Five of us would be spending the night on the summit. My companions, in addition to Art, with his bushy white mustache, were Chuy Gonzalez, a retired Linotype machinist for the El Paso newspaper; Danny Rodriguez, a burly young biker with a remarkably bushy goatee; and Danny’s younger brother, Larry, who had never before ascended Mount Cristo Rey. We loaded up our trailer with firewood, tools, ice chests, jackets, blankets, tarps, and lights to illuminate the cross as a reminder for the faithful down below in El Paso del Norte, the Pass of the North, of which Mount Cristo is one pole, that tomorrow was their day of devotion. The drive up the mountain, my fifth or sixth trip in as many hours, was now routine, though Larry, on his first such voyage, kept up a nervous bilingual commentary. The other men explained, mostly in Spanish, the stations of the cross along the roadside and told stories about bandits and shoot-outs and the dead man who’d been found in a ravine near the Via Matris, a series of small shrines depicting the most difficult moments in the Virgin’s life. We passed a small stone ruin where Urbici Soler had lived while he worked on the cross and a large berm or earthen dam to protect the road from erosion. The berm concealed a D7 bulldozer that broke and was too expensive to fix, so they just buried it.
Shadows were beginning to lengthen when we arrived at the summit, and the Franklin Mountains, illuminated on the other side of El Paso’s river valley, were more lovely than I had ever thought possible. I’ve been coming to this dusty border city for two decades, ever since my mother followed her railroader husband here in the 1990s. Until tonight I had never understood why anyone would live here if not compelled to do so. There are few trees and virtually no grass, and the eye falls on little that is not brown or tan. The wind blows continuously, and the landscape has been brutalized by industry and real estate developers. Pawnshops and paycheck loan usurers infest every strip mall. Little remains of the charming oasis of fruit trees and vineyards described by travelers such as Julius Froebel in the 1850s. Yet here I was, roughly fifteen hundred diagonal feet from a virtually undefended border adjacent to one of the worst little slums in the Western Hemisphere, if not the planet, and I felt strangely serene. Perhaps I was inspired by the odd fellowship I had fallen into with these devoted guardians of a faith that was both intensely familiar and curiously alien.
Such thoughts continued to run through my mind as I was roused by the need to set up floodlights. Chuy and I carried the lights up the steep metal staircase that runs along the steeper stone ramp to the summit, then Art showed me where to run extension cords from a generator housed in a heavily armored bunker on the lowest terrace. Danny worked to get the generator running. Once that crucial task was accomplished and the lights were working, we began to make our camp. Art had driven the Jeep up the stone ramp to the second terrace; we unhooked the trailer, rolling it out of the way, and Art pulled the Jeep around to the west side of our platform so that it could act as a windbreak. A Border Patrol helicopter flew by, and a fire pit, cut from a steel drum, was retrieved from the trailer. Ventilation holes had been cut to resemble a face, and someone had added a white mustache in chalk. It looked just like Art. As the sun began to set and the evening redness began to spread across the western horizon, I saw a bloody waxing crescent moon poised to set behind the mountains of Juárez.
Urbici Soler’s Jesus
While the fire kindled and darkness dropped all around us, the lights of the valleys on either side of the mountain popped into being and Juárez revealed its true size: with 1.3 million inhabitants, it was more than twice as large as El Paso. Looking south at the small outcropping of the mesa on the other side of Anapra, I remembered what Rudy had told me about it, that dozens of young women had been found up there, raped, murdered, left to blacken in the sun. Hundreds of women were murdered here in Juárez over the decades, many of them drawn to the border to labor in foreign-owned factories known as maquiladoras, and for a while those killings made headlines. More recently, that story had been eclipsed by President Felipe Calderón’s quixotic war on the cartels. Since 2006, some forty-seven thousand Mexicans had died in drug-related violence, and more than thirty-seven hundred people had been murdered in Juárez the previous year. Chuy wondered aloud whether we’d hear any AK-47 shots down there. “At night,” he said, “the sound travels.” Danny pointed out the local police station and said that last year they heard shots down in Anapra, then watched a police car leave the station and drive a few blocks before turning off and taking a meandering path back around to its home base. “It was like, nahh, never mind, they’re okay.” Everyone laughed. A big new divided highway, entirely devoid of traffic, stretched off along the borderline toward Santa Teresa, a small port of entry that was lighting up the western horizon. The road was built by Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturer, which had recently opened a new maquiladora near Santa Teresa to assemble computers for Dell. The previous summer, a Foxconn executive gave a New York Times reporter a tour of the squalid colonias near his plant and told him that Anapra, because it was the poorest area of Juárez, is “the easiest place to pull labor.”
Loud music blared from some obscure but nearby location in Mexico, and Larry speculated that a well-lit building on the far side of the colonia was a meth plant. Suddenly the music stopped. “We had the DJ down there,” said Larry, “but somebody shot him.” I asked Larry and Danny if they had grown up in El Paso and what they thought about all the violence in Mexico. Larry launched into a story about how he was almost abducted off a street corner in Juárez when he was three or four.
“Yeah, my brothers were up on the hill,” Larry said, drawing out the vowels in his pleasantly musical Mexican accent, with its characteristic emphasis on penultimate syllables and the last two words of a sentence. “They were sliding down, playing, on cardboard. My parents were in church. I was looking at my brothers—ah, cool, ahaha—all of sudden Poom! I get inside a car! Kind of remember some lady grasped me, and the driver took off. But there was an intersection where you have to go left or right, and then, right at that time, my mom saw me crying, and said, Hey! Then all of a sudden the patrol was right there—perfect timing! My mom went hysterical. My kid! My kid! There was congestion in the intersection. And they got me back. I would have been gone! Like for body parts, ’cause that’s what most people do, you know, they kidnap kids for either their body parts, or to sell, or I don’t know, that couple must’ve been in need of—a child.”
“Ransom,” said Danny. “Or something,” finished Larry. The brothers often completed each other’s sentences. That was roughly twenty-eight years ago, back before the current troubles. Danny and Larry grew up going in Juárez, where their grandparents had built a church. They would go across every weekend and on Tuesdays and Thursdays for Mass. Even after the kidnapping attempt they still went to Juárez. “We actually stopped going to that hill,” said Danny. “That’s what happened. Ever since then, we said, you know what, we’re here for church.”
“Let’s just stay together and go to church, and go to dinner, like a family thing,” Larry said. “Stay wise, open-eyed.”
Neither of them go to church much anymore, but their father still goes across occasionally. “I know it hurts him, ’cause of what’s going on,” Larry said. “But he still goes once in a while. But it’s not the same.” Tata’s radio was dialed into the local college football game. Every hour on the half hour he’d check in with the base on his walkie-talkie. There was some confusion with the communication system, because the base had the wrong kind of radio, and then somebody broke down on the first horseshoe, one of the broad switchbacks along the road. We watched headlights slowly ascending through space. I wouldn’t want to be in a Jeep on that road at night. The FM radio announcers’ voices faded in and out of my awareness. I heard the radio say, “…left, out of the gun, snap is back…” American football makes no sense to me, even though I grew up in Texas and played the game for one bewildering season. When Tata learned that I followed Spanish soccer, that my team was Barcelona, he stared at me as if I were a spa
ce alien.
Danny was talking about the cartels and the government. He said that he saw no hope for the future in Mexico. I asked him if he thought life over there would settle down if one of the cartels succeeded in exterminating the others. “I don’t think it will. Just going to be that way,” he said. “The government’s already paid off. Everybody’s paid off.” Juárez, he said, was dying. The streets were empty; stores were boarded up. “Five years ago I was in Juárez, and it wasn’t that bad. But the last time, maybe about a month ago, I was looking everywhere where I would cruise around, you know, and it was just a ghost town.”
Larry shook his head. “You can’t win, then join them. That’s what’s happening. Pay me off! Nobody gets caught. Nobody gets tried. Even before this was going on, the women murdered. The bus drivers. The rapists, and then—ah, get this sucker, wrap ’em up. It’s paid off. You can’t win, so just join it.”
We ate tamales and fried chicken and roasted jalapeño peppers on the fire. Larry and Danny drank beer after beer but showed no sign of fatigue or intoxication. Danny sat with his back against the Jeep, his stomach round and full; he looked like a Mexican American Buddha. Larry straddled a long, thin piece of lumber, holding two other pieces in his hands like ski poles. The temperature dropped as the wind picked up, and I quickly exhausted my stash of warm clothing. Tata gave me a large parka he had brought along. Eventually, I also squeezed myself into a pair of coveralls that were not quite tall enough. I must have looked a sight, as my grandmother would say. Larry used to work as a forklift operator in an ice cream warehouse, where the temperature was thirty degrees below zero. They worked half-hour shifts, wearing insulated boots and jumpsuits. During breaks they would defrost the forklifts and drink coffee and cocoa. The cold tonight didn’t seem to bother him at all.
The football game had been over for a long time, and we had long since shifted to a country music station, and we listened to generic rock songs belted out in an ersatz southern accent. The songs were all intolerably optimistic. At one point someone dialed up a “soft rock” station playing “Little Red Corvette.” Poor Prince, he probably never expected to be a golden oldie.
The cold desert wind was now so brutal that Art wrapped a blue plastic tarp around the windward side of the Jeep. I crawled into the backseat and curled up, in a space far too small for my body, wearing several layers of wool, a wool cap, fleece gloves, a heavy insulated canvas jacket, a borrowed bright orange parka, and an undersized pair of coveralls, shivering. I dozed and then awoke in a confused panic, clambered out of the Jeep, stripped off my coveralls, and stood by the fire, listening to Larry and Danny and Chuy and Art tell stories. One year three drunk guys from Anapra showed up. They had been drinking all night and saw the fire on the mountain, so by God they decided to climb up there. Art and Rudy, well armed and resolute, persuaded them to leave. They went right off the edge where Rudy’s Jeep had gone over—they call it Rudy’s Sleep—and lit cactuses on fire all the way back to Mexico. In years past, hundreds of Sunday school kids from Juárez would climb the mountain for the pilgrimage, but after 9/11 the Feds put a stop to that.
At 3:15 a.m. the Border Patrol finally showed up. First to arrive was a figure striding very quickly, wearing a large backpack and a balaclava: a female agent, it turned out, who had hiked all the way up in the dark, surely wearing night vision goggles because we did not see any lights along the path. She didn’t say a word, just marched right up the ramp to the cross. Ten minutes later a male agent named Rocky walked up and exchanged greetings with Art and Chuy. Soon thereafter we noticed a fire down below near the boundary marker. More Border Patrol. Our two agents set up a tripod and started scanning the valley with a large thermal binocular called a Recon Lite. They could see for miles. On the American side, cars began to make their way up the gravel road to the base. Flashlights appeared, bobbing up the looping switchbacks; the pilgrims would soon be here, so we started breaking camp. Water was poured into the fire pit, and the extinguished ashes then went down the side of the mountain. Floodlights were lit along the ramp. All our supplies disappeared into the trailer and the Jeep. By the time the first pilgrim arrived at 4:28 a.m., there was a steady line of cars backed up almost to the Rio Grande. Hundreds of lights bounced and pendulated in the hands of devoted Christians. After reaching their destination, some immediately turned around and headed back down, as if eager to avoid the inevitable crush of bodies and traffic. Others lingered at the peak, took their turn bowing down on the newly repaired kneelers, or paid penance on the hard whitewashed concrete, lighting candles, staring up at the Son of God, whose luminous presence in that dawning light was the result of so much care and effort on the part of a devoted band of men and women for whom work itself was prayer.
Pilgrims
I had been waiting to see the matachines, the Indian dancers Rudy and Art had told me would be dancing for the Virgin. Now they were here. They wore tunics called naguillas, sewn with red, green, and silvery sequins and beads and spangles in a diamond-shaped motif, from which depended short lengths of Carrizo river cane or bamboo or some plastic imitation that swung and clattered and rattled with every step. Matachines drifted up and back from the cross, settling in a group on a rocky slope off the first terrace. I saw a figure wearing a hideous demonic mask, and another that was less sinister, though still grotesque. They were Danza Guadalupana, from El Paso, and they told me they were soldiers who danced to honor the Virgin of Guadalupe. As the first glimmers of light appeared on the horizon, the drummers stepped forward and the dance began. Matachine has its origins in Moorish dances imported by the Spanish, but it enacts the primordial drama of Mexico’s founding. The main characters are La Malinche, the Aztec mistress of Hernán Cortés; the Monarca, or Montezuma; and, in this version of the tradition, a sinister figure called el viejo, the old man. The matachines I spoke with told me that el viejo was evil, yet he also was clearly the leader of the troupe. He carried a double-headed plastic battle ax and wore brown coveralls. Before the dance, he walked through the crowd terrorizing small children, who squealed and laughed and hid behind their parents. He did his best to scare me as well. El viejo was clearly a trickster figure of ambiguous virtue, in contrast to La Malinche, the lead dancer, a symbol of purity and grace, performed by a lovely teenage girl. El viejo and La Malinche faced each other and played out the ancient drama of conquest, love, betrayal, and conversion. I searched in vain for Cortés the killer. The whole spectacle was confusing and wonderful, with dancers spinning and stomping and crying out loudly in the billowing clouds of dust. Most of the dancers carried small stylized bows and arrows. The Monarca held a sword. People sat and watched for a while, resting before making their final push to the top or the long descent to the base. Behind us Christ the King appeared to glow as dawn broke in the east.
When the matachines finished their performance, Art signaled that it was time to go. We gathered all the floodlights, stepping delicately among the worshippers and the rapidly growing array of candles in glass jars, bunches of flowers, desperate prayers written on slips of paper. An American flag waved proudly, reiterating the patriotism of the Smeltertown diaspora. I took one last look down at the ASARCO plant and its monumental smokestack, and the little plaza with Monument 1 and the adobe house where Francisco Madero met with Pancho Villa and established a provisional government during the Mexican Revolution. I was dubious about our ability to make our descent along that narrow Jeep track crowded with pedestrians, but other volunteers were there to help; they had made their way up the mountain and were busy selling water and soft drinks. Ruben Gallegos helped block human traffic as the Jeep lumbered down the narrow ramp toward the first terrace, then, after a pause to collect all our passengers, we set out past Rudy’s Sleep and toward the first hairpin turn. The most harrowing moments came when we began to round a blind turn. Art would press on the Jeep’s horn, which was not at all loud, and slowly release the clutch, whereupon the Jeep would lurch forward and we would suddenly see the astonished fa
ces of a family who would dart back out of view and press themselves against the sheer rock wall as we passed.
Matachines
By mid-morning the path up the mountain was mobbed with people ascending and descending. Several other troops of matachines made their way up, and others danced at the base next to a large tent set up by the local church. The matachines here at the bottom wore far more elaborate costumes. Some wore huge brightly colored feathered headdresses. Others wore elaborate headgear made of feathers and fur. The leaders were young men and women in their twenties; some dancers were children; others could have been grandmothers. One drummer sported impressive face piercings. They all stomped and rattled and performed their footwork while shaking their musical gourds in ecstatic concentration. They all told me the same thing: they dance to honor God, to show him that they appreciate everything he has given them. I spoke to pilgrims on their way back to their cars. One woman said that she had walked because her mother had just been diagnosed with cancer again, after enjoying a remission of seventeen years. She said that next year she would come again, and every year thereafter. “I’m going to do it for all the sick people, not just my mom. It’s a sacrifice we have to make.”
Then I saw a beautiful young girl walking slowly down the path, leaning slightly on her mother’s arm. Her name was Ashley Chavez, and her feet were bare. She had short dark hair and wore blue nylon basketball shorts. Her wide feet were dusty but showed no signs of injury. I asked about her pilgrimage. It was good, she said. I asked her if she felt pain. “Yeah, it hurts a lot. It was a challenge, but I made it through.” I asked why she had walked without shoes. She hesitated and glanced at her mom; her pretty face was wide open and innocent, and she smiled a sweet, shy smile. Behind her the morning sun reflected off the giant figure of Christ on his mountain. “I needed a favor,” she said. “A really big favor.”
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