The Crystal Frontier

by Carlos Fuentes

  5

  MALINTZIN OF THE MAQUILAS

  For Enrique Cortázar, Pedro Garay, and Carlos Salas-Porras

  Her parents gave Marina that name because of their desire to see the ocean. When she was baptized, they said, maybe this one will get a chance to see the ocean. In the clump of shacks in the northern desert, the young would get together with their elders, and the elders would tell how, when they were young, they wondered what the ocean was like. None of us had ever seen the ocean.

  Now, as the frozen January sun rises, Marina sees only the thin waters of the Río Grande, and the sun feels that everything’s so cold it would like to slip back down between the dun sheets of the desert from which it is beginning to emerge.

  It’s five o’clock and she has to be at the factory by seven. She’s late. What made her late was making love with Rolando last night, going with him to El Paso, Texas, on the other side of the river, and returning late, alone, shivering as she crossed the international bridge to her one-room house with lavatory in Colonia Bellavista, Ciudad Juárez.

  Rolando had stayed flat on his back in bed, one arm folded behind his head, the other flattening a cellular phone to his ear. He looked at Marina with weary satisfaction, and she didn’t ask him to take her home. She could see how comfortable he was, so boyish, all cuddled up, and also so open, so moist and warm. Above all, she saw him ready to start working, making calls on his cellular phone since very early—the early bird catches the worm, especially if the bird’s a Mexican making deals on both sides of the border.

  She glanced at herself in the mirror before leaving. She was a sleepy beauty, with the thick eyelashes of a young girl. Sighing, she put on her blue down jacket, which looked bad with her miniskirt because it hung to her knees while the skirt just reached her thighs. She stuffed her work sneakers into her bag and slung it over her shoulder. Unlike the grin-gas, who walked to work in Keds and put on their high heels in the office, Marina always wore pointy high heels to work even if they sank into the mud from time to time. Marina wouldn’t sacrifice her elegant shoes for anything: no one would ever see her in worn-out shoes looking like some Apache.

  She caught the first bus on Cadmio Street, and, as she did every other morning, she tried to look beyond the dirt-colored neighborhood, the shacks that looked as though they’d popped up out of the ground. Every day, without fail, she tried to look at the vast horizon. The sky and the sun seemed her protectors; they were the beauty of the world, they belonged to everyone and cost nothing. How could ordinary people make something as beautiful as that? Everything else was ugly by comparison. The sun, the sky … and—so they said—the sea!

  She always ended up looking toward the gullies that tumbled down toward the river, as if her eyes were pulled by the law of gravity, as if even within her soul all things were always falling down. Even at this early hour the Juárez gullies looked like anthills. Activity in the poorest neighborhoods began early, as swarms of people poured out of the shacks down by the edge of the narrow river, trying to cross. She turned away, uncertain if what she saw annoyed her, embarrassed her, aroused her sympathy, or made her feel like imitating those crossing to the other side.

  Better she fix her eyes on a solitary cypress tree until she couldn’t see it anymore.

  Instead of the cypress, Marina saw only concrete, wall upon wall of concrete, a long avenue boxed in by concrete. The bus stopped at a field where some boys in shorts were playing soccer to keep warm, and then, shivering, it crossed the vacant lot to the next stop.

  She sat down next to her friend Dinorah, who was wearing a red sweater, blue jeans, and loafers. Marina held on tight to her bag but crossed her legs so Dinorah and the other passengers could see her classy high heels with a chain instead of a leather strap across the ankle.

  They made their usual small talk: How’s the little one, who’d you leave him with? At first, Marina’s questions irritated Dinorah and she would pretend to be distracted—looking for a piece of chewing gum in her bag or fixing her mop of short orange-colored curls. Then she realized she’d be running into Marina on the bus every day of her life and she would quickly answer, My neighbor’s going to take him to a day-care center.

  “There’s so few of them,” Marina would say.

  “Of what?”

  “Day-care centers.”

  “Around here, sister, there’s not enough of anything for anything.”

  She wasn’t about to tell Dinorah to get married, because the one time she did, Dinorah had responded angrily, Why don’t you go ahead and do it first? Set an example, Miss Know-It-All. Marina wasn’t about to point out that, though neither of them was married, she didn’t have a child—that was the difference. Didn’t the kid need a father?

  “What for? Around here, men don’t work. You want me to support two instead of just one?”

  Marina told her that with a man at home she’d be able to defend herself better against the pests at the factory, who were always after her because they saw that she was defenseless, that no one stood up for her. Marina’s comment infuriated Dinorah, and she told Marina she was sick and tired of her, God may have thrown them together on the same bus, but if Marina went on giving advice no one asked for, she’d quit talking to her. Marina should stop being such a hypocrite.

  “I’ve got Rolando,” said Marina, and Dinorah almost died laughing: All the girls have Rolando, and Rolando has all the girls. Who do you think you are, you idiot? Marina began to sob, though the tears didn’t roll down her cheeks but instead welled up in her eyelashes, and Dinorah felt bad. She pulled a tissue from her pocket, hugged Marina, and wiped her eyes.

  “You don’t need to worry about me, honey,” said Dinorah. “I know how to protect myself from the boys in the factory. And if someone tells me I’ve got to fuck him to get a promotion, I’ll just change factories. Anyway, nobody moves up around here. We just go sideways, like crabs.”

  Marina asked Dinorah if she changed jobs a lot. Marina’s job was her first, but she’d heard that when the girls got fed up with one place they moved on to another. Dinorah told her that after you’ve done the same work for nine months your sides start to hurt and your back won’t let you sleep.

  They had to get off to change buses.

  “You’re late too.”

  “I guess it’s for the same reason you are,” Dinorah said with a smile. They walked off laughing, arms around each other’s waist.

  The plaza, crowded with little shops and all kinds of stalls, was already bustling. Everyone was exhaling winter mist, and vendors were showing off their merchandise or hanging up their signs: Hurry, hurry, get your beans from Jean. The two women stopped to buy corn, delicious ears of it dripping melted butter and still steaming. They giggled at an advertisement: Use Macho Man for Sexual Deficiency. Dinorah asked Marina if she’d ever met a man with sexual deficiency. Marina said no, but that didn’t matter as much as choosing the right man. The right man? Well, the one you really like. Dinorah said that the men with sexual deficiencies were almost always the braggarts, the ones who bothered them and tried to take advantage of them in the factories.

  “Rolando’s not like that. He’s very macho.”

  “So you told me. And what else does he have?”

  “A cellular phone.”

  “Wow.” Dinorah rolled her eyes mockingly but said nothing more because the bus arrived and they got on to make the last leg of the trip to the assembly plant. A very thin but good-looking young woman, with an aquiline beauty unusual in those parts, came running up to catch the bus. She was in a Carmelite habit and sandals. As she took the seat in front of them, Dinorah asked if her little feet weren’t cold like that in winter, without stockings or anything. She blew her nose and said it was a vow that only made sense in the frost, not in the summer—she used the English word.

  “Do you two know each other?” asked Dinorah.

  “Only by sight,” said Marina.

  “This is Rosa Lupe. You can’t recognize her when she’s in a
saintly mood. But believe me, she’s normally very different. Why’d you get involved with this vow business?”

  “Because of my famullo.”

  She told them she’d been working in the plants for four years but her husband—her famullo—still hadn’t found work. The children were the reason: who would take care of them? Rosa Lupe looked at Dinorah, although not with obvious malice. The famullo stayed home with the kids, at least until they were grown.

  “You support him?” asked Dinorah, to get back at Rosa Lupe for her remark.

  “Just ask around at the factory. Half the women working there are the breadwinners in their families. We’re what they call heads of households. But I have a famullo. At least I’m not a single mother.”

  To avoid a fight, Marina commented that they were coming into the nice area, and without saying another word the three of them looked at the rows of cypresses lining both sides of the road. They were waiting for the incredibly beautiful vision that never failed to dazzle them though they’d seen it countless times. The television assembly plant, a mirage of glass and shining steel, like a bubble of crystalline air. It was almost like a fantasy to work there, surrounded by purity, by brilliance, in a factory so clean and modern, what the managers called an industrial park.

  It was one of the plants that allowed the gringos to assemble toys, textiles, motors, furniture, computers, and television sets from parts made in the United States, put together in Mexico at a tenth the labor cost, and sent back across the border to the U.S. market with a value-added tax. About such things the women knew little. Ciudad Juárez was simply the place where the jobs called them, jobs that did not exist in the desert and mountain villages, jobs that were impossible to find in Oaxaca or Chiapas or in the capital itself. Those jobs were here, and even if the salary was a tenth what it was in the United States, it was ten times more than the nothing paid everywhere else in Mexico.

  At least that was what Candelaria wore herself out telling them. A woman of thirty, Candelaria was more square than fat, the same size on all four sides. She always wore traditional peasant clothing, though it was difficult to tell from which region of Mexico, as the totally sincere, serious, but smiling Candelaria mixed a little bit of everything: pigtails tied with Huichol wool, Yucatan-style smocks, Texan skirts, Tzotzil belts, huaraches with Goodrich tire soles available at any market. And since she was the lover of an antigovernment union leader, she knew what she was talking about. It was a miracle she hadn’t been blackballed from all the assembly plants. But Candelaria always managed to save her skin: she was a wizard at changing jobs. Every six months she went to another factory, and each time, her boss breathed a sigh of relief because the agitator was leaving, and as far as the owners were concerned, frequent job changes meant little or no change in political consciousness: there wasn’t enough time to stir anyone up. Candelaria would just shake her comical pigtails and go on raising consciousness in one place after another, every six months.

  She had been working in the plants for fifteen of her thirty years and didn’t want to ruin her health. She’d already worked in a paint factory and the solvents had made her sick—imagine, she said at the time, spending nine months filling paint cans just to end up painted inside. That’s when she met Beltrán Herrera, a mature man—which is why Candelaria liked him—mature but with tender eyes and vigorous hands; dark-skinned, he had graying hair and wore a moustache and glasses.

  Candelaria, Bernal said to her, they wouldn’t give you water around here if you were dying of thirst. Whatever you need you’ve got to earn with the sweat of your brow. They talk about costs and profits, sure, but there’s no insurance for work-related accidents, no medical treatment, no pension, no compensation for marriage, maternity, or death. They’re doing us a big favor giving us work, thank you very much, so keep your mouth shut. Say so much as three little words, my dear Candelaria, “three little words,” as the old song goes, strike by coalition, strike by coalition, strike by coalition—say it three times like a litany, Candy sweetest, and you’ll see how they turn pale, promise you raises and bonuses, respect your opinions, urge you to switch factories. Do it, darling. I’d rather you switched than died.

  “This place is so beautiful,” sighed Marina, taking care not to let her stiletto heels puncture the green lawn marked with the double warning NO PISE EL PASTO/KEEP OFF THE GRASS.

  “It looks like Disneyland,” said Dinorah, half joking, half serious.

  “Sure, but it’s full of ogres who eat innocent princesses like you,” said Candelaria with a sarcastic smile, fully aware that her irony was lost on these three. She loved them anyway.

  Everyone but Rosa Lupe put on a regulation blue smock, and they all took their places opposite the skeletons of television sets, each ready to do her job in order—Candelaria the chassis, Dinorah the soldering, Marina the newcomer learning to repair weldings—and Rosa Lupe checked for defects like loose wires, cracked washers and, as she worked, Rosa Lupe spoke to Candelaria. Listen, don’t you think it’s about time to stop treating us like jerks? And don’t go into your Saint Candelaria act, okay? You’re always preaching to us, always treating us like shit. Candelaria opened her eyes wide. Me? Dinorah, listen, you tell me if there’s anyone more screwed than I am: I came here alone from the village, I brought my kids, then my brothers and sisters, then my dad. How’s that for a load to carry? Think I make enough?

  “Your union boss doesn’t chip in, Candelaria?”

  The square woman gave Dinorah an electric shock, a trick she knew how to do. Dinorah squealed and called the fat woman a bastard, but Candelaria just laughed and said that every one of them had a whole soap opera to tell, so maybe they should just try to get along with each other, okay? To spend their time together and not die of boredom, okay?

  “Why’d you bring your dad?”

  “For the memories,” said Candelaria.

  “Old people get in the way,” said Dinorah softly.

  All these women came from other places. That’s why they entertained one another with stories about their backgrounds, about their families, the things that made them all different. And yet at times they were astonished at how alike they were in many things—families, villages, relatives. All of them felt torn inside. Was it better to leave all that behind and set about making a new life here on the border? Or should they feed their souls with memories, hum along with José Alfredo Jiménez, feel the sadness of the past, agree that indifference is the death of the soul?

  Sometimes they looked at one another without saying a word, all four friends, comrades—Candelaria, the one who’d worked the longest in the plants, Rosa Lupe and Dinorah, who’d come at the same time, Marina, greenest of the lot—understanding that they didn’t have to use words to say these things, that they all needed love, not memories, but that even so it was impossible to separate memory from tenderness. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

  The one best at keeping track of the stories was Candelaria, and her conclusion was that all the women came from somewhere else, that none of them was from the border. She liked to ask them where they were from, but it was hard for them to talk except with Candelaria, whom they trusted and with whom they dared to link love and memory. Candelaria wanted to keep them both alive, feeling it was important they not condemn themselves to oblivion or indifference, the death of the soul. She hummed the tunes of the unforgettable José Alfredo, as the radio announcers never failed to call him.

  “From the Venustiano Carranza commune.”

  “From deep in the heart of Chihuahua.”

  “No, not from the country. From a city smaller than Juárez.”

  “Well, from Zacatecas.”

  “From La Laguna.”

  “My dad took charge of the whole move,” said Rosa Lupe, the woman with the aquiline profile who dressed like a Carmelite. “He said there were too many of us for the communal land. The land we could farm was getting smaller and smaller and drier and drier the more we divided it up among all my brothers
. I was always active, very active. At the commune they put me in charge of keeping the streets clean and the walls painted white. I liked to make confetti for the fiestas, bring in the bands, organize the children’s choruses. Dad said I was too clever to stay in the country. He brought me to the border himself when I was fifteen. My mother stayed behind with my little brothers and sisters. My father didn’t beat around the bush. He told me that I was going to make ten times more money in a month than the whole family would make in a year on the commune. That I was very active. That it wasn’t going to break me down. As long as he stayed here, I accepted things. He was like an extension of my life in the village. I didn’t tell him I missed the land, my mother, my little brothers and sisters, the religious festivals, especially Candlemas—like Candelaria!—when we dress up the Christ Child, decorate the Holy Cross, and have these terrific scary fireworks. And Ash Wednesday, when the whole village wore charcoal crosses on their foreheads, Holy Week, when the Jews with their white beards and long noses and black overcoats come out to play tricks on Christians. All of it—pilgrimages, the Wise Men—I missed it all. Here I look up the dates on the calendar, I have to make an effort to remember them, but back there I didn’t. The fiestas came along without having to be remembered, see? But my father set me up here in Juárez in a one-room house and told me, ‘Work hard and find a man. You’re the cleverest one in the family.’ Then he left.”