A Wetback in Reverse
Page 1
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Cover
Books by Frederick Martin-Del-Campo
The Journey Begins ...
To the Wilds of Hispanic America I Go
Learning about Mexico in the Movies
Biblical Plagues in the Land of Maiz
Getting in Touch with Long Lost Friends
The Pig Virus Strikes Again
A Wetback on the Move
Connecting with the Folks Back Home
Getting the Dirt First Hand
Jesus Christ, Save Us from the Pigs!
Thunder Rolls Over Aztlan
Across Borders, and Class Divisions
Getting Wicked in Veracruz
Knowing yet Not Knowing about Nothing
The Poblanos and the Pigs
The Unique Hell of A Mexican Mother
Dirty Little Secrets Betrayed
The Days Pass, and Life Goes On
Humor to be Found in the Porcine Flu
Stocking Up on Hope
The Vagaries of Wayward Vagabonds
Waiting Around for Something Nice to Happen
Beating A Dead Horse
Cry Damnation for the Pathetic
“I Want, I Deserve”
The Music of ‘Good-bye’
Towards the Western Horizon
Under the Volcano of Fire
Domestic Troubles
Family Feuds
Drug Pushers and Dopers
Jews in Mexico
The Treaty of Hidalgo and the Trouble with Wetbacks
Drug Addiction in the Family
A Pirate’s Life for All
Misconceptions about Mexico
Hijackings and Kidnappings ~ Mexican Style
Have It Your Way at McMexico
Pantyhose Wearing Terrorists and Other Weirdos
A Smoker’s Delight
Getting My Moxy Back
A Multitude of Sins
Playing Cat and Mouse in the Streets
Indefensible ... Irresistible
A Season of Evil and Hate
Red-Light Livelihoods
Guns and Gangsters on the Run
The Pity Problem with Prostitutes
When the Lights Went Out at the Movies
A f t e r s h o c k
The Storms that Bring Out the Stress
The Reason Why I Was Named What I Was Named
Forward Back to America
E p i l o g u e
Back cover
A Wetback in Reverse
Hunting for an American
in the Wilds of Mexico
A Memoir by
Frederick Martin-Del-Campo
CCB Publishing
British Columbia, Canada
A Wetback in Reverse:
Hunting for an American in the Wilds of Mexico
Copyright © 2013 by Frederick Martin-Del-Campo
ISBN-13 978-1-77143-110-1
First Edition
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Martin-Del-Campo, Frederick, 1965-, author
A wetback in reverse : hunting for an American in the wilds of Mexico / by Frederick Martin-Del-Campo. -- First edition.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77143-109-5 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-77143-110-1 (pdf)
Additional cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada
Contact Frederick Martin-Del-Campo at: snoobula@gmail.com
Cover artwork credit: Bryan Garcia Mitre, Randy Garcia Mitre, & Laura Mitre Rivera
Note: Elements within this memoir have been fictionalized in the interest of privacy and the author’s creative license.
Extreme care has been taken by the author to ensure that all information presented in this book is accurate and up to date at the time of publishing. Neither the author nor the publisher can be held responsible for any errors or omissions. Additionally, neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the express written permission of the publisher.
Publisher:
CCB Publishing
British Columbia, Canada
www.ccbpublishing.com
This book is dedicated to
Bryan, Randy and Laura,
Thanks guys. Your story, your struggles, your suffering was the stuff of inspiration as well as compassion.
Live, rejoice, and suffer all that you can stand ... and then let me write about it!
Books by Frederick Martin-Del-Campo
On the Hill of Contemplation
Bound for the Promised Land Part 1:
The Trials of Manhood
Bound for the Promised Land Part 2:
The Sentiments of a Woman
The Island of Estasia
The Donation of Constantine
Chronicles of War and a Wanderer
The Meditations of Misery
A Wetback in Reverse
and his latest work in progress...
Children of Anger
The Journey Begins ...
“I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am not grateful to those teachers.”
... I have no idea who spoke these words, but they form my guiding motto through this unique experience of traveling through a Tequila inspired “Lala-land!”
Or, as my father would say, “Asi me gusta, que se expresen como macho con huevotes!” (“That’s how I like it, that you express yourself with the balls of a real man!”)
... Well, so be it!
The beginning of any voyage, indeed of any adventure, is always laced with uncertainties, particularly about things which you may have seen or experienced in the past. You may be afraid they might return fraught with mysteries, especially about things which you likely have never seen or experienced before. They are strewn with many riddles, which are bound to crop up in the course of experience, and trouble your dreams thereafter.
It was such a beginning that greeted me when at last I’d made the decision to get up, shore up, pack up, cell-phone and lap-top specifically, and send everything else to Hell. Like the song in the musical Sweet Charity says, “There’s gotta be something better out there,” and so I headed for the border: I was bound to go Mexico Way, come Hell or high-water!
And, no sooner had I made the fateful decision when uncertainties, mysteries and riddles placed one obstacle after another before me on the road to nowhere, not to mention the Hell that greeted me upon arrival, and the high-water that nearly drowned me along the road of perdition. I was bound to realize a personal quest, and that’s all!
Many Mexicans and other foreigners entering the United States arrive illegally, without proper documentation, are derided for their ignorance of the law and lack of consideration for the customs of the country they hope to adopt for their own. Mexicans, in particular, are regarded as Wetbacks because of the arduous journey they must undertake, which includes crossing the Rio Grande or enduring the awful heat of the South-West, drowning in their own sweat. Whatever route they chose for their exodus from their home country, they end up all wet. In my case, however, I would be known as the wetback in reverse ~ an American-born Mexican who was heading back for the homeland of my fathers because life in the USA was becoming more and more uncertain and expensive; because the global financial melt-down forced me to confront hard choices about the future, and job prospects were nil and void; because I sudden
ly felt the impulse to take off and search for my ancestral roots; and because life in the USA was unendurably boring in the extreme. Thus, I felt I needed some of the stimulating vulgarity, violence, vanity, vagaries, vexations, vituperation and vacuous venality that make up survival in most Mexican towns in order to get the old wheels and turbines of purpose and devotion cranking again. Also, just to get my jollies off, I’d thought to try my journalistic hand, and this country would be just the place to put myself through the investigative ringer, as it were. There is much to be said as well for the simple, unobtrusive, undemanding existence of Mexican village life, however, where-about, most often, you have to chase down and kill your own supper!
Well, here I am, here I am stuck, to live, experience, to suffer a year in the life of Great Mexico!
To begin with, Mexico is one of the worst (many Mexicans themselves believe) racist regimes in the world. The majority Mestizos frequently find ways to sideline minority Indians and even the privileged Criollos. The Mestizos are generously assisted by the Government, which fears their political backlash if they don’t cater to their demands. They are given scholarships, loans, grants, business opportunities, even cash hand-outs just to placate their half-blood resentments. They even fix examination results so that minority groups, especially Amer-Indians of the South like Zapotecs of Oaxaca or Maya tribes in Chiapas, score lower to make the Mestizos from the Valley of Mexico and other densely populated areas appear smarter. However, well-to-do Criollos and some Indian communities have learned to prosper in spite of adversity by going overseas and making their money there on the one hand, or have found ways of undermining the local practices of corrupt officials working within their communities on the other.
The egotistical way of thinking, “I know and you don’t,” is dividing all Mexicans. We all know nothing! The “right,” then, is no “right”... we all read from some book, most likely a religious book, the reason for our belief in the “right,” but what we really want to believe in is that we alone are in the “right,” for what it is worth. How do we know what we read today will not be proved wrong tomorrow? None of us will be there to even defend it, regardless of what that “it” might be, and few Mexicans will defend their rights.
DOES ANYONE REALLY KNOW ANYTHING!!!!
to the wilds of
hispanic america I go
In the smug comfort of my California home, I realized I was deprived of my identity. Hence, I resolved to discover the reason for my name. It would be a quest to come to terms with my past, my heritage, and secure the future with identity in hand. I would visit old friends, beg them to help me with my quest, and discover in the process the wilds and wonders of the land, which had shaped the lives and legacy of my ancestors. I would go forth to find myself amidst the shadows of forgetfulness and obscurantism.
Upon crossing the border into Baja California from San Diego, California, I headed for the nearest Tijuana bus station and hopped on the first bus out of there regardless of the destination. Well, to my consternation, the first place I ended up in was Reynosa, located in the state of Tamaulipas, across the Rio Grande in Northern Mexico. Indeed, it is a strange place with a large population, and even larger poverty statistics, yet with a bustling economy. There isn’t much around to recommend it, very few remarkable landmarks to boast about, but I found it typical of many a Mexican town I would traverse or visit in the course of this extended trip. It is located on the extreme north-east point of the country, and an unlikely place in which to begin my sojourn, but here I am to wonder what crap will be flung at me the minute I get off the rickety, air-polluting bus, which I somehow managed to survive. No sooner did I arrive in Reynosa when the wires were all burning up with news that there was a fire-fight between federal soldiers and narco-traffickers not far from the hotel-dump I’d just entered.
As I heard it, 30 masked soldiers in combat gear, and acting on a tip, busted down the door of a boarded-up house to find 55 terrified migrants; all hostages of the Gulf drug cartel. Amid screams and the smell of urine and sweat, they found a blood-spattered room and a nail-encrusted log used to beat the captives and extort money from their families; $3,000 each, or so the locals reported. I, for one, found it hard to sympathize since many of the victims were once perpetrators of the wicked trafficking, which, to boot, provides quite a decent living for many starved out and desperate natives. So, at once I don’t sympathize, but at the same time I pity them and have to understand why they do it.
This is not quite what I was expecting by way of a welcome from the ever accommodating Mexicans, but it was the noise of gun-fire and reports of blood spillage that provided me with a cheap thrill.
Hence, as the events unfolded while I looked for another cheap hotel to stay at (the other one, to my unceasing horror, was full of roaches, human as well as the six-legged variety, and bed-bugs), many of the bystanders rumored about, like a bunch of haphazard reporters clawing each-other to be the first one at the scene, that five suspected kidnappers were hauled off in a military truck, including the alleged leader ~ the son of a local police officer. So be it for counting on the honesty of the police officials, and, or their relatives to uphold the law! Yet, this first run-in with the corruption inherent in Mexican Society was a tiny taste of what was to cross my way in the course of this already haphazard sojourn.
LEARNING ABOUT MEXICO
IN THE MOVIES
Whilst I went about exploring the interesting (sometimes) sights, and irritated by the unpleasant sounds of the town center, I came across a heavy, mustachioed, more than 90 year old buzzard of a man sporting a wide-brimmed hat, resting his hands on an elegantly carved cedar-wood cane who, allegedly, spent hours every day at the local tavern, “La Aguila Desnuda” (The Naked Eagle), recounting stories of his self-aggrandized life as a movie-maker throughout the golden age of the Mexican Cinema during the 1940s and 50s. He would be the first really weird character I would come across during my experiences in this country, and as my journey progressed, his weather-beaten old face would haunt me, especially during the wee hours of the morning when I’d be inside a crowded bus en route to the next destination.
He couldn’t be bothered by reports of a shoot-out or a narco-trafficking drug-bust. He only talked about two things, according to a couple of drunks that would pace their drinking according to the length of his anecdotes: himself, and his fall from artistic grace.
Apparently, he had actually suffered the alleged downfall, and was persecuted by the semi-socialist PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) regime of the time, because he was no longer thought of as a wild and crazy radical but had matured into a staid and dull reactionary while using his influence to turn the youth of Mexico against the by-then paternalistic and corrupt government.
His name, I later learned, was Fulgencio San Roman.
San Roman was a typical product of Criollo parentage: large, gray, robust and spoiled by inherited wealth. Soon I gathered sufficient dirt on this fellow to be able to relate that he flourished as a movie-maker until his own pride brought him to the gates of ruin. The younger generation, despite his very liberal attitudes, just did not click to his narrative style during the 1960s; they found his stories too intense, overly-dramatic, almost Wagnerian, that celebrated a revolutionary Mexico that no longer appealed to their forward-looking imaginations. They were looking for something that would make them twist and shout along with every other member of that libertine 60s generation. Upon gathering more research about his singular achievements, I discovered that his most notable works were made between 1940 and 1960, and they included such classics as Thunder Over Aztlan, about the state of Mexican society after the 1910 Revolution; The Eagle and the Serpent, about the struggle to maintain an independent democracy under Benito Juarez following the invasion of France and the installation of the Archduke Maximilian of Austria as Emperor of Mexico; Tonantzin, Our Lady of the Roses, which took a biting look at the devotion of the common masses to their idol of Guadalupe; The Return of Quetzalcoat
l, about the prophecy of the return of the Toltec God of the Wind, of civilization and the arts to liberate Mexico from the tyranny of the Aztecs; The Wind that Swept Mexico, a grandiose epic depicting the drama of the revolution against the Diaz regime; and finally, Once Upon a Time in Old Mexico, which took a hard, poignant look at the feudal conditions still existing, and the oppression of the Indian and Mestizo peasants by the landed gentry, in the haciendas just prior to the Revolution.
According to his own accounts, however, San Roman’s downfall was due to his self absorption. His first movies, going back to the late 1930s, are more story or drama centered, and have some old-fashioned insight into characters. By the late 1950s they had become increasingly superficial, self indulgent and outlandish for no good purpose, though many would argue, including me, that those later films (once I had a chance to see a few of them) were, visually, among his very best.
Camera wizardry, outlandishness of plot, and weirdness of characters were not, according to his ardent critics, enough to carry a film. Of his earliest films I can’t say much except that I hardly understood what they were about, whilst others placed more emphasis on plot and characters, but they were still devoid of the style and color that marked the later ones.
The self-admitted self-absorption reflects that of Mexico’s society more than anything. It is a society not unlike America’s, and there are few things on this planet that are more self-absorbed than a typical Mexican, particularly in regard to his culture and origins. This society is one where a vast majority of its people live in abject poverty, fighting always for water, space, and beliefs (the latter a courtesy of an idol-strewn Roman Catholicism with a uniquely Mexican flavor to it) that replace scanty food for the living flesh as sustenance for the soul.