The Sandwich Family

Tips for crossing illegally from Mexico into the U.S. (as told to me by a middle-class Mexican businessman.)  

Arizona vs. Texas

Cross from Mexico into Arizona and you’re crossing into the desert.  You might die of dehydration in the debilitating heat and you’ll inevitably get lost.  But, if U.S. Immigration arrests you they’ll send you home fairly fast ~ just two months incarceration.  Arizona is only preferable to Texas because during the day, you can hide in the sand.

It's easier to survive crossing from Mexico into Texas, but it's tougher to hide.  If U.S. Immigration catches you in Texas, and if it's your first or second "offense" you are looking at six months behind bars before you're deported home.

I personally know 4 Mexican nationals who got into the U.S., worked there for years and then were deported only to then attempt to save up the $8K needed to pay the coyote and the cartel to make another run for the border.  The 5th Mexican National I know who crossed is my friend Jose.  This is his story and the story of his wife's family.

Jose and Deanna's Food Shop

Mornings at 8 a.m. I appear at my next-door-neighbor's "shop" for fresh squeezed orange juice and a ham/cheese/jalapeno Bimbo bread sandwich.  

$1.97 U.S. Breakfast

Deanna would make the sandwich, and her husband Jose squeezed the oranges.  (Neither are pictured for legal reasons.)

That was, until Jose went missing.  As the story goes, Jose left San Miguel de Allende for a multi-month stone mason job in California.  His reason?  His family needed the income.

Because Jose didn't have papers,  he paid a coyote to get him across the Mexican/American border.

For 2 months no one heard a word.

I was alone with my hand-ringing over his disappearance.  Jose's  in-laws weren't uselessly sniffling.  They immediately showed up at the "shop"

Rosa

David

to lift the day-to-day business operation from Deanna's shoulders so that she could stay home and take care of her young children.

Rosa, Jose's mother-in-law began making my daily sandwich.  David, Jose's father-in-law, squeezed my orange juice.

Israel's Clothing for Sale

The family aggressively ratcheted up their business model to include the sale of clothing.  Jose's brother-in-law Israel took charge of that.

In the background, during all this food prep and clothing sales played classical music off a beat box.  This didn't fit at all with my mental image of a poor family trying to make ends meet one sandwich at a time.  I offered to call immigration.  The family just smiled at me.  I offered the family use of my US Vonage landline.  When they refused, I thought they were pretending not to understand my spanish.

Set to Guanajuato Classical Music Station

Rosa

Every morning I asked for news of Jose.  I assumed that all were stoically preparing to learn that Jose either died in the Arizona desert or was in prison.

Far too slowly, I found myself challenging a lot of my preconceived notions about my neighbors.  (All of them were due to my ignorance of the spanish language.)

Pre-conception:  They are poor and uneducated. 

Pre-conception:  They will never climb from poverty one sandwich at a time.

Sandwich Prep Area

Pre-conception:  They need my help.

And then one early morning, I saw this:





On my street, set up next to a parked truck, Jose's other brother-in-law Martine was playing the violin.

Maestro Martine (seated)

Okay, street musician.  No big deal.  Right?

Wrong.  It was a big deal because Rosa, Martine's brother had told me HERSELF that her brother had brain damage.

And the only time I ever saw Martine was when he was riding around the neighborhood on his bicycle delivering house plants.

Israel

I went to Israel for answers and found out that in reality my "adopted" sandwich family are professionally trained, classical violinists.  Martine is a violin teacher.

Other members of the family that do not live here in San Miguel de Allende perform with the Mexico City Philharmonic and the New York Philharmonic.  Israel has a college degree in marketing and is a professional drummer.  Rosa has been playing violin since she was five and she's a pastry chef.

As for Jose, he is a master stonemason who needed work and so he tried, unsuccessfully, to take a short-term job in the United States.

Jose was arrested and imprisoned in Arizona.  He was later released and is now back in San Miguel.  He is looking into becoming a cab driver for the time being.  He is banned from the U.S. for the next 5 years.

THE CAVE MAN OF SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE

CAVE MAN

I have never seen him in clothes other than these.  He is my neighbor and he lives in a cave hidden behind an ancient wood door.   Once in awhile he leaves the cave and goes shopping.  One San Miguel block takes a good hour.  

Stooped from the middle he cusses as he inches along.  His right hand “cane” is a pick ax. 
His second cane is a mop wrapped in  oily cloth. 

Last week he yelled at a passing child to bring him a soda.  The boy returned with a Coke and heaved it at the old man.  Few get too close.


Once I opened my iron gate and there he was.  I almost toppled him over.  He snarled.  “Pase, pase, pase!,”  Which means move, move, move.  
I did.

But, he has people.  I think they're family.  Who else would come.  During the rains, I walked to his cave door.  There I saw a rather ordinary middle-aged woman stacking his garbage inside and an ordinary man up on his makeshift tree branch roof laying broken red tiles

I've got to find out who he is, how he came to live like this in a hovel of rocks.