The Jaguar's Children

by John Vaillant

We got off the bus in Altar, which is in the state of Sonora, eighty kilometers from the border. This is where my father instructed me to go. Altar is a little town only for migrantes and narcos and you pay extra to get off there. There is a lot of extra between Oaxaca and el Norte. From the bus I saw a sign saying ÉXODO 1:12. I was half asleep, tired from traveling three days, and I thought it was the time until we reached that place. But then there was another one—ÉXODO 3:17 and then MATEO 5:5 and more after that. Maybe you have a Bible and you can tell me what this means.

  The moment we stepped off the bus we were surrounded by coyotes, some on foot and some in vans with dark windows. They were working that place like pimps and all their girls had sexy American names—

  “Yo, chapo, you want L.A., Atlanta, Nueva York? I got ’em right now.”

  “Oye, esé, you like Miami—you get a job in a country club ten dollars an hour como mi hermano. Todo es posible. We go tonight.”

  “¡Chis, Oaxaca! Over here. Where you want to go, güey? Tacoma? I got a good price for you.”

  In the north, Oaxaca is an insult and many times that first day I heard it—“Heyyyy, Oaxaquito!” What they are really saying is, “Heyyyy, stupid poor indio from the south, let me take your money!”

  I just looked away because everyone knows there are many pandilleros up here. But in my mind I was saying, “Chinga tu madre y chupa mi verga oaxaqueña, pinche pendejo.”

  Besides the church which is old from the days of the missions, there is nothing in Altar, barely a tree, just a few blocks of houses, some hotels and restaurants, a gas station, the Western Union, some little tiendas and many rooms and beds for rent. Always on the plaza was an old man sweeping with his broom made of branches—sweeping and sweeping even when there was nothing to sweep. There are stalls there with things to buy, but there is nothing for the house or the milpa, nothing nice to eat or to wear. Besides expensive water, it is mostly clothes and almost all of them are black or gray—T-shirts, jackets, balaclavas and gloves, even the bags—so you can be invisible in the desert, in the dark, because that is what a migrante needs to be to make it in el Norte.

  Altar is the same I think in English—where you go to make an offering, a sacrifice. You can tell by the faces and the bodies that people come from everywhere to do this—not only from Mexico, but Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, some guëros and chinos too. There were so many—hundreds, thousands even—almost all men, wandering around the bus stop, the plaza, the streets. It was like the corrals at the matadero where they keep the cattle waiting. There were more around the church of Our Lady of Guadalupe and inside also, praying for the journey. In Altar, la Virgen de Guadalupe is everywhere—on the men’s jackets, on their pants, tattooed on their skin and painted on the walls, rising up over the mountains of el Norte to guide and comfort her dark children—los migrantes, los peregrinos, los hijos de la chingada.

  Most of them are walking. It is a long trip, two or three days from the Sásabe crossing, and it is easy to get lost in the desert, easy to die. Along the border there are signs from the government saying, ¡CUIDADO! IT’S NOT WORTH IT, with pictures of snakes and scorpions and skulls. But when you look north, past the sand and rock and mesquite, toward that wall of mountains with only cactus growing, you still believe you can do it because who wants to turn back now when you came so far? What is there to go back to? Your family is depending on you. And if you are still not sure, there is the voice of the coyote—“¡Ándale! Stay together. If you fall behind we cannot wait for you.” This is the message of Progress in the New World, and coyotes are the messengers. But some of us do fall behind. In Altar, by the church, I saw a map with red dots marking all the places migrantes have died. Everywhere north of Sásabe was covered in red dots, all the way to Tucson. If they ever make a Guinness Book of Third World Records, this border will be in there for sure.

  It was César’s idea to go in the truck. I was going to walk across because it is cheaper, but César told me about his older brother, Goyo, who walked into California from Tecate and nearly died. “He had a good coyote who stayed with them,” said César, “but they got lost anyway. It was only when one of them climbed a small mountain and saw the lights that they knew where to go. By the time they got to the place on the highway to meet the van, they’d had no water for a whole day and they were almost crazy. He said their saliva was like glue, their tongues so thick they couldn’t speak. And that was in January.

  “Goyo saw some things out there,” said César. “At the end of the first day they found a body. He told me it was like the ones you see in las catacumbas where the mouth is open screaming and screaming and the skin is tight like a drum. The face of this one, he said it was full of cactus spines. Because this is what happens when you go crazy from the thirst—you will try to eat a cactus and the pain will not stop you. Nothing will stop you and anything is possible,” said César. “Goyo told me that face stays with him—como un fantasma oscuro—visiting him in the night. There is another thing my brother saw out there and that was the diapers. Goyo is a father, you know, and to think of babies and small children out there in such an infierno—‘Who can do this with a child?’ he said.”

  César’s brother told him there are thousands of bodies out there, thousands of red dots. When I was young in the pueblo the padre read to us about the Valley of Dry Bones, but then I did not know it was real, or that those bones were ours. César said his brother made him swear on their mother he would never try to walk across, but it wasn’t until we got to Altar and met Lupo that César told me of this promise.

  We found Lupo in his garage across from el Mercado Coyote Blanco. He was tall and thin with rings in both ears and a mustache so short and fine you can count the hairs. There was some kind of tattoo animal crawling out of his collar. I couldn’t see what it was, but its claws were in his neck. When Lupo gave us the choice to walk for twenty thousand or ride for thirty, César is the one who said to me, “There is some risk with a vehicle of getting discovered at the border, but I’m telling you, man, three hours in a truck beats the shit out of three days in the desert.”

  I could have left him then. I had the chance, but I was afraid to go alone. I called my father and told him about the truck and how it was more expensive but safer than walking. He called back soon. Don Serafín would permit this, he said, but I must pay the difference and if I don’t make the payments every month there will be a problem between him and Don Serafín—so I must not fail. I know my father was afraid for me, but he is also afraid of Don Serafín and how I might cause him shame and other problems if I don’t pay back the money. That was the last time I talked to my father, and after it I felt like I was carrying one of his buckets of cement.

  César made his own bargain with Lupo, but he did not speak of it to me and I did not ask. Once this was done there was only the waiting for the truck to be ready. Behind the garage where Lupo and his compadres were working, there was a little choza with some old mattresses and pieces of foam on the floor and this is where he told us to sleep. “If you go out,” he said, “be careful. You can be kidnapped here. It doesn’t matter if you have nothing, they will get it from your family no matter where you live. And if they can’t, they can make you carry a gun for them or maybe la mota. Or maybe they just kill you for your liver and kidneys—there is a market for that here too—and when they finish there are many holes in the desert filled with Oaxacas just like you.”

  He wasn’t lying about this. “My brother Goyo made this trip many times,” said César, “but five years ago was the last time. Before, it was different—you could go back and forth, no problems. You might get robbed, but you wouldn’t be kidnapped and killed. Now the whole situation is changing—many times they move the people and the drugs together. I think now he can never come back to Mexico.”

  It is the same for my tío in L.A. who has no papers. He hasn’t been home in ten years. That part of the family is broken off now, like they went to China.

  The last thing Lupo said
to us before they closed up the hole—“Whatever happens, don’t make a sound.”

  Well, something happened. First the road was smooth for maybe an hour like we were on the highway to Sonoita, and then it wasn’t. I thought, Oh, it is construction, because in Mexico the road is always under construction. I said this to César. And this is when he said, “Dios, espero que sí.” That is when I began to be afraid. There was something in his voice and I was thinking then I must save my water. I don’t know these other people except for César and I said nothing after that, only to curse when my head hit the wall of the tank. The road was never smooth again, only rough and more rough, and we were banging around inside here like turkeys in the back of my father’s truck. People were becoming frightened and angry and the air was getting bad. Our clothes were wet from the rusty water and the things growing and this was mixing with our dried sweat and sour clothes from all the days traveling to be here and it smelled like food going bad. It was the end of the night and because most of us are from the south it was cold for us. Whatever clothes we had, we were wearing them. For me it was only jeans, a polo and my sweatshirt with the hood.

  We drove like this, slow, in a low gear, for another hour—maybe more, it is difficult to say. Something happens to your sense of time in the dark. Then we stopped like we hit a wall. I heard heads and bodies hitting the front of the tank. There was crying and cursing and some little pieces of prayers, even though we were supposed to be quiet. The truck was leaning to one side and I knew something had happened to the front wheel—maybe it was flat or in a hole. But the motor was still running and we were still hoping that this was the border and that soon we would be moving again because to imagine something else was intolerable. Es demasiado.

  Someone whispered, “¿La frontera?” Another said, “¡Gracias a Dios!” Then César said a prayer to la Virgen María de Juquila who is not only César’s protector but a great help to travelers, especially Zapotecos. Of course we have many virgins in Mexico and most of them are guëras—white, like you maybe, but Juquila es una morena, dark like us. Like me. We look into her small face and see someone we know and many people, including César, believe she really understands. For her my family has made the pilgrimage. Our Juquila is the smallest virgin of them all—the size of a Barbie with long black hair, and I was thinking then, Yes, Juquilita is the right virgin for this situation. She is small enough to fit in here. After the truck stopped everything was still, everyone holding their breath and listening, except for César who prayed for all of us quiet and quick—

  Dear Mother, Virgin of Juquila, Virgin of our life,

  please intercede in all misfortunes that may befall us.

  If, in this world of injustice, of misery and sin,

  you see that our lives are turbulent, don’t abandon us.

  Dear Mother, protect the travelers and pilgrims.

  Guide the poor who have nothing and those whose bread has been

  taken from them.

  Accompany us throughout our journey, liberate us from sin,

  and please—deliver us home.

  There was whispering and soft words as some others followed along, and at the end in many voices, “Amén.”

  There were small sounds in the dark then as some people crossed themselves, kissed a crucifix, a medallion, their crossed fingers, counted off their rosaries. I had nothing but the little clay head my abuelo gave me and I held this tight in my fist. I will tell you, it is not the head of a saint or a virgin, it is the head of a jaguar made a long time ago when men and jaguars lived much closer together. My grandfather knew this animal well. Never was this an easy thing to do, now it is harder.

  After César’s prayer, we did like Lupo told us—we stayed silent as water in a tank. For an hour we waited like this with the motor running. Outside, there was no other sound, no voices or birds, no other cars or trucks. I wondered to myself if this was a special crossing point in the desert. Maybe we were waiting for someone to come and read the words on the truck—the secret coyote code. César was sitting next to me and I felt him moving in the dark. “Where are we?” he whispered. “What the fuck are they doing out there?”

  Right after that I felt him stand up. I don’t know why he did this, maybe he was impatient, but in that same moment the engine roared and the truck jumped forward and then stopped dead—the motor and everything. It was a surprise for everyone and it threw us all backward. I hit my head hard on the back wall and I felt César falling over me. There was so much shouting and cursing it took a moment to understand what was happening, but soon I knew there was a problem with César. He wasn’t moving, he was only lying on me, very heavy. I said his name, but there was no answer. I was feeling for his face, and when I found him his forehead was wet and I knew it wasn’t water. Right there near his head is a place on the back wall where the pipes come in—only a few centimeters, but the edges are sharp and it was enough to hurt César. I rolled him off me and put my ear to his face. He was breathing, but not in the normal way.

  I was telling the people around me that a man is hurt, but a woman in front started banging on the tank and screaming. Others were telling her to stop. “¡Chis, cállate!” they hissed. “You will give us away!” There was some kind of fighting then, it moved through the tank in a wave and I was kicked in the face. That was the third time I wished I never left Oaxaca. I heard the door of the truck and someone outside hit the tank hard with a pipe or a stone, shouting, “Shut the fuck up or you will all be discovered and shot!”

  This is what they say can happen on the border now—maybe your Minutemen, maybe agents from la Migra take you in the green truck, and no one ever sees you again. So we were quiet then because no one wants to die or disappear, and César, my only friend in here, lying next to me just breathing and breathing like a broken machine.

  3

  Thu Apr 5—11:56

  It is hard to say this, AnniMac, because I am ashamed to be in such a situation. But what reason to hide it now? Who knows, maybe you would do the same in my place. I must tell you so that somebody knows what happened to César and all of us. Maybe you can find the people who did this.

  Luego, it happens like this—

  The truck is stopped, we don’t know where, and César is lying beside me somewhere between death and sleeping. Outside, I can hear the coyotes talking to themselves. They are coyotes so of course they are hard to understand, but it sounds like they are looking at the truck, trying to figure out what to do. I whisper once more that someone is hurt but no one notices because they are trying to hear the coyotes. So I feel César’s face again and his forehead, and there is the cut, right on the line where the hair is growing and it is pushed in a little bit, the skin and bone together. I open my water bottle and pour some drops on his forehead to wash the blood away, but it keeps coming so with my phone I look around for something to stop it and that’s when I see the little cotton dress sticking out of his jacket pocket, the one he bought for the Virgin Juquila when we were still in Oaxaca. The blood is coming fast and there isn’t time to think so I put the dress on there and push on it.

  This is when I hear one of the coyotes climbing on the hood, on top of the cab. There is a scraping noise at the front of the tank, near the top, and then comes a blade of light so sharp we all cry out and cover our eyes. We are mostly grown men and women in there but the way we hide and cover ourselves is like when your father comes at you with the belt. A moment comes and goes like this and then carefully I look through my fingers. The light is still there blinding, screaming in over our heads—como la Anunciación—and I understand it is a flashlight coming through a small hole. Then a shadow comes across it and I see only teeth.

  “¡Amigos! ¿Qué tal?” says the shadow with its teeth. “Tenemos un pequeño problema aquí. It is the front wheel—this is broken. Everything else is OK but we must bring our mechanic to fix it. We tried many times to call but he will not answer so now we must go to find him. We are close—only ten kilometers so it won’t
take long. We will bring back some water too because maybe you are getting thirsty.”

  “¿Cuando?” asks a man in the front.

  “Not until the night. Because of la Migra.”

  “How long is that?”

  There is a moment, another blade of light is stabbing us and then the shadow again. “Not long—a few hours.”

  This of course cannot be true because we left only a few hours ago and a man in front with a Zapotec accent says, “What are you talking about? It’s six in the morning! We can’t wait here all day!”

  “¡Cabrón!” says the coyote. “Be quiet or you will make big problems for us and for you. La pinche Migra has powerful sensors all over the desert and they can hear everything you say. Oye, we want to help you, but we are going to need some money to do it.”

  “We already paid our money,” says the Zapotec man.

  “Yes, but that is different money, only for Don Serafín. It is untouchable. We are just the guides, amigo, and now we have this little problem so we must work together to fix it, no?”

  “How much?” asks another man. He sounds old and tired and I wonder if he has done this before.

  “To buy the parts and pay the mechanic to come here—five hundred,” says the coyote. “Five-fifty with the water.”

  “Five hundred and fifty pesos,” says the Zapotec man.

  The coyote makes a disgusting noise and spits. “¡No más pesitos! You’re in America now, bro—”

  “Then let us out!” shouts the baker from Michoacán.

  “Tranquilo,” says the coyote. “It isn’t safe here. And we have no torch.” There is a silence in the truck. “The mechanic has one, but he won’t take pesos. Solamente dólares gringos.”