The coyote had sent him and two others in a different bus, as the minivan where the original group was travelling was packed to the brim. This is problematic, because as the immigrants make their way across Mexico the coyotes must pay a tax to allow for the passage of individuals further north. The head of this operation, unnamed, is one who knows each coyote by name and face.
This was Jose's first time travelling north, and as such there was no way he could know what to expect, unless by chance he ran across others in his youth who could relate with truth and accuracy the hardships of the ever changing terrain.
It was in Reynosa where several armed men stopped the bus he and the two paisanos were riding. They began asking for credentials: passports, visas, IDs. Jose and his company, coming from a small village in Honduras, knowing they were embarking in an essentially clandestine course, failed to carry any form of identification on their persons. They were asked to get off the bus. One of the two paisanos, extremely afraid, broke off running. He was soon chased down and beaten with the butt of the gun, hauled back bruised and bleeding, to be carried off with Jose and the other man in a Toyota truck to some unknown location.
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Monday, July 4, 2011
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Jose 1:
Jose (#1, as anonymously each male will be called Jose and each female Maria) grew up in a small village of Intibuca called Pueblo Nuevo. He is a young, brown skinned man in his early twenties, voicing a shrill laughter of E's naughty jokes. He appears to have arrived to Virginia from the Garden of Eden, knowing nothing of sex or nudity and calling marriage 'accompaniment' or 'finding company'. I see his childhood in an isolated cerro, full of God's Word (Logos) dripping from his mother's lips from the time milk dripped into his lips from his mother's breasts.
"How do people get over here?" I asked.
"They take out loans from different people. People that have come to the US and have gone back to Intibuca with money will provide loans, but with interest."
"What if you come here and you can't find a job?"
"The interest adds up and you have to pay more. Sometimes the people that lend you money ask to hold a title to your land before they let you borrow from them. If you fail to pay the loan, they keep your land as a collateral."
"How much does it cost to come here?"
"It costs about $10,000, or 200,000 Lempiras. My family was able to borrow L. 60,000 from a gentleman, and L.50,000 from a lady that had worked here in the US and gone back."
The conversation went on to describe the sacrifice, the effort, the dangers of the road to the Dream. "It's gotten a lot harder to make the trip." he said, "Bandits in Mexico stop the buses and ask for credentials and will take out anyone who lacks credentials. It has made the trip more expensive..."
The young man talked openly, as if it had been a breeze. But before he told me the story, little did I know that he, like many others, had to grip onto his life with the fiercest claws of faith his soul could conjure.
"How do people get over here?" I asked.
"They take out loans from different people. People that have come to the US and have gone back to Intibuca with money will provide loans, but with interest."
"What if you come here and you can't find a job?"
"The interest adds up and you have to pay more. Sometimes the people that lend you money ask to hold a title to your land before they let you borrow from them. If you fail to pay the loan, they keep your land as a collateral."
"How much does it cost to come here?"
"It costs about $10,000, or 200,000 Lempiras. My family was able to borrow L. 60,000 from a gentleman, and L.50,000 from a lady that had worked here in the US and gone back."
The conversation went on to describe the sacrifice, the effort, the dangers of the road to the Dream. "It's gotten a lot harder to make the trip." he said, "Bandits in Mexico stop the buses and ask for credentials and will take out anyone who lacks credentials. It has made the trip more expensive..."
The young man talked openly, as if it had been a breeze. But before he told me the story, little did I know that he, like many others, had to grip onto his life with the fiercest claws of faith his soul could conjure.
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