This Love Is Not for Cowards

by Robert Andrew Powell

  “Why do I love my wife?” Francisco Ibarra asked when I’d inquired about his affection for his hometown. “Why does Paco love his girlfriend? It’s inexplicable.” He went silent for a while. I could tell he was thinking. “Es agradecimiento,” he said finally. It’s gratitude.

  Sandra Rodríguez Nieto at El Diario is an investigative reporter. In Juárez. That’s one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet. She’s so good at documenting border corruption that a newspaper in Madrid recently awarded her a major honor. The prize, and the significant prize money, was split with one of her El Diario colleagues, to her relief. “If I would have won it all, then someone might kidnap me for it,” Sandra tells me. She still collects enough euros to escape. Maybe to San Francisco, her favorite American metropolis. Maybe back to Mexico City, where she cut her teeth in journalism. Yet she won’t leave. She can’t leave. “Juárez is the most beautiful city in the world,” she insists. “It’s got mountains and great sunsets and the best people anywhere in Mexico.” She sinks her share of the prize money into her house. She uses her escape money to pay down her mortgage.

  I eat lunch one afternoon at the Yvasa complex commissary with Adir Bueno, from the Indios’ media office. I bring up a particularly gruesome killing covered in the morning paper: a man decapitated and strung to a fence in the manner of a crucifixion. “Don’t you ever think about leaving?” I ask Adir.

  “Moving would feel like quitting,” he replies. “I like Juárez. People are very nice, hospitable. I’ve lived here for twenty-four years, and I love it here.”

  What I need to do, Adir tells me, is look past the killings. His family has hosted exchange students for several years. One from Finland, one from Switzerland, one each from Germany, Holland, and Slovakia, and at least one more from Japan. “And they all come back to visit, Robert. Why would they come back if they don’t love it here?” The student from the Netherlands flew back not six months ago, into the worst of the violence. The killing will end someday, Adir insists. Juárez will revert back to a Mexican resort town, an even better city than before. More fun, more free. “Like Las Vegas but Mexican, so better.”

  Elizabeth Rojas and Martin Marquez, the mother and father of Marco Vidal’s wife, run a bus company that shuttles workers to and from maquiladoras. The buses roll out from a dusty lot near the border at four thirty in the morning, heading to the poorer barrios that are the only places most factory workers can afford to live. All buses in Juárez look like school buses. Private ruteras can be painted however the driver/owner likes. I’ve seen hot-rod racing flames shooting from engines. I’ve also seen Indios logos drawn on bus back doors and Indios stickers plastered on every window. Any bus that exclusively shuttles workers to border factories is colored the same white with gold-and-green trim. To tell whether the bus is owned by Dany’s parents, I have to look closely for three triangles, their corporate symbol.

  Their buses are hired by the individual maquiladoras. Cummins is one of the Marquez family clients. The electronics company RCA is another. Hundreds of factories operate in Juárez, enough to support several competitors in the busing business. The maquiladora transportation industry has been pinched by the recession, which has forced client factories to close. The bigger threat is coming from extortionists, who have begun to target the bus companies one by one.

  “We left Juárez last February,” Elizabeth Marquez tells me. “We went to El Paso. We bought a house. We went because they started calling junkyards and extorting money. Those that didn’t pay were killed. Then they started to kill the owners of some businesses like ours, buses. We were afraid. Some people that my husband knew were kidnapped, and they killed them.”

  We’re talking inside her home in Juárez, a large house in an exclusive and gated subdivision of other upscale homes. Five other families in the subdivision have left recently for El Paso. The Marquez family came back. They returned from El Paso after only a month and a half.

  “I was bored,” Dany’s mother says. “The only thing we would do is watch TV and eat and then go to sleep. American people are boring. Mexicans are a very happy people. When we crossed back into Juárez, right away I went back to normal.

  “Here most of the families know each other,” she continues. “We know what our neighbors have, what they do. When we came back from El Paso, five or six families invited us over for carne asada. We all played in the park together. When you have a problem and you go to a neighbor and ask them for help, they give it.”

  It doesn’t even have to be a neighbor. Before I started running along the river, I would jog through residential neighborhoods near my apartment. One evening, I’d been out for almost an hour, heading in a direction I understood to be due west. My simple plan to turn around and run back home on the same route, due east, didn’t work out. I no longer recognized the streets. Was I actually going south? Could I somehow still be going west? I kept expecting to orient myself at the next major street and then, okay, at the street after that. Yet the longer I continued running, the more confused I grew. There were no visual clues, and I simply didn’t recognize where I was. Finally, in defeat, I approached an OXXO convenience store to ask for directions. An older man coming out of the store held a twelve-pack of beer, a bag of ice, and the tiny hand of a young boy that turned out to be his grandson. I was nowhere near where I’d thought, he explained. And I was very far from my apartment. He waved me over to a minivan, where three generations of his family sat inside. His wife surrendered the passenger seat and insisted I take it while she crammed in the back with her daughters and their kids. “Have a Tecate! Please!” the man said, handing me a cold red can and firing up the ignition. This could have been where I was kidnapped, but I was never worried. He was never worried I was going to rob his family. He drove me all the way back to Colonia Nogales, he dropped me off, the entire family waved goodbye, and that was the last I ever saw of them.

  But neighbors are helpful, too. A woman I met when I was walking Benito introduced me to all the families still living near us. The mansion that dominates our block—it takes up eight plots—is owned by the Zaragozas, who run a gas company. She tells me if I sit on the bench outside the big mansion I’ll be in range of their security cameras, which should make me feel safer. A smaller house near the park is owned by a veterinarian. He’s willing to take Benito with him to work and back, I was told.

  “Anything you need,” my neighbor added, “you let me know.”

  It was a nice day and I wasn’t in any particular hurry, so we talked for a while longer. She invited me over for dinner with her family whenever I’m free. She told me the violence is making her crazy, but she can’t leave.

  “Our young people, they don’t watch what they’re doing, so we send them to El Paso. But we’re all going to stay. We have a mission here. When our mission is up, then we’ll go up.”

  She pointed not north, to Franklin Mountain, but straight up, to the sky. What is her mission?

  “To love people. To help people.”

  EACH WEEK, AS the Indios’ demotion grows more certain, the Juárez press comes up with ever more creative ways to describe the worst team in the history of Mexico’s Primera division. After the blowout loss to Estudiantes—the team from Guadalajara scored three minutes into the game—a cartoon in PM featured an owl (the Estudiantes mascot) pushing an Indian into a fiery pit of flaming skulls.

  “You guys are horrible,” I tell Marco at the first practice after the team returns to Juárez. “Really, really bad.” He’d asked if I’d watched the game, which of course I had. I’d watched it at Applebee’s, naturally, along with most of the Indios’ front office. Adir from the press department was there, along with the office manager, some men and women from sales, and the youth coach hired to replace Pedro Picasso. Half of those employees have since been laid off. Budget cuts. It’s leaked out that even the players haven’t been paid in weeks, a rumor Marco confirms for me, sort of. “Weeks? It’s been more than a month, dude.” Money is so tight the players
were afraid there wouldn’t be funds to fly back from Guadalajara, that they’d have to chip in and charter a bus.

  It’s Marco’s turn to give the press-pool interview after practice. He tries to stick to soccer. He tells a handful of voice recorders the old line about how the Indios are not yet mathematically eliminated. He says they’ve got to play hard and fight this Sunday at home against a team from Querétaro. The reporters, suddenly all Roberto Woodwards, ask only about the budget crisis. Has he been paid or what? And if not, what does he think of an organization that’s supposedly major league but can’t make payroll?

  Marco dodges the money questions in the interview, but walking back to the locker room with me, he allows that the problem is so bad the players are talking about striking. They’ve decided not to only because stories about “the financial disaster in Ciudad Juárez” would further stain reputations already discolored by their disastrous play on the field. He agrees with my assessment of their play. “Horrible” and “really, really bad” sound about right. It’s kind of late for a turnaround. The Estudiantes loss pushed the Indios to the brink of a fiery pit. There is no more wiggle room. They must win every single game from here on in, all seven remaining matches on the schedule. No ties. All must be wins, starting with Sunday’s game against Querétaro.

  Game day is beautiful, a spectacularly nice afternoon for the team funeral we all expect to witness. I walk up to the stadium in shorts and a red Indios polo shirt, my exposed skin absorbing the delicious sun. A silver pickup rolls past, its driver and two passengers wearing Indios jerseys. The driver stops and motions for me to hop into the bed. Ken-tokey remains amazed that I hopped into his SUV back in the preseason, the first time I met him. “You didn’t even know us!” he says. Yeah, but I could tell Ken-tokey was a decent guy, just as I can tell today’s truck driver and his passengers are simpático. For as much danger as there is in this town, there’s even more love. The free ride in the truck is the sort of random generosity extended to me every day in this warm and wonderful city.

  “Semillas! Pistachios! Trident gum!” The vendors are out. The banners are up. El Kartel crowds into the south bleachers. Gil Cantú sits in the owner’s box next to Francisco Ibarra, who has shaken off the insults from the Tigres game. (His son Paco, though, is conspicuously absent.) I switch things up and sit in the north bleachers, behind the Querétaro goal, with all six fans of the visiting Gallos Blancos, or White Roosters. Six fans. No more than that were willing to travel a thousand miles to weekend in the most dangerous city in the world. I’m spread out and sunning myself as I watch the Indios play surprisingly good soccer. The players from Querétaro are much taller, and their black-and-blue uniforms fit their physical style of play; one of their forwards shatters the eye socket of our Argentinean defenseman. Yet Los Indios are hanging tough. They’re playing well, especially for unpaid amateurs. Christian makes a big save off a free kick and throws the ball to Marco, who calmly distributes it forward. No room to hit Edwin on the right side? No problem. Marco fires a long pass clear across the width of the field, to where Maleno stands in open space. Juárez’s favorite son surges forward, the Indios on the attack.

  “Far away are those days that Juarense Daniel ‘Maleno’ Frías looked bold and sassy before trembling enemy defenses,” stated El Diario after the Tigres loss. “These days, Maleno is only a shadow of the player he was not even a year ago.”

  Maleno, on the right side of the field, passes the ball to Edwin, who passes it on to a streaking Indios defender named Tomas Campos, who is open on the left side, wide of the goal. Tomas sprints forward with the ball, then lofts it toward midfield. His pass appears to be headed to Querétaro’s goalie, but from my seat behind the net I notice Maleno slipping into the penalty box. Before the goalie can catch the ball, Maleno sticks out a cleat to redirect the ball into the goal. The shot is so amazing, the result so unexpected, that I scream out loud, my act suddenly blue: Holy fucking shit. We’ve scored! Maleno scored. We’re winning! I don’t have a beer, but I want to throw one in the air, just to do it. We have scored. The Indios have scored.

  And the Indios hold on. Seventy minutes played, now eighty. Still 1–0. With only five minutes left, the nylon tunnels to the locker rooms start inflating. I relocate to the owner’s box, arriving just as the final whistle blows. The players on the field hug in a pyramid of relief, Marco leaping on top as if summiting a small mountain. Gil shakes Francisco’s hand. It’s the first win either man has witnessed in more than a year. Their Indios remain alive, still in the Primera, not yet relegated. Positive thinking comes through in the clutch.

  “We’re playing with fire, brother!” Gil shouts to me as he makes his way down some stairs, heading toward the locker room. I follow him. Players give interviews in the tight and enclosed space between the lockers and the parking lot. “Pachuca, Chivas, Pumas. We have tough teams coming up, but we’re not dazzled anymore,” Marco says into a bouquet of fuzzy television microphones. None of the reporters ask about the team’s emerging financial crisis. No one cares, not right now. Marco showers and dresses quickly, stepping out to the parking lot to sign autographs on posters and jerseys and even, by request, onto the skin of one boy’s back.

  “We want Maleno!” shouts El Kartel. “We want Maleno!” The local hero, the man of the match, emerges from the locker room a prodigal son, the lost striker who has regained his sassy touch in front of trembling defenses. In the mass of Karteleros seeking Maleno’s autograph I spy the grandmother arrested for exposing her breasts at the season opener in Monterrey. “Chicharrón!” I call out. She sees me and smiles. “Oh, ganamos!” she cheers. She hoists a can of Coors Light over her head. A cigarette smolders in her other hand. “We won! The whole world is in crisis, Robert, but today the Indios won and I’m just so happy!”

  Chapter 14

  Lost

  Not ten minutes outside the city, Juárez disappears. Did it ever exist? Pale sand dunes dip and rise into gentle peaks, a mocha meringue. Squiggly ridges blown onto the sand are broken by the tracks of a lynx, or maybe a rabbit; I don’t know my desert wildlife very well. The only animals I can confidently classify are a pack of Homo sapiens in pickup trucks zooming across the dunes as if the Chihuahuan Desert were a giant skateboard park. And also, closer to where I’m sinking into the sand, three more humans. One’s a photographer. The others are a young woman in a black dress and, next to her, the well-groomed physique of a seriously metrosexual soccer player. Marco and Dany are posing for their official engagement photos, and I’m serving as a sort of general assistant. I’m holding Marco’s flip-flops and Dany’s stiletto heels and a bottle of Gatorade that Marco bought on the short ride out here, and which he prefers to drink because, in his words, “I hate water.” The photographer is trying to take as many pictures as he can before the sun sets behind the Juárez Mountains, which won’t be long now.

  “Okay, now Marco, you stand behind Daniela,” he says in Spanish. “Okay, good, hands on her arms, the upper arm. Right. Now Dany, you turn back to gaze into his eyes. Con amor, por favor.”

  Without her heels, in her bare feet, Dany stands half a head shorter than Marco, kind of a perfect fit. They look good together. The other day at the Cielo Vista Mall in El Paso, shopping for this photo shoot, Dany tried on eight dresses, though she has ended up just pulling from her closet a simple and stretchy number as dark as her straight hair. (“I’m terrible with choices,” she explains.) Marco’s wearing tight white linen pants and a V-neck T-shirt colored turquoise. No Ed Hardy logos embellish the shirt, to my surprise. Marco still manages to signify baller status with the appropriate accessories: two diamond studs in his ears, his bulky white Diesel watch, Armani sunglasses, and his hair fauxhawked and glistening with a thick application of styling gel. The photographer commands him to hold Dany’s hand and march to the top of a dune immediately to the east, opposite the waning sun.

  “Now Dany, drape your hand over his neck in a way that lets us see your engagement ring.”

>   Marco and Dany met at the gym. At Total Fitness in Las Misiones Mall, where all the Indios work out for free. Marco had just finished lifting some weights and had just ended a long relationship with his girl back in Dallas. He found Dany heading for the elliptical machines, not really going anywhere in particular. Her classes at UTEP are largely to please her parents, who want her to get a degree. She cooked food at Disney World for four months, which she jokes is the only job they let Mexicans do. She agreed to go out with Marco, the first date went well, and he put the clamps down after that, right away. No other boys ever again. We’re together now and we’re going to be together forever. She happily agreed to his terms. They legally wed in a courthouse in Dallas only a few months after that first meeting in the gym. Marco feels certain he has married up. Her family’s established in Juárez. He can see himself transitioning into their maquiladora bus business when his playing days come to an end.

  Ever since their wedding, Dany’s been planning their wedding. Their official wedding, the church ceremony here in Juárez. She might not be good with choices, but she has a clear vision of how the day is going to unfold. Marco riding up to the chapel on a horse, if they can pull it off. Butterflies released during the ceremony. The reception at her family’s house, the one her parents returned to after El Paso proved too boring. She’s going to transform the backyard into a nightclub. White leather couches for lounging, small round tables for intimate talk, a row of larger tables—“ooh, with champagne-colored tablecloths”—for dinner and as a safe space for older relatives to sit witness. A live band, of course. But also mariachis. And one of those chocolate strawberry fountain things. Marco is paying for much of it, he tells me. During one discussion of flower arrangements, he made a show of objecting to the price of each bouquet, but it was clearly a show, and he clearly doesn’t object. When I asked him how much he was willing to spend on the wedding, he said he didn’t care, whatever it costs.