by Texas
'But I must come back, General Talbot. And I must bring my children.'
'Damnit, Eloy. There is no way you can sneak past us with three kids. You'll be caught, and into the calaboose you go. Then what will happen to your children?'
'General Talbot, we must come back. We are needed.'
That was the haunting phrase which put this border problem into perspective. The Mexicans who were streaming across in such
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uncounted numbers were mostly illiterate and they showed no inclination toward becoming Americanized, as immigrants from Europe had done in the early 1900s, instead, they clung to their Spanish language and their Mexican ways, and there were fifty other things wrong with them, but they were needed. They were needed by ranchers who could not otherwise find cowboys and by young mothers who could not find helpers. They were needed in restaurants and hotels and shops and in almost every service activity engaged in by the people of Texas. They were desperately needed, and as long as this was true, they would be enticed over the border by the millions.
As 12 February 1969 approached, Border Patrol Officer Talbot, who now wore cowboy boots, a large hat and a bolo tie when off duty, and could scarcely remember when he had been a Vermonter, realized that his old friend and nemesis Eloy Muzquiz was due to make his appearance in Ciudad Juarez in preparation for his dash to paradise, this time with three children in tow, so he telephoned a Mexican officer in Juarez with whom he had established good relations, and asked: 'You see a man about forty years old with three kids buying groceries for a dash across?'
'No, but I'll keep watch,' and after a while the Mexican called back: 'Yep. Buying sardines, canned refried beans, canned fruit, juices and a big bag of pinole.'
'Let me know when he crosses.'
As if obedient to some inner schedule, one which had worked j in the past, at about one in the afternoon Eloy led his three children across the dry river and eastward toward the freight yards. From a distance Talbot, marking their progress through field I glasses, saw the father instruct his children as to how they must 1 run to leap aboard the moving freight. He saw the engine getting up steam, the surreptitious movement of illegals edging toward the still-motionless boxcars, and he could feel the tension. Then, to his dismay—almost his horror—he saw that his fellow officer Dan Carlisle had spotted Eloy and his children and was placing himself in position to nab them within the next few minutes. Without hesitation he activated his walkie-talkie: 'Three-oh-three! Two-oh-two calling. I'm on to a crowd that might prove difficult.'
'Three-oh-three speaking. Cannot help. Following my own crowd.'
'Could be I'll need help.'
'You want me to come over 7 '
'You'd better.' With relief he saw Carlisle stop his tracking of the Muzquiz family and start west: When he reaches here I'll think of some explanation.
With his glasses he watched the engineer climb aboard the diesel, saw the trainmen wigwag their signals, and studied carefully the long line of boxcars as it strained to get started. Wheels spun, the engines coughed; the cars started to inch forward. Another spin, then all the wheels seemed to catch at the same instant, and the long train began to pick up speed.
Almost trembling, he watched as Muzquiz started his three children for the boxcars, urging them forward. Christ in heaven, Talbot prayed, don't let them slip. And he watched with strange satisfaction as the two boys leaped for the train, grasping the proper handholds.
Now the little girl, twelve years old, had to make the flying leap, and Talbot watched, teeth clenched, as her father spurred her on, her long dress flapping in the February sunlight. Taster, kid!' Talbot cried under his breath, and he sighed with relief when he saw Eloy lift her and almost throw her toward the train, where her brothers dragged her to safety. 'Okay, Muzquiz!'
He gasped, for at this moment one of the many scrambling wetbacks slipped and fell toward the implacable wheels, which had destroyed so many in such situations. W r as it Muzquiz? Talbot saw the sliding man frantically clutch at rocks, until with bleeding fingers he caught one that saved him, and there he lay as the train moved past, its wheels turning always faster.
Eloy, leaping over the fallen man, grabbed the handholds, swung himself into the boxcar, and disappeared.
At the Fort Stockton stop Muzquiz explained to his children why they must wait till the first frenzied action dissipated, then quietly he led them to the rusted Ford station wagon that still stood beside the road. In it they slept for some hours, side by side, waking when it was time to head cautiously for Midland, where they caught the bus to Lubbock.
When they reached Levelland they were greeted with warmth and even embraces, for many families needed their help. When they were safe in the two-room shack which the plantation owner provided, Muzquiz told his children: 'This is our home now. We will never leave.'
If Ben Talbot developed a feeling of brotherhood toward Eloy Muzquiz because of the latter's decency and courage, he knew another Mexican for whom he felt only loathing, and this slimy operator preoccupied his attention, both when Talbot was on the job or resting beside the swimming pool at the house he and his wife, Maria Luz, had built at the edge of El Paso. His notes on this infamous man explained why he despised him:
El Lobo, real name unknown. Birthplace unknown. Frequents the cantina El Azteca. About thirty-two, slight, neatly trimmed mustache, toothpick in corner of mouth. Always present when some deal is being engineered. Never present when trouble starts. Stays in Ciudad Juarez mostly, but is willing to come boldly into El Paso when business requires it. Occupation: coyote. Smuggles groups of wetbacks to rendezvous in the desert. Collects his fee and often deserts them.
1 Locked 63 wetbacks into a closed truck with space for 16 at most. Drove across desert to Van Horn in blazing heat. More than 20 died.
2. Dropped 17 wetbacks into the small opening of a tank car that had been carrying gasoline, closed the hatch at El Paso yards. All dead when hatch opened at Fort Stockton.
3. Packed 22 into a Chevrolet, plus two locked in the trunk. In order to protect springs on car, wedged wooden posts between them and body Friction from driving set wood on fire. He ran from car, but did not stop to open trunk. Two men incinerated.
4. On at least two occasions led groups of girls who wanted to be waitresses across the desert and sold them to the men from Oklahoma City.
Talbot vowed that he would catch this evil man during some foray i north of the river, but El Lobo was so clever and self-protective that he could not be trapped, and often Talbot had to watch with disgust as the slim, tricky fellow came boldly into El Paso on the I maternity gambit, leading some pregnant peasant girl to Thomason General Hospital, and charging her a fee for the service. Since El Lobo broke no law during such missions, and since the deaths t listed on his dossier could not be proved against him, he moved with impunity, but events were about to unfold in a dusty little I town well south of the border which would place him in real jeopardy.
On the bleak and sandy plains of northern Mexico, mid-way between the cities of Chihuahua and Ciudad Juarez, stood the adobe village of Moctezuma, seven small huts, one of which served as a roadside shop dispensing allegedly cold drinks to American motorists. The place was called by the grandiloquent name La Tienda del Norte and was operated by the Guzmans, a widowed woman with two daughters and a son.
The older girl was married to the man who ran the nearby Pemex station, and it was her responsibility to wash the windshields of any cars that stopped, and to send orders to the national gasoline monopoly for such additional supplies as her husband thought he might sell to motorists who found themselves short of
gas on this rather frightening road If one did not fill up at Moctezuma, one could well be stranded before reaching Chihuahua.
It was this constant flow of big cars passing south that caused discontent in the little village, for when one stopped for either gas or a cold drink, the Mexicans could see the wealth the owners possessed: They are all richer than the archbis
hop. It must be fun to live in los Estados Unidos where money is so easy!'
The young wife, Eufemia, had often thought of this as she tended the rich travelers, but more so now that she was pregnant. Her condition occasioned great discussion among the residents of Moctezuma, for what a young woman did when she was pregnant made a universe of difference, as two of the older women reminded the mother, Encarnacion: 'It is important. It is life and death, really, that you get her to El Paso.'
True, but neither her husband nor any of his friends have done this thing, and they have no way of instructing her.'
'What you must do,' one of the women said, 'is get her to Juarez and put her in touch with my cousin. El Lobo, that's his name, and his job is to slip people into the States.'
The other woman had a simpler plan: To get into El Paso is nothing, you just walk across the bridge. But to leave El Paso for the rest of the States, that's when you need El Lobo.'
'You think that Eufemia can just go to Juarez, cross over and reach Thomason General without getting caught?'
'Others have done it, haven't they?'
And that was the nagging fact: other pregnant women from villages far off the main road had somehow reached Juarez, got across the river and entered the hospital, had their babies and come home with that precious piece of paper, more valuable than gold, which certified that this child, male or female and of such-and-such a name, had been born within the United States.
Such a paper meant that for as long as he or she lived, that child could enter the States, assume his citizenship, get a free education, and build a good life. Without such a certificate, life would almost certainly be one of unending poverty in northern Mexico; therefore, women like Eufemia were willing to undergo any hardships to ensure that their unborn children received a fair start in life, and that was why even the poorest, even the least-educated, headed for El Paso in their ninth month.
But these benefits did not fully explain why so many citizens of Moctezuma yearned to live in the States. Nothing differentiated their land from that of New Mexico or Arizona, and it was actually better than many parts of West Texas; the strain of people was no different from that of people who prospered in those American
states; and the climate was the same. But the sad fact was that in Mexico no way had been devised whereby the unquestioned wealth of the land, almost unequaled in the Americas, could be justly distributed. The wealthy grew immensely wealthy; the Guzmans could see the great cars sweeping north to the shops across the Rio Grande and then come roaring back loaded with goods purchased in American stores. But in the Mexican system none of that wealth filtered down to the peasants who did most of the work. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a more cynical system than that which trapped Encarnacion Guzman and her three children, for the national leaders had been preaching since the 1920s the triumph of La Revolution, and each succeeding administration had cried at election time: 'Let us march forward with La Revolucion!' but the same reactionary cadre had remained in power, cynically stealing the nation's wealth and allowing the great masses of the people to plod along, sometimes at the starvation level.
Any young person living in Moctezuma would try to get to the States, and if a pregnant woman wanted to ensure that her baby was born with rights to that superior economic system, she was entitled to try every known device to accomplish it. The flood ol people streaming north never seemed to diminish.
The plan that the Guzmans worked out was this: brother Candido, a clever seventeen-year-old, would take his sister Eufemia tc Juarez, where he would make contact with El Lobo, and for a smal fee, which Candido would carry in his shoe, Eufemia would be taken across the bridge two or three days before her labor wa; supposed to begin. She would be kept in a house run by El Lobo'i friends, and on the morning when birth seemed imminent, sht would be taken to a place close to the hospital. At the proper time and this would be crucial, but women in the area could helf determine it, she would be rushed as an emergency patient to th( hospital, where she would give birth, she hoped, to a son. Ther her friends would show her how to acquire a birth certificate anc purchase three or four photographed copies. She would then re cross the bridge, rejoin her brother, and return to Moctezuma— and eighteen years later she would bid her son goodbye when h< left to take up residence in the States.
The awful price exacted by this system was the inevitabl« breakup of the family, for the time would come when this chile with his precious documents would leave Mexico forever; but th< good part was that when as a young man he established his Ameri can citizenship, he could send down to Moctezuma and bring ii his entire family under 'the compassion rule.' So once Eufemi.
gained entrance to Thomason General, she was guaranteeing future American citizenship for herself and, perhaps, as many as a dozen family members. 'Make no mistake,' warned an older man who had worked as an illegal in Texas, 'many things happen up there that no one in his right mind would wish, but it's better than here. It's worth the risk.'
Candido and his sister caught a ride north with one of the
iPemex trucks, and as they neared Juarez the driver said: 'You
understand, it's easy to cross over into El Paso. Anyone can do
that. But it's hell to slip out of the city and move north. Guards
iand stops everywhere.'
'I don't intend to stay,' Candido said, and the driver said: 'They 'all say that. When you see it, you'll want to.'
Although Juarez was a large city, they had no difficulty in [finding El Lobo: 'I'll get your sister to the hospital at the right time. I can also take you to fine cities in Texas, Candido. Lots of work.'
'I'm not staying.'
'For fifteen dollars, all the way to Fort Stockton and a good job.' 'Just my sister.'
It was agreed that Candido would accompany her to the first
[stopping house and would at the appropriate time move her close
to the hospital, and he did this effectively, so that Eufemia had a
frminimum of worry. At the stopping place six other pregnant
Iwomen counseled with her, and she watched as they moved on to
the American hospital; she saw two of them when they returned
mth their babies, both girls, and displayed the precious birth
certificates. 'You are so lucky,' she said, and they replied: 'We
She was. With the skill of an expert, Candido moved her nearer :he hospital, and when her labor pains became intense, he led her :o the emergency entrance, where a young intern with a mustache :ried: 'Here's another Aztec princess!' and before Candido could tsk even one question, his sister was whisked away.
It cost the city of El Paso about twelve hundred dollars to deliver i Mexican baby and care for the mother prior to release, but the nost Thomason General could extract from the constant stream >f pregnant women was seventy-five dollars each, and most, like iufemia, could pay nothing. Why did Texas allow this preposterous system? 'I'll tell you,' Officer Talbot explained to a newspaper-nan from Chicago. 'We're a compassionate people down here. Ve do not turn away pregnant women. But we also like the cheap mbor the Mexicans provide. Mercy and profit, one of the most newarding combinations in world history.'
The Pemex driver had been right. Once Candido saw the riches of El Paso and the good life available to even poor Mexicans, he wanted to stay, not in that crowded city but in the hinterland, where he heard that jobs were plentiful, and this desire tempted him to come back across the international bridge as soon as he placed his sister and her baby on the Pemex truck heading south.
Since he did not purchase the services of El Lobo, he was able to penetrate only a few miles past the immigration blockades when a tall Border Patrol officer named Talbot detected him on the road and sent him back to Mexico.
On his next try he did use El Lobo, who put him well inland, but again he had the bad luck of running into Officer Talbot, a misfortune that was repeated on his third attempt. 'Haven't I
seen you before?' Talbot asked, and this time when he shoved the boy across the border he warned: 'Next time, jail.'
So Candido, with his burning memories of riches in the United States, returned to Moctezuma, but in June of the following year, when he was eighteen and working at his brother-in-law's garage, his younger sister, Manuela, informed her family that she wanted to try to get into the States, and again the women of Moctezuma decided that Candido should take her to Juarez, where, for fifteen dollars, El Lobo would lead her not into El Paso, where she would be apprehended if she tried to sneak past Officer Talbot, but to a safe crossing he had developed some seventy miles to the east. Said a man who had used that route under El Lobo's guidance: 'It's not easy. You cross the Rio Grande, walk inland about a mile, and a truck picks you up. Costs another fifteen dollars, but you can't make it alone. Candido, warn your sister that she cannot make it alone.'
For Candido the next days were agonizing, because the old longing to get into the United States revived, but he knew that if he went, he would leave his mother alone: Eufemia married. Manuela gone. If I go, who's left to help? But then he began to think of his sister: I can't leave her in a truck at the edge of the desert. By the time he and his sister were ready to board the Pemex truck he had not made up his mind, but as he said farewell to his mother he embraced her with unusual ardor and burst into tears. She must have known what tormented him, for she said: 'Do whatever's right.'
When they reached Ciudad Juarez and Candido actually saw El Lobo again, he knew he must not leave Manuela in that man's corrupt hands. So without having made a major decision himself,
he eased into the Loho operation, reserving the right to back out at the last moment.
The truck carrying the would-be emigrants left Juarez at five m the afternoon with seventeen passengers, eleven men and six women at fifteen dollars a head, and drove southeast along a bumpy road traveled by other trucks returning empty from the trip to the crossing. At dusk the emigrants pulled up at a lonely spot east of Banderas, and there Candido had to make up his mind: 'Well, are you joining them or not 7 Fifteen dollars if you do.' And on the spot the boy said: 'I'll stay with my sister.'