillas, the Veracruzanos sometimes didn’t even know how they would feed their families. It wasn’t just Veracruz. Mexico itself was spending eighty cents from every earned dollar on foreign debt. The vast money machine that was Pemex gasoline and oil bled more pesos than it put into the national economy. The even bigger narco money never made it out of clandestine mansions.

It was a two-way flow. Western Union had facilitated a cash-flood back from Chicago and Los Angeles. Remittance money stormed south from East Harlem and San Francisco, Seattle, and Skokie. It cost fifteen dollars a pop to transfer funds to the terminals at BanaMex. Western Union became so much a part of the folklore that it had its own nickname, “La Western.” People without electricity were well versed in using its computerized services. Bright high school kids from the dirt and