| Dreams Die In the Desert Border takes senseless toll They came across the border in the night, packed into a van. There were 28 of them, all men from the state of Vera Cruz, all filled with anxiety and hope. The oldest was 35, the youngest 16. They were told to get out of the van and walk a few miles to the highway. The van disappeared. But the highway was 50 miles away, and in daylight they found themselves in a vast, baking Arizona desert. They had no water. The fierce sun hammered down. Temperatures rose to 115 degrees. They started dying on Tuesday. Fourteen would die before rescuers arrived Wednesday. Some were surely bound for New York, hoping to find here what they could not find at home: honorable work. They were coming to Brooklyn and Queens and the Bronx, to meet friends or relatives who would give them a bed and then bring them to restaurants where they could wash dishes or clear tables. They were coming to haul garbage for private carters at 3 in the morning. They were coming to tear asbestos out of renovated buildings in Tribeca. They were coming to paint houses and lay sidewalks in Bayside, to mow lawns or trim hedges in Riverdale, to clean cesspools and repair rooftops on Long Island, to deliver food and garments, to sweat in factories. A Horrible Death They were coming for the same reasons all the old immigrants (including my own parents) came to New York: to do jobs that Americans would not do. And to build better lives for their children. Those 14 young Mexicans did not expect to be killed by the heat of the San Cristobal Valley in Arizona, to be found dead in the waterless, treeless wilderness between the Granite and Mohawk mountain ranges. Nobody ever knows when the blow will fall. Their skins were blistered by the scalding sun. Water seeped like hope from their bodies, dehydrating them, and one of the survivors explained to his American rescuers that he had drunk his own urine in order to live. Dehydration makes human beings crazy. They rave. They hallucinate. They tear off their clothes and run in circles. Then they die. Said Johnny Williams, regional director in Arizona of the Immigration and Naturalization Service: "It's one of the most terrible deaths that can occur to a human being." The young men came from towns named Las Cloacas and Los Tuxtlas and Coatepec, places on the margins of the Mexican economy. Someone in the state of Vera Cruz promised them the golden dream of the United States and arranged for them to travel to the border, la frontera, where they'd be moved across. The price for such a passage is about $1,500, so they must have saved and scrimped for more than a year to raise the money. Then at Mexican versions of what the Irish once called "the American wake," they surely had farewell meals, and plenty to drink, and hugged the women they loved and crooned the heartbreaking old Mexican songs. And then they went off to die. Yes: The polleros (literally, chicken farmers) who move undocumented people across the border are callous hoodlums. They have their counterparts in China, the Dominican Republic and South America, but they exist for a purpose: to provide a service not covered by the law. The current process of becoming a legal immigrant is a bureaucratic horror. I've seen the lines form each dawn at the American Embassy in Mexico City, with several thousand human beings stretched down the block and around the corner into Rio Lerma. These are people who want to do it the right way. They have given up a day's work (sometimes two or three) and have traveled many kilometers to the capital. They hope they have the correct documents. They hope they will soon be working in the United States. Too often, they are rejected without explanation. But hope doesn't die easily. A U.S. Berlin Wall The rejected, or those from places far from any American consulate, then turn to the polleros. They are chickens ready to be plucked. And like the Irish, Italian and Jewish gangsters before them, the smugglers of human beings feel no guilt about exploiting their own people. A dozen years ago in Nogales, a pollero (then called a coyote) told me: "I get them across. I don't care what happens on the other side." What happens too often is death. Last year, according to Mexican government figures, 409 Mexicans died crossing the border, the highest total ever recorded (the average this year is one death a day). Part of the reason is Operation Gatekeeper, approved by Bill Clinton in the 1990s. In addition to a heavier Border Patrol presence, American versions of the Berlin Wall were erected in California, Texas and Arizona, complete with electronic sensors and glaring lights, driving the paperless migrants into infinitely more perilous areas. Areas where they drown. Or freeze. Or bake. On the Mexican side of the border, the new president, Vicente Fox, has given the migrants unprecedented attention, appointing a cabinet-level secretary for border affairs, preparing survival kits for those who insist on going, filming TV spots about the dangers, firing corrupt officials who steal from returning migrants. In their first meeting, Fox urged President Bush to move swiftly toward humane reforms. Bush smiled and nodded and mumbled, but nothing concrete has been done, and the dying continues. On the American side of the border, organizations have been formed to make the passage safer. Some have placed water tanks in the desert. Some ride the highways in search of lost souls. Many groups are run by Catholic priests and Protestant clergymen who insist that action is more important than pious oratory. All understand that what is being smuggled into the U.S. is hope, not dope. Obviously, the system itself is broken, and only Bush and the Congress can repair it. They should do so immediately, in the name of those who died last week in Arizona. The whole system of applying for visas should be made simpler and cheaper. Migrants need more than a return to the old bracero program; only 11% of Mexican migrants now work in agriculture. They need a true guest worker program, covering all forms of labor, one that protects every Mexican worker from exploitation. Intelligent Amnesty They must be allowed to join unions. They should be eligible for all social services. Their children must be welcomed in all American schools. An intelligent amnesty program would grant citizenship to every "illegal" family that has American children. After all, each child born in this country is a citizen, the equal under law of Dick Cheney. No such child should worry that a parent will be shoved back across the border. None should fear that an uncle or cousin will die raving in a trackless desert. A few months ago, the fine Mexican novelist Carmen Boullosa told me that she had met a 15-year-old boy in Brooklyn who had traveled all the way from central Mexico to New York. Alone. No family. No friends. A kid, all by himself. We talked about the crazy courage of such a boy and I said, "That's exactly the kind of kid we need here." "Yes," Boullosa said, "and it's exactly the kind of kid Mexico shouldn't lose." The same could be said of the young men who died in Arizona. We needed them as much as Mexico did. But the horror of their deaths will be made infinitely worse if, in the end, it turns out that they died for absolutely nothing. Original Publication Date: 5/29/01 New York Daily News |