In 2014, the Mexican government released new data officially recognizing an incidence of more than 164,000 homicides since 2007. Researchers such as Molloy are quick to remind the public that such statistics “probably report a minimum number of the deaths that have occurred.” They do not account for the missing and disappeared, estimated at more than 25,000 in 2012. Nor, of course, do they account for the high rates of kidnapping and extortion.
These numbers also fail to take into account all those who have died or gone missing crossing the border into the United States, people often fleeing the violence-ridden towns and cities of their birth. In 2017, Manny Fernandez reported in The New York Times that the Border Patrol had recorded over six thousand deaths in the sixteen years between 2000 and 2016. In Arizona’s Pima County alone, the remains of more than two thousand migrants were found. The sheriff of another rural county in Texas told Fernandez that “for every one we find, we’re probably missing five.” Even as overall crossings dropped to new lows, the proportion of migrant deaths in the deadliest counties remained constant or even grew. All along the border, coroners, county medical examiners, and forensic anthropologists at state universities and nonprofit organizations struggled to identify thousands of remains. “No one deserves to be just a number,” one forensic expert told Fernandez. “The idea is to figure out who they are, and give them their name back.”
It is difficult, of course, to conceive of such numbers in any tangible and appropriate way. The number of border deaths, just like the number of drug war homicides, or the numbers that measure the death toll of the Mexican Revolution or the War of Independence, does little to account for all the ways that violence rips and ripples through a society, through the lives and minds of its inhabitants.
—
On a slow shift at the intel center I spent several long hours compulsively navigating dark corners of the Internet, reading of kidnappings and drug massacres, decapitations and dismemberments, bodies discarded in drop houses. On a Mexican news site I read about the discovery of seventy-two bodies in the state of Tamaulipas near the town of San Fernando—fifty-eight men and fourteen women found twisted atop one another, lying blindfolded with bound hands against the wall of a cinderblock barn. The lone survivor of the massacre was an eighteen-year-old Ecuadorian boy who somehow managed to escape the cartel ranch after suffering a gunshot wound to the neck and feigning death underneath the bodies of his companions. In the throes of an unimaginable terror, he fled for ten miles across the arid coastal plains surrounding San Fernando. Finally, he arrived at a military checkpoint where he alerted the soldiers who would subsequently storm the ranch and discover, after the ensuing firefight, the slumped bodies that would later be identified as migrants from Brazil, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Honduras, souls forever waylaid on their passage north through the crumbling Republic of Mexico. As I read the news I hunched above my keyboard with my head in my hands, pulling at my hair with clenched fists. I felt as if the screens were rattling before me, as if the entire room were beginning to roll away, until finally I heard my name. Cantú, Hayward yelled across the floor, snap out of it.
—
In an exhaustive study of news coverage in multiple borderland newspapers, Jane Zavisca, a cultural sociologist at the University of Arizona, surveyed ten years’ worth of reporting to determine the most common metaphors used by journalists writing about migrant deaths.
Economic metaphors were predominant, characterizing migrant deaths as a “cost,” “calculation,” or “gamble.” Death is a price that is paid, a toll collected by the desert. Death is the foreseeable outcome of “cost-benefit analysis, with measurable, calculable risks and consequences.” Death is the ultimate risk in a game of chance, the unlucky result of a roll of the dice. Metaphors like these, Zavisca writes, “naturalize death” and “suggest that migrants bear some responsibility for their own deaths.”
Violent metaphors were the second-largest category, depicting death as the vengeful punishment of an angry desert or the casualty of a war waged along the border. In such discourse, deaths were blamed on unforgiving weather, on lethal immigration policy, on a lack of enforcement against an invading army of migrants.
Dehumanizing metaphors constituted Zavisca’s third category. Here, migrants were depicted as animals, something hunted, the persecuted prey of smugglers, law enforcement agents, and militant vigilantes. “Lured” to the border by the prospect of well-paying jobs, migrants engage Border Patrol “trackers” in a “cat-and-mouse game” with deadly consequences. “A related metaphor,” writes Zavisca, “depicts enforcement agents as humane shepherds tending to a flock.” This allusion “reinforces the humanity of the Border Patrol while it dehumanizes migrants by portraying the Border Patrol as ‘saviors.’” An associated livestock metaphor, widespread in Mexico, casts migrants as chickens and smugglers as chicken ranchers—pollos at the mercy of their polleros.
Another subcategory of metaphors describes migrants as “dangerous waters threatening the nation . . . a metaphorical home.” Enforcement is represented as an effort to stanch the unwieldy flow of migration, the border as a barrier to be plugged and sealed against a rising tide. The corresponding death toll is “a ‘surge,’ and the bodies are part of a ‘flood’ of migrants that overwhelm Border Patrol agents and medical examiners.” It is here that Zavisca cites the work of Otto Santa Ana, a sociolinguist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who argues that, ontologically, such metaphors dehumanize migrants by representing them as “an undifferentiated mass.”
—
At the beginning of a swing shift Hayward told us he had been accepted for a command position at the Border Patrol’s tactical operations headquarters in El Paso. It’s not Virginia, he told us, but it’s two states closer. A couple years out there, he said smiling, and I’ll be sitting pretty for a position in D.C.
Two weeks later, on his last day at sector intel, Hayward pulled me aside. Have you ever been to El Paso? he asked me. Sure, I said. My mom used to be a ranger in a park just east of there. Shit, he said, you’re practically a native. How would you like to live there?
I pictured the city’s glittering lights, recalling how they reached across the border to form a single throbbing metropolis. I recalled, too, news of shootouts and murdered women across the river, the Juárez morgues brimming with bodies. I thought of my mother fallen in the cracked streets, helped to her feet by a man who told us we were in our home.
I’ll cut to the chase, Hayward said. The intelligence team out there is looking for agents. They want guys like you: fluent in Spanish, with intel and field experience. You’d be working under me, supporting tactical operations at headquarters, which means you’d get deployed on intel missions all across the southwest border. He watched my face to gauge my reaction. Nothing’s a guarantee, he cautioned. I’m not the only one doing the hiring. But I can put in a good word, and you’d have a hell of a good chance. I looked down at the carpet and felt the air gushing up from the floor vents. It’s a paid move, he added. And it would get you back in the field.
—
Early in the afternoon, sitting in boredom before the dual monitors of my workstation, I looked up to behold the massive image of a prairie falcon in one of the camera feeds at the front of the room. The bird had landed atop a distant surveillance tower somewhere in the rolling grasslands of eastern Arizona and was looking directly into the lens of the camera, as if to peer into the fluorescent airlessness of the office. I stood up from my chair and walked closer to meet the bird’s interrogating gaze.
What cowardice has caused you to retreat from the desert? Why not return to the border’s smoldering edges, why not inhabit the quiet chaos churning in your mind?
I took several steps toward the screen, as if to reach the bird. I’m afraid to come any closer, I wanted to whisper. I’m afraid the violence will no longer shake me.
—
Hayward greeted me at
the el paso headquarters dressed in a polo shirt and cargo pants. No uniforms? I asked him. That’s right, he said, here we live the good life. I followed him through the parking lot, making note of the various buildings as he pointed them out to me—the armory, the equipment warehouse, the weight room. I followed him up a set of stairs to a modular unit with a massive air conditioner humming outside. He gestured at the adjacent building. That right there is the front office, he said, where all the head honchos are. He lowered his voice. Trust me, he whispered, you never want to end up in there.
I followed Hayward through the door and walked with him toward the back of the building, past a small kitchen and a meeting room lined with topo maps to a small office space where two plainclothes agents sat opposite each other at dual-monitor workstations. This is your new team, he smiled, nodding at the two men as they stood from their chairs. These boys are Chuco Town natives. He pointed first at the older agent, who reached out to shake my hand. This here is Manuel, he told me, he’s our expert in scout communications, radio intercepts, signal triangulation, geolocation, all that good stuff. Knows more than I ever will, that’s for sure. You can think of him as our team dad. Manuel smiled at me. That’s right mijo, soy como tu papá. Hayward gestured at the other man and paused. Beto here, well, I’m still trying to figure out what he’s good at. Beto threw up his hands. No seas malo, boss. Hayward laughed. Just kidding, he said. Beto’s our equipment guru—he’s installing big-ass signal receivers in all our rides, outfitting a travel trailer to be our mobile command center, and he claims to be pimping out our ATVs, whatever that means.
Beto and Manuel smiled and stood staring at me for a few moments before looking back at Hayward. Oh, Hayward said, I almost forgot. He looked at them and placed a hand on my back. Cantú here is still a little green, but he can research the shit out of just about anything, knows how to mine any database you can think of, and can write one hell of a report. Qué bien, Beto said, because yo no hablo mucho English. Hayward rolled his eyes. Very funny, he said. He looked around the room one more time. Am I missing anything? Manuel looked at me and sat back in his chair. Where are you from, mijo? he asked. Arizona, I said. Beto’s eyes lit up. Hey güey, did you find a place to live yet? I’m still looking, I said. You married? Got kids? I shook my head. Beto leaned forward and snapped his fingers. Mira, he said, I’ve got this casita in my backyard I’ve been trying to rent out, it’s like a one-room apartment, perfect for a guy like you. He grabbed a pen and tore a page from a notebook on his desk. Here’s my number güey, call me and we’ll talk about it. Manuel whistled. Damn Beto, that was fast. All right boys, Hayward said, motioning for me to follow him out of the office, that’s enough sweet talk for now.
Hayward walked me back to my car and handed me a stack of documents. I need these filled out by Monday for HR, he said. Show up an hour early and I’ll take you over to the warehouse to get you outfitted with some new gear. I took the documents, glancing into the distance at the Franklin Mountains. I’m glad to be here, I told Hayward. Good, he replied, I’m happy to have you. But listen, he said, I need you to hit the ground running. We deploy to Lordsburg, New Mexico, in two weeks for our first mission. I’ll be ready, I said.
—
In Antígona González, Mexican poet Sara Uribe reimagines the Greek tragedy of Antigone set in modern Mexico. In a translator’s note to the English edition of the book, John Pluecker writes that in Sophocles’ canonical play, “Antigone could not bear the dictate of Creon to leave her brother’s dead body exposed and unburied on a dusty plain. In Uribe’s version, Antígona González is bereft of a body to mourn, a body to bury.” Pluecker explains that Uribe’s book, written as a kind of long-form documentary poem in response to an ongoing plague of disappearance, is actually “one text made out of many,” using direct quotations and language lifted from academic and philosophical texts, blog posts, newspaper crime reports, and testimonies gathered by Mexican journalists.
In Uribe’s poem, Antígona González searches for the body of her missing brother, and in doing so, inhabits the consciousness of all those who suffer disappearance: “Day after day our certainties have slipped away from us.” When grappling with a loss that is incomplete and unending, “there are some who search as a way to refuse to remain in the silence to which they’ve been relegated. There are some who inquire time and time again as a means to confront their misfortune.” In turn, Antígona González imagines the declarations of those who come like pilgrims to sites of massacre, to wherever they may find bodies that remain unidentified and nameless:
I came to San Fernando to search for my brother.
I came to San Fernando to search for my father.
I came to San Fernando to search for my husband.
I came to San Fernando to search for my son.
I came with the others for the bodies of our people.
Antígona González asks: “What thing is the body when someone strips it of a name, a history, a family name? . . . When there is no face or trail or traces or signs . . . What thing is the body when it’s lost?”
—
We arrived in Lordsburg in the late afternoon and checked into our hotel. Hayward handed Beto and me a set of key cards and explained that we’d be sharing a room. Budget cuts, he said with a grin. Beto groaned. Hey now, Hayward said, you two are practically roommates, right? He smacked Beto on the back. You already live close enough to watch each other shower across the yard, so this won’t be much different. Manuel chuckled as Beto shook his head. That’s cold, boss.
At sunset we drove across the railroad tracks to a Mexican restaurant, the only business in a row of abandoned storefronts. Inside we were met with sidelong glances as we sat down in our uniforms near the door. A long silence hung in the air as the waitress handed us our menus. After ordering, we spoke quietly to one another until an older couple stopped at our table on their way to the door. Thank you gentlemen for your service, the man said, nodding at Hayward. His wife smiled. You boys stay safe out there. Thank you, we said.
As we ate our dinner, Manuel pointed to a small boy standing near the door of the restaurant, staring at us with his eyes wide and his mouth agape. His mother hurried over to him and bent down to speak to him in Spanish. Vámonos ya, she whispered, tugging on his arm. But the boy stood transfixed, staring at our guns and the fabric badges sewn to our shirts. His mother looked up apologetically. He wants to be a police officer when he grows up, she explained, pushing her child away from us.
The next morning I awoke early and went to run east along the train tracks toward the rising sun. I could feel my body filling with strength while I ran, swelling with a sense of comfort beneath the wide arc of the sky. Later, riding with Manuel and Beto through the winter-blanched grasslands and playas of New Mexico’s boot heel, I felt almost giddy to be back in the field after more than a year behind computer screens. The three of us were silent as we drove, listening to the occasional sounds of our equipment scanning the radio waves for secret frequencies used by cartel scouts. As we neared the line, crackled voices began to filter in through our devices and I pored over topographic maps in the backseat, looking for hilltops and other high places that might provide a vantage point for surveying the terrain and monitoring the comings and goings of marked enforcement vehicles like ours.
Back in the hotel room that night, I was visited by flickering images as I slept. I dreamed of a cave littered with body parts, a landscape devoid of color and light. I saw a wolf circling in the darkness and felt its paws heavy on my chest, its breath hot on my face.
I awoke to Beto’s snoring. I fumbled for my notebook in the dim light from my phone, then shut myself in the bathroom and sat on the toilet with the light on and the fan running, hurriedly scrawling every detail I could remember from the dream. Then, for several minutes I stared into the mirror, trying to recognize myself.
—
In the morning I arrived late to meet Hayward
and the others at the breakfast tables in the hotel lobby. No one greeted me as I sat down with a bowl of cereal and a cup of peach yogurt. Eventually Manuel looked up from a plate of watery scrambled eggs. Listen mijo, he said, Beto tells me you’ve been jacking off in the bathroom in the middle of the night. The table went silent and then Beto and Hayward burst into laughter. I looked at Manuel. Shit, I said—I was trying to be quiet. I looked at Beto and bowed my head. I’m sorry man, I said. I just didn’t want you to know that I was on the phone with your mom. Beto punched me in the shoulder as the others doubled over laughing. No me chingues, he said. My mom doesn’t go for güeritos like you. Hayward leaned back in his chair. Shit, he said, you boys crack me up. He stood from the table and adjusted his gun belt. Beto looked at him. Damn, boss, he said, those are some shiny boots. That’s right, Hayward said, I’ve got more meetings with the brass at Lordsburg station today. You don’t think I got to the top by dressing like you, do you? He pushed his chair in. I’ll see you boys tonight.
On the drive south toward the border I rested my head against the window, trying to escape the images rattling in my mind, searching for relief in the views of broad valleys and wooded mountains. I found myself inspecting the scenery for signs and clues, for something that might explain the wrenching nature of my dream. I was aware that wolves had once roamed freely through these mountains and valleys, until they were deemed a menace and stamped out. I was aware, too, of the animal’s tentative reintroduction to the landscape—small, carefully bred packs released into closely monitored pockets of wilderness to slowly reinhabit a terrain that had once been their own.
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