The Line Becomes a River

by Francisco Cantú

  For a long while I looked down at my hands, trying to control the heat rising in my face. I thought about my dreams, about all the terrors I had never shared with her. Finally, I looked up at my mother and met her gaze. I had a dream José was back, I told her. He came in to work. He was skinny, his beard had grown out, his face was tired and worn. He had been in the desert for days, maybe a week or more, and he still seemed lost. It was like he had something to tell me, but I don’t know what it was. My mother thought for a moment, leaning back on the couch. You know, she said, many cultures believe that our souls travel at night, that they leave the body to visit the people who care about them. So maybe José came to visit you. My mother took one last drink from her eggnog. Or maybe you need to visit him, she suggested, looking at me from across the room. Maybe you need to go to him and listen.

  Mira, aquí la ley viene de los narcos. In the streets you can see them out on patrol. I’ve seen them myself, driving through the neighborhood in convoys, standing in the backs of trucks with guns and masks. Everyone who lives here knows who the bosses are, they know the local leaders by sight. If you talk in the street, if you say something against the narcos, people will hear you. Anyone could report you, you never know who’s working for them. If someone is killed or kidnapped on the streets, no one sees anything. No one reports against them. Everyone here knows one another, everybody knows someone in the business, you see?

  When someone new walks through the streets, the narcos know right away, they immediately find out who they are. They’re always worried that other mafias are coming. For example, when you called me and said you wanted to visit, I went to Ignacio at the pawnshop down the street. I told him that a friend from my old job was coming to check in on me, to see how I’m doing. I told him casually, like it was nothing. But the real reason I told him is because he knows people, so when someone asks, Who was walking with José in the street this morning? Who went to talk with José at his house? he can tell them, Oh, don’t worry, it was nobody, it was just José’s friend from work.

  I see all this and I think of my boys. For a while, you know, a couple months ago, after I had tried to cross again and again, I finally started to think that maybe my family could come live in Mexico until Lupe and I could arrange our papers. I even mentioned it to the boys on the phone. We don’t want to live in Mexico, they told me. We don’t know anyone there. We like it here, they said, we like our school. They bragged about how good they were doing in their classes. José Junior was on the phone telling me about his last report card. Dad, he said, I got pure A’s with just one B. I did it to make you proud.

  When I really started to think about it, I realized that, as a good father, I could never bring my boys here. I think a lot about the environment here in Mexico. Here it is normal for children to hear of murder. There’s a school just down the street from here, I walk by it every day. I see the children in the schoolyard play at killing. Te voy a matar, they say to one another, soy pistolero, soy narco. So I think about the mentality my boys would be exposed to. I don’t want my sons to grow up like this.

  Things here can go very quickly from bad to worse. A kid’s mentality can change very fast. They see that delinquency is easy, that they don’t have to study to get money, to have success, and so they engage in drug work, they align themselves with the narcos even from a very young age.

  Mexico could be a great country, a rich country, a country of opportunity. There are leaders in this country, but they are not given an education, they are not valued, they are ending up in the mafia. So you see, this sets up a cycle: How can a government care for its people if it is run by the mafia? And how can the mafia manage society if their leaders don’t even have education? You know those forty-three students who went missing? They were studying at a rural college to become teachers. They disappeared more than a year ago and still no one knows what happened to them. Probably they were killed by narcos, by the cartel. They were accused of causing trouble because they were politically active, because they were protesting for better transportation, for more support from the local and state government. But the government is in the hands of the cartel, so it’s not concerned with them, it doesn’t protect them.

  Those students would have grown to become teachers, they could have even been future doctors, future presidents. But in Mexico education means nothing. If our government valued those students, they would have made an investigation, they would have found the problem, they would take action to fix it, to make sure it never happens again. A government has to care for its citizens. People in government must strive to protect their fellow man. But we don’t have a real government here. I won’t bring my boys to live in this country.

  In the U.S., at least the system is more organized, laws are respected, there is not so much corruption. The system there doesn’t leave people uneducated, it doesn’t leave them to die in hunger, to die without a name, without an investigation into their death. That’s why I have always taught my boys to respect authority and to give thanks to the law, even to the police. For years I worked at a Chipotle. I started as the lowest worker, standing at the cash register, cleaning off the tables, sweeping up the floors. The police came in all the time to order food and I was always friendly with them. They started to recognize me—after a while they even learned my name. Eventually I worked my way up in the restaurant to become the main cook. Everyone I worked with said I was the best cook they’d ever seen, that I could do the work of two men. The policemen would see me cooking in the back and yell to me. What’s up, José, how’s it going? One time I came into the restaurant on my day off to pick up my paycheck. I was with my boys and when we walked in, there was a table full of police officers having lunch. They stood up to shake my hand. José, they said, it’s good to see you, are these your boys? They even shook my boys’ hands. My boys, they couldn’t believe it. After we left, Diego said to me, how do those cops know you, dad? We’re friendly to one another, I told him, that’s all. We treat each other with respect.

  The other day I was on the phone with Diego, he was telling me that he wanted to change classes, complaining that he thought his teacher was racist against him because he’s Mexican. I told him, you must learn to do what your teacher says. If you think she is racist, talk with your family, meet with your teacher. You cannot give up just because you think someone is against you, because it is difficult to face them. I try to teach my boys that they must not be consumed by battle, they must not give in to vice, they must work hard to become someone in life.

  When Lupe and I went to get married, the pastor told us that it was important to grow a family, that it was important for children to see their parents together. Es de mucho valor una familia unida. Family should stay together. If I must stay in Mexico and my wife raises my boys alone, they will be getting less care, less love, and so the family will slowly deteriorate. Being a parent is a job that you share, it’s a job you have to be present for. When I was in jail, the same place where you brought the boys to see me, I was with many others that had returned to Mexico to be with their dying family members, people with family in the United States, family on both sides. I began to see that when people are separated from their families, many of them fall into depression or fall to other illnesses. One man in the prison, a man in my same situation, told me that his wife became so depressed while he was away that she collapsed and had to be taken to the hospital.

  Some politicians in the United States think that if a mother or father is deported, this will cause the entire family to move back to Mexico. But in fact, the mothers and fathers with the best family values will want their family to stay in the U.S., they will cross the border again and again to be with them. So you see, these same people, the ones with the most dedication to their family, they begin to build up a record of deportation, they have more and more problems with the government, and it becomes harder and harder for them to ever become legal. In this way, the U.S. is making criminals out of those
who could become its very best citizens.

  I owe a lot to the U.S., you know, I really do. The United States has given me a lot. My mother built her house in Oaxaca with the money I earned from working there. I feel that I have been blessed there, so I don’t want to have problems with the government. I want to legalize, I want to get a lawyer. I want to become a citizen.

  To be honest, I am still grateful to the United States. If I am arrested crossing the border, I understand it’s part of the system. I realize that I am crossing illegally. But it’s complicated, you see. I know I’m breaking the rules, but it is necessary because my family is there. I don’t want to cause harm to the country, but I have to break the law. I have to. Es una necesidad. It is a situation of emotion, of love. Those who accept staying apart from their family are without love. Their children grow up without love. So I must fight against this.

  I know there are laws, I know that they need to be enforced, but at the same moment these laws are wounding me, wounding something inside me. My children want me there, my wife wants me there, all of them are pleading for me to stay, but the government is separating us. If I search my feelings, I don’t feel hate but sadness. The day you saw me in court, the day I saw my family there, it was as if the government was destroying my family, tearing it apart right in front of me. I could feel the power they held over us.

  I shouldn’t have left the U.S., it’s true. I shouldn’t have left my family, but I couldn’t live without going to see my mother. I remember thinking to myself, if my mother is dying and I have the ability to be by her side, I must do it. It was not a choice for me, there was no other way. And that’s why I’m here, because I had too much love for my mother. Now I sit in this room and I look out the window at those hills. Those hills that you see right there, that’s the United States. I used to be able to just run up and over those hills. But now there is a barrier. I hate it, I hate it. It’s something barbaric.

  The crossing now, it’s much more dangerous than it ever was. It’s not easy. I’ve tried four times in six months and still I can’t get across. Each time it takes something from you. And of course, each time it takes money. People in my situation, people who have tried again and again to get across, they become desperate. They try to find an easier way to get across, a cheaper way. Out of desperation, I’ve even thought of crossing over as a mule for the cartels. It’s cheaper that way, you know. The coyotes give you a bundle of marijuana to carry on your back and you pay them half of what you would pay anywhere else. You cross with a group of mules and your coyote is guided the whole time by the scouts watching from the hilltops, so there’s less chance you get caught. If you arrive successfully at the other side, they give you a payment. You get back the money you paid them and sometimes you even make money. But it’s a risk, of course. If you are captured by la migra you are entered in the computer as a drug trafficker, and you’ll never be able to become legal. The cartel will be against you too, because you lost their load. You become a victim of both systems.

  I don’t want to carry drugs across the desert, I don’t want to get myself into more problems, but sometimes it’s not a choice. The same people who control the drug smuggling control the human trafficking, so in some places if you want to get across, you have to carry a load. I’ve even heard that sometimes they will kill you if you refuse. A man in jail told me that there are mass graves in the desert where many people are buried for this very reason.

  I met another man in jail, a man from Michoacán who crossed with a group of eighty-five. Each time the group stopped, he would count their numbers, and each time the number was less. There was a woman in the group who was crossing with her five-year-old daughter. The girl was exhausted, she wanted water and there was none. The man from Michoacán offered to carry the girl on his shoulders and the woman thanked him. After a while, he noticed that the girl had not moved or said anything so he took her off his shoulders and saw that she was dead. The mother, of course, she was beside herself, she became hysterical. The coyotes told them that the group had to keep going, that they must leave the girl’s body there. The man argued with them. I’ll carry her body myself, he said. Two or three miles later, the girl’s mother died too. The man fought with the coyotes. We have to bury them, he said, we have to tell someone they’re here. No, they said, we have to keep going. Come with us or stay behind, you decide. The man shouted and wept. You’re criminals, he told the coyotes, you are evil. He did everything he could to remember where they left the bodies, to guard the image of that place in his mind.

  Later, when the group arrived at the road, they were picked up in trucks and vans. The man from Michoacán ended up in a truck that got chased down the highway by police. Two migrants fell from the back of the truck during the chase, he said, and he never knew of them again. The driver evaded the police and delivered the migrants to a drop house where they were held for ransom. Some of them were taken into another room and tortured or killed. After several days some men began to fight with the smugglers and one of them broke a window and escaped. The police found him and he told them about the drop house, and soon the place was raided by immigration agents, the smugglers were arrested, the migrants were processed for deportation. The man from Michoacán told the agents about the girl and her mother, he told them he knew where to find them. The agents took the man in a helicopter through the desert and then, believe it or not, he found the place. On the ground they found the body of the woman already decomposing. The animals had been at the body. The little girl was there too, but she was missing a leg. He told me that even the agents began to cry. The man from Michoacán was peaceful, he was a family man like me. But he told me that if he ever found one of those men, if he ever saw one of those coyotes, he would kill them.

  So you see, each time I cross I risk my life. When you step into the Mexican consulate, you see pictures of the missing. All of us who cross are exposed to this possibility. We know there are dangers in the desert and in the mountains. La mafia, la migra. There’s mountain lions, snakes. There’s cliffs and deep canyons. There’s no water. There are many dangers, but for me it doesn’t matter. I have to cross, I have to arrive to the other side. I even dream that I am there. I dream that I’m there with my family, that it’s morning and I have to go to work. Then I wake up and I’m here.

  The judges in the United States, if they know the reality, they know they are sending people to their death. They are sending people to commit suicide. I will do anything to be on the other side. To be honest, I would rather be in prison in the U.S. and see my boys once a week through the glass than to stay here and be separated from my family. At least I would be closer to them. So you see, there is nothing that can keep me from crossing. My boys are not dogs to be abandoned in the street. I will walk through the desert for five days, eight days, ten days, whatever it takes to be with them. I’ll eat grass, I’ll eat bushes, I’ll eat cactus, I’ll drink filthy cattle water, I’ll drink nothing at all. I’ll run and hide from la migra, I’ll pay the mafias whatever I have to. They can take my money, they can rob my family, they can lock me away, but I will keep coming back. I will keep crossing, again and again, until I make it, until I am together again with my family. No, no me quedo aquí. Voy a seguir intentando pasar.

  EPILOGUE

  On a hot Texas evening at the edge of Big Bend National Park, I watched a man ride his horse across the Rio Grande. After traversing a riverbank teeming with locusts, he ushered his horse up the small hill where I stood overlooking the darkening valley. Buenas tardes, I greeted him. He eyed me from his saddle. You speak good Spanish, he said, are you la migra? No, I answered. A ranger? No, I assured him, just a tourist.

  I gestured at the village across the river and asked the man if he lived in Boquillas. Of course, he said, beaming with pride. I asked what he did for work and he nodded at the unattended souvenirs and handmade crafts that had been set out atop the rocks. No hay trabajo, he complained—we make our money from tourists
.

  I asked if many Americans crossed over to visit. Sure, he said, Boquillas is very safe. Narcos don’t bother us, even the rangers and la migra leave us alone. He paused. You know, he said, there’s a nice restaurant in my village. Is there breakfast? I asked. Of course, he smiled. I’ll come for you in the morning.

  As the man rode back across the valley, the rugged Sierra del Carmen, formed by the shifting of ancient seas and the endless faulting of the earth’s crust, smoldered pink with the last light of the day.

  The next morning, as the sun grew pale and white in the eastern sky, I met my guide at the banks of the river. He instructed me to climb onto his horse, and then, like it was nothing, he spurred the animal across the river into Mexico. We spoke little as I jostled atop sauntering haunches and grasped at the back of his saddle. Passing the first cinderblock homes of Boquillas, I considered the extent to which my safekeeping depended upon this stranger, leading me into the silent and unfamiliar streets of his village.

  I ate breakfast alone on a shaded patio, where I observed the passing of rumbling trucks and tired-looking horses as Boquillas slowly woke to the day. After breakfast, as we rode back toward the border, I asked my guide about violence in the surrounding towns and villages. He shook his head. The delincuentes don’t come to Boquillas. If they mess with someone here they won’t even make it to the edge of the village. He looked back at me over his shoulder. Here the law comes from the people. We look out for one another, me entiendes?

  As the horse approached the border I questioned my guide about the crossing. Aren’t there cameras? I asked. Sensors? No, he said. Está tranquilo. As we came closer, I scanned the ridge above the riverbank, half expecting to hear the roar of a vehicle or the shouts of silhouetted men—but there was only the slow snaking of the river, the faint sound of water drifting by on its journey through deep canyons and broad basins, past irrigated fields and sprawling floodplains, toward the vast and shimmering waters of the Gulf.