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Sunday, April 1, 2001 Immigrant finds journey, life roughBy CLAUDIA MOSCOSO | News-Journal Staff Writer AGUA PRIETA, MEXICO — She was among 30 Mexican dreamers trying to sneak across Mexico's Sonora desert into the United States. Her goal was to earn a fat paycheck, 16 times larger than her weekly pay back home.
The journey began at nightfall. She and the other strangers formed a human chain, walking one in front of the other. She wore all her belongings -- two pairs of pants, a jacket and a blouse -- so she could move like a snake crawling in between barbed wire fences and sand. Silence and fear became her companions. Two coyotes, as human smugglers are known, guided the way. One walked in front of the group, whistling and alerting the others. She moved quickly, eating and sleeping only when she was told. Above all she kept quiet, very quiet. She didn't say a word when she felt thorny bushes ripping her clothes or when she got lost in the darkness. She lay still on the ground watching a U.S. border patrol vehicle cruising by, its lights flashing. Moments later she saw an immigration officer walking toward the group. He stopped just a few feet away from her, waving a flashlight toward the travelers who were on the ground. Somehow he didn't see them. "We stayed on the ground for at least half an hour after that," she said in Spanish. She got more bad news after she stood up. The coyotes had abandoned the group. Just a few days before finding herself surrounded by strangers amidst the shadows of the night, she thought she had gathered enough courage to follow through with her dream of coming to America, even if that meant risking her life. She didn't want to sit idle anymore, seeing her ailing parents go hungry, often forced to choose between buying groceries or a pair of shoes. Months before she decided to leave Central Mexico, she kept remembering the stories her friends had told her about Northwest Volusia. They said it was a land of evergreen fern fields and plenty of jobs. She often thought she might have been destined to work in that foreign land. She certainly felt qualified, having enough experience working for years in onion, tomato and broccoli plantations at home. Her friends in Northwest Volusia had said they would help her with all the arrangements for the trip, which included transportation from Arizona to a home in Northwest Volusia. So, despite her late grandfather's advice to stay put where she was, she decided to leave. She stuffed her embroidered knapsack with bread, cookies and ham, and said goodbye one last time to her parents before embarking on a journey toward the unknown. Everything had been planned. She and seven others were dropped off at a hotel near the border. Then, someone guided them to a makeshift cardboard house. She was to spend the first night there. Twenty-two other pilgrims were already inside, most of them men. Some crammed themselves into the tiny house, and ended up sharing beds with strangers or sleeping in sofas. She slept outside -- the languid flames of a bonfire were her only covers. Water was rationed at sunrise. She was handed a bucket of water to shower. At around 11 p.m. the coyotes said it was time to form a line and start walking. Their strange whistling noises began. But the coyotes vanished as soon as the immigration officers were spotted nearby. Luckily for her, some of the people in the group had tried to cross the border at least once before, and knew the way back to the hut. Two people stayed behind hoping to cross the border on their own. In the hut, the coyotes reassured her that they never meant to abandon the group. A day or two later, the journey began all over again, sneaking beneath fences, crawling, brushing against dense underbrush and feeling ice stick to her clothes at night. "I saw many, many stars that night," she remembered. She paused to wipe sweat off her face while apologizing for getting so nervous as she relived the experience. "La migra," the immigration officials, weren't around on her second try. She made it, she said. Once on the other side, she and the others had to wait for several days near the border. The two people who decided to stay behind in the desert had just returned to the hut. The coyotes were gathering enough people in Mexico to make the journey worthwhile. And, when they finally did, they had problems, finding the "migra" along the way and starting the journey from scratch three or four times. The second half of the journey began several days later, when the entire group reunited in Arizona. About 33 people crammed into a van, some fit between seats and the legs of others, while other travelers laid on top of others. Only the coyotes were to be seen to prevent raising any suspicions. She only ate once during the three-day road trip, although the van stopped two more times for food. But she said that many of the people inside the van had not showered for days and stunk so much that she lost her appetite. Her quest for fortune ended up costing her much more than $2,000 -- the price the coyotes charged her. Besides having to borrow all that money from friends, she also had to leave her loved ones back home. Now, she isn't certain all the agony and pain of crossing the border was worth it. Every day she goes to cut fern in Northwest Volusia's fern fields, she feels a void in her life. She misses her family very much. She also has found out that life in America isn't as rosy as she had pictured it. |
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