To Those GOOD FOLKS With Whom I Like To Exchange Stories, share ideas, mutually engage in real work, visit and generally keep up to date:
Look here. Nine Posts. Nine.
A couple of years ago, for three years, I served as a Co-Moderator of the Presbyterian Youth Connection, which is like the "Congress" of Presbyterian youth. I learned a lot about email. Along with my co-hort Patricia, we coordinated meetings, recruited volunteers, and passed ideas along. Because of my work with the Youth Connection, I had somewhere around 300 related email addresses in my address book. I learned a lot about emails and, more generally, about communication. If, for instance, I was in need of some help to run a meeting, plan a conference, or start a movement (you know, small things) and I sent a blanket email to "Everybody out there"-- around 300 folks-- I'd get absolutely no responses. If, on the other hand, I copy-pasted the email into ten separate emails, added a personalized first paragraph like "That book you were telling me about, you know The Populist Moment?, really sounded great. I've put it on my "to read" list. You know, I got to thinking about something that's coming up..." and started the emails with names: "Hey Michael!" "Lateef listen here" "Megan, check this out" "Fauntleroy" you know "Daniel-" "Rachel" "Lindsey" "Chris" "Mary, how are you?" ... with this bit of personalization, I'd end up getting nearly eight out of ten responses, and a bunch of them would be positive.
But, of course, I'm not doing that with these update emails. So, after eight emails, your mental space, your lack of time, and your fidgety fingers probably add up to a desire to delete. Hey, I've done it too. These emails aren't about guilt; I don't think good things come of that emotion.
So...
I moved in with my host family. Spanish for breakfast, lunch, dinner, late evening snack. All spanish, all the time. The first night here, I wrote in my journal:
"So, I've moved in with my homestay. Oh my God I am tired. As I try to find words even in english, they are impeded by the great slate of blank, like the "nothingness" from the Never Ending Story; it consumes all thoughts and they are forever lost as my mind attempts comprehension and my thoughts navigate rapid translation. Every gap is filled with the meaningless word "Pues" (Well). Something funny? "Pues." Something serious? "Pues." Something I agree with? "Pues." Something I don't understand? "Pues" Mi mente esta muy cansado, tanto cansado. Solamente tengo dos mas palabras: Buenos Noches. [My mind is very tired, so tired. I only have two more words: Good Night.]"
The first night, before I wrote in my journal, we met our to-be host families at a potluck dinner party. We started learning all the important words, like, you know: boogers. "How do you say, caca en tu nariz (poop en your nose)?" Mocos. As it turns out, "mocosos" are "snotty nosed little children" or just "kids." So, we learned the five, ten, or fifteen other ways to say kids. In spanish, or at least in northern Mexico, there's about a million different ways to say everything. Everything. Cada cosa. Todas las cosas. And so it goes.
About that time at the party, amid the laughter, Fausto, my to-be host father, reacted to our use of english. "No. You can't. No!" he joked. "From now on, only spanish. No more english. You're here to learn spanish, so you can only speak in spanish. Every english word costs one dollar." I bargined with him: "How about ten cents?" "No, un dolar," he said. I've been living with Fausto, Chayito (the mother), Iban (20-year-old son) and Cynthia (12-year-old daughter) now for two weeks. Still, every use of engligh in the house is promptly called out: "Un dolar!" Of couse, nobody actually pays. The other day, I called Fausto out because he said "Good morning." When I said, "Un dolar!" he said that we were actually even because I'd said "dolar" and "dolares" (or dollars) are American and therefore english, and so, in fact, I owed him a dollar. "No, no," he corrected himself: "10 pesos."
Currently it costs 10.85 pesos to change for a dollar. In 1994, it was three to one (3 pesos, 1 dollar). Promptly after the passage of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), in a matter of two days, the peso devalued to 50% of its prior exchange value. In two days, the exchange rate went from 3:1 to 6:1. Two days. Imagine going to the grocery and paying $7.50 for milk this Sunday. The devaluation was wrapped up in the NAFTA negotiations. I read it was anticipated and agreed upon. Why? Who'd it help? NAFTA has cost the U.S. workers three million jobs, and our neighbors to the south have to pay $7.50 for milk. Good ole not-free, free trade.
The wall, "el muro" is practically in my host family's backyard. Well, it's in the neighborhood, just up the street. The first day in the neighborhood, I walked up the street and saw these great rolling hills just a few hundred yards away. My mind raced forward to picnicks and afternoon reading opportunities. I kept walking up the hill, and, then, in the ravine between the hills, I saw the wall. 16ft of rusted corrogated steel with a guard-rail at the top to prevent recreation and temp-work. Well dang. My imagined picnick would cost a possible concussion and a felony. 100 yards: so close, yet so far away.
Remember Elias? My spanish tutor? The guy whom I asked how to say "Your feet stink like dead fish"? The man loves to eat acorns. We watched Narnia the other day in Spanish, and jointly munched away. They're a lot sweeter here than in the East. My friend Rachel Williamson, from Warren Wilson told me that she'd found a single oak tree at Warren Wilson that had "the sweetest nuts on campus. [She] ate a whole acorn without spitting it out." So either Elias found the sweet tree, or they're just sweeter here in northern Mexico.
Anyway, today we went across town on the buses to a community center where he works teaching kids English. Last night was halloween, so a little snotty nosed kid, a "mocoso" had a bag of candy and shared it around. She kept insisting I have some, but, of course, I can't eat sugar. I swear those kids love Elias. When he took out his guitar, all talking stopped, and they gathered around. Listening. Watching. The four-year-old, Martin kept trying to strum the cords. Eventually, we moved around back to the basket-ball court. Elias left his guitar in the hands of Martin and the other five-year-olds while we and the rest of the children played a game a lot like duck-duck-goose. Then he played some more songs. After a song or two, the kids began to drift away.
The girls started doing cartwheels and back-bends. The boys climbed on top of the basketball goal and jumped down acting like their favorite wreslers from the Lucha Libre (Mexico's WWF). All of them called for attention. "Natan! Mira (Look). Watch me. Watch this." And to Elias: "Profe! (Teacher!) Profe! Look. Watch. Watch me. You weren't looking. Hey, I'll do it again. Watch. Watch!"
Katie, my niece, she's ten. I know about this stuff.
They did their own thing until Elias started singing and playing songs in English. The cords started; I thought: Do I know this one? What is this? No, I can't. Of course not. Ahha! It was "Imagine," John Lenin's song. Then he played "Stand By me", the overly-sentimental song that I can only guess originated in the early nineties. If you want to know beauty, listen to 25 little mocosos try to sing, "Darling, Darling, Darling. Stand. Stand by me."
Of course, it's has become routine now to hear people speak of "el otro lado" (the other side). The first couple of times I heard the phrase, I asked for clarification: "The other side of what?" Or, one time, we were walking on the street, so I asked, "Over there?" pointing. No. It means the other side of the wall, the Estados Unidos, the United States.
The great thing about talking spanish with kids is that they do most of the talking. They say a lot of "watch!" They fill me in on the gossip of their friends: so-and-so is her boy friend-- "No he's not!" "Yeah. He. Is." But, mostly all I have to do is listen, and nod, and laugh, and try to offer appropriate listening grunts. They have a lot to share. The problem arrises when they ask me questions in their high-pitched, pre-puberdescent voices. They're about as easy to understand as, well, um-- They're hard to understand.
Still in the community center, midstride through a smile-and-nod, I received the blank, anticipatory look that means I was supposed to say something because my companion asked me a question. I'd missed it entirely. Turned out, Guadalupe was asking me where I was from, and some other details. I told her I was from Florida. Her nine-year-old face screwed up in confusion. Her friend clarified the situation: "It's on the other side," he said. "Oh," she said, "I've got an uncle that lives in Phoenix, en el otro lado (on the other side)."
The wall was built in 1994 here in Nogales as part of the Border Patrol's "Operation Safeguard." Guadalupe was born in 1997. It's part of her reality. I guess kids grew up in Berlin as well. Nogales is not a Mexican town. Only because of the wall, there now is a Nogales, AZ and a Nogales, Sonora. It historically was known as Ambos Nogales (or both Nogaleses). Nogales is a border town. Ceselia, a long-term employee with BorderLinks told us yesterday that back before the wall, folks would call across the chain-linked fence to their neighbors, many whom were friends: "Hey. Could you pick me up a gallon of milk?" "Yeah, grab me a pint of tequila on your side and we'll swop." It was faster than going through the Port of Entry.
When you drive into Mexico, you don't have to show your drivers license. When you drive to the U.S., you've got to huff exhaust for one and a half to two hours waiting in the customs Port of Entry line. You've got to answer questions about what you did, where you're going, whether you're "bringing anything back with you?" etc, etc. All cars get stopped, and poorer vehicles, darker faces, and heavier accents all increase the likelihood of a search, canine sniff-out, and further questioning. I'm not crying for anybody or throwing guilt; it's just true. You ought to know. For a U.S. citizen to enter Mexico, you've got to... nothing. If you're Mexican, in order to enter the U.S., you've got to have a crossing card (which costs $300 U.S. dollars), or a Visa (which also costs at least $300), and starting in January, everyone also has to have a passport (which costs $80 U.S. dollars). Starting in January, US citizens will also be required to carry a US passport to re-enter the U.S. from Mexico.
At the top of the 16ft corrogated steel wall, there is a guard rail. I've mentioned it twice before. It angles backwards into Mexico. The edge is sharp. Back in September, our Border Parol tour guide told us about how he sliced open his arm rather seriously during the wall's construction. On the U.S. side, I often heard this wall talked about as "protection." Here the kids talk about the wall and "the other side." Folks here think of the wall more like the walls of a cage. In reality, they don't talk about it much. It's a rather bitter subject. Here it's not wrapped in such good PR. It's actually rusted corrugated steel, 16ft tall with a guardrail at the top.
It's a curious thing, our border relations with Mexico. Have you ever ran into one of those folks that are seriously afraid of germs? They're usually pretty insulting. I like to think of myself as a fairly clean person. I wash my hands. I don't cut my vegetables on the same cutting board as my meat without washing it first. And then, there are those folks that microwave their sponges before every use in order to sterilize them. They tend to furrow their eyebrows a lot and open their mouth in panic when you abid by the "five-second rule." They're only a step away from Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets. They're the folks that don't really want to hug you, and if you're in town, they're afraid to offer you a place to stay because they'll have to wash their sheets and hire a fumigator as soon as you leave. Really? What do they think I've got? Gengivitis, leprosy, cold-sores, hand-fugus, influenza, and oozing venereal disease? What the heck?
Sometimes I think that American immigration policy is kind of like the reactions of an obsessively-clean, rich person. Really? They're Mexican. Well shit. Then they must be dirty, lazy, dishonest, theiving, illegal, impatient, waiting for a hand-out, and a-- if not already, a potential-- rapist. Solution: keep them away. Let's build a fence-- make it a wall. And, we need to micro-wave our sponges and take some antibiotics. Please. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), please, we need you to sterilize our community as well. Raid our communities too, please.
Remember the Greyhound? Folks I know tend to have a certain hesitancy with folks that have less money than they do. They're "dangerous." I do it too. It's no secret that we let slip words like "The sketchy part of town," which is affluent-code for "the poor part of town" or "they-have-less-money-than-we-do part of town." Y'all. We do the same thing with the twelve million illegal migrants. Except it's worse because they've got even less money.
That's a couple of things I've been seeing, hearing, living, and thinking.
peace be with you,
Nathan
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