Deference to foreigners
It’s often amusing how Third World people will sometimes defer to us White folks. This is especially noticeable in Central America where the former Indian subservience to Spanish colonial masters is now manifested toward any White foreigner.
One time I was in downtown Guatemala City and walking by National Police headquarters, a massive fortress that occupies one entire block. There are guards on each street corner surrounding it as well as on the roof. The place is very well guarded and there’s a palpable tension in the zone.
Police and armies in Latin America often have a variety of very old weapons and vehicles, which must be a real nightmare for repairs and obtaining spare parts. One day I was walking the street that faces the entrance to that imposing building, and as I approached the street corner I saw a policeman with a curious weapon I’d never seen before. He saw me eyeballing it and he appeared to be a friendly sort of fellow so I was bold enough to ask him about it.
I’d seen photos of the old US Army Grease Gun but had never handled one nor even seen one before. But this is apparently what this cop was holding. I asked him if it was a .45 caliber and he confirmed that it was. I showed interest and perhaps even fascination with it and asked him if it was indeed the US-made Grease Gun. But he shook his head and said “No, it’s from one of those countries up north, like Panama.” Oops, this guy’s geographical knowledge was evidently deficient, and perhaps his intelligence as well, which was quite dramatically confirmed for me by his next act.
He just reached out and handed me the weapon! Oops again! Sweet Jaysus! I had to quickly take a step backward or his gun would have been in my hands. . . and I’d probably have been in the gunsights of every other cop on the street as well as the roof of the building.
Wow! I mumbled my thanks to him, made a wide arc around him, and got the hell out of that area as fast as I could.
Noblesse Oblige
I ran across something fascinating about George Orwell. He died of tuberculosis just at the time when TB drugs were appearing in the US and he might have used his celebrity and wealth to obtain them to save his life. However, he hesitated because it might appear to “exercise privilege”. Where has that sense of honor gone? The Brits were very class conscious not only about privilege but also about duties, noblese oblige, a very nice balance of the two and that speaks very well of them.
Exercising privilege in the Third World is a given; it’s done by anybody who has power but what’s lacking is the noblese oblige part of the equation. I have a foreign friend here in the Philippines who lives in a gated subdivision where there are fees assessed to pay the guards and other shared benefits. One of his neighbors is some high ranking cop, or he’s protected by somebody very influential, and this guy refuses to pay for this year’s gate access decal for his car. It’s as if his thoughts are “I’m powerful so why should I pay that?” It’s not a lot of money but it feeds his fragile ego to get by NOT paying it.
That’s similar to the case of the Saudi princess in Paris who charged hundreds of thousands of dollars in shops around the city and refuses to pay for the items. I had a friend in Mexico City who lived in a lovely condominium on the edge of the city’s Sunken Park. Because of some unclear legal language the condo board assessed each member for water use. However, several owners simply refused to pay for the water, leaving the others to pay the whole amount. Why? Because they could get by with it! What despicable, crude, anti-social behavior all these Third World people exhibit!
Contrast that with Orwell passing on the TB drugs so as not to appear to be uppity. And you recall how the Titanic’s passengers so nobly allowed women and children first access to the boats while the band played calming music, the men unsure of their own survival. That’s because the passengers were British and Americans. Can you imagine what it would be like if the passengers had been Filipinos or Mexican? When the Superferry 14 caught fire here a few years ago do you suppose the crew aided the passengers to leave? Of course not; the crew had been trained in handling lifeboats and so they themselves abandoned the ship and left the passengers to their own fate. Ah, what a noble and cultured race these Filipinos are, eh? Do you suppose that’s why they have such a hard time with nation-building? Huh? Huh? Captain Smith of the Titanic went down with his ship!
(In all fairness I cannot now find the link to that story about the crew abandoning the ship. For many weeks after the disaster there were various conflicting reports appearing in the press. One of them was that of the crew leaving the passengers stranded on board, and the ship’s officers having subsequently disappeared into hiding to avoid legal charges. I did see that story but cannot now find it.)
Rambling about religion
I was amused to read a friend’s email in which he comments about churches and their different characters. I’ve done a bit of shopping around for churches myself, back in my phase of spiritual seeking. Unity churches seemed best for me; I liked their attitude about money, that it is God’s plan for us to have wealth and we should never feel guilty about seeking it or having it. The Pentecostals are kind of fun, in their own odd way, with their dancing and jumping around and just spontaneous hootin’ and hollerin’. I’ve done some of them, as well as the good old Texas-style faith healing services. I actually got in line for that one time and got “touched” and I did in fact momentarily pass out. You know the scenes on TV where the preacher touches the forehead and the seeker just falls back. I always thought it was a crock but I can attest there is something more than smoke and mirrors in that regard.
Catholic masses are pretty dull. It must be a very long time since my friend attended (or “heard” in Catholic parlance) mass since he says the priest speaks in Latin and turns his back to the parish. That ended way back in the 60s when they switched to local languages and the priest began to face the people, to be more “user-friendly”. I often thought it great fun to attend mass in some of the countries I’ve visited and have done it in Tagalog, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese, Waray, Ilocano, and of course the old Latin. Here in this country many churches have masses in various languages. The main church in Tacloban has masses in English, Waray, Cebuano, and Tagalog. That makes for a very busy Sunday morning for the priests, eh?
My family was very Catholic and I recall the anxiety those changes produced in my mom. Religionists of any flavor seem to be really set in their ways, very very conservative and resistant to change. That was a worldwide change in Catholic ritual, designed to make the Church more appealing to the growing numbers of non-European members.
It even triggered some violence in the super-conservative. In one small town in Minnesota, in the adjoining county from where I lived, some of the parishioners just took over the church building and physically expelled the priest. They loved their old wooden country church and didn’t want any changes made. Part of the change in the buildings was to remove the communion rail up front, thereby giving the feel of closeness for all. The rail was seen as kind of a separation between the people and the priest as well as God. The idea was to remove the rail and unify all three. For the most part, people finally put aside their anxiety and went along with the changes, but there still remain some schismatic groups who meet and hire priests who’ll say mass in Latin for them. When I lived in Houston my neighbor was a priest who did just that. He was some kind of modern itinerant preacher and traveled from town to town and said mass in Latin in defiance of the new order.
I remember as a kid amusing myself in mass looking over the words in Latin, trying to sound out and learn a bit here and there. I never missed mass a single Sunday in my first 18 years, THAT was how religiously demanding my mother was. I was a young teen when they made the changes in the rite. One that amused my dad was the ending. Previously the last thing the priest said, as the mass ended, was some Latin phrase that we all memorized but didn’t really know. We just knew it was our cue to go home for lunch. But the new English version has the priest saying “Go. The mass is ended.” And the people are supposed to respond in unison “Thanks be to God”. My dad, who was kind of a luke-warm (to use my mom’s phrase) Catholic but played along for the sake of family unity, seemed to come to life at this point and said that last line with especial emphasis, as if he really meant it as “Yes, thank God this crap is over for another week!”
One time when I was in the army and hadn’t yet fully shaken off my Catholic guilt, I was leaving to mass one Sunday and one of my barracks mates asked if he could come along. He’d never been to a Catholic service before and just wanted to see what it was all about. Afterwards, while walking back to barracks he commented that the priest was really very piggish in handling his bread. I found that amusing but I can understand from his viewpoint it really must have appeared so. At the beginning of the communion portion of the mass, the priest blesses both the wine and the small circular pieces of bread called hosts. He is supposed to consume his bread and wine before serving it to the congregation. But his host is much larger than that which we get, perhaps so that it’s easily seen from far in the back. But since it has already been blessed, and is then considered the body of Christ and no longer mere bread, he must be very careful not to drop any crumbs. And his host is bigger than a single mouthful so he must break it up, then carefully get all the pieces that have fallen. And on reflection I must agree that, to a non-Catholic his movements probably do appear very awkward and maybe even “piggish”.
It is odd how people perceive the behaviors and rituals of others. I remember an old movie about the Spanish conquest of Peru. The Inca, a ruler and a god to his people, is told by an advisor that the Spanish are curious people. “Lord, they EAT their god; I have seen them do this!” A funny line indeed.
In Latin America, especially where the Indians form the majority of the populations, Catholicism appears to be more an expression of popular culture than a true spiritual exercise based on knowledge of church history and ritual. One time in Honduras I was in the communion line and I saw a peasant holding his boy of about three. After the priest placed the host on the father’s tongue, the father motioned for the priest to give one to the kid as well. Dad seemed quite disappointed when the priest refused to do so. I guess the peasant saw people lining up because the priest was going to be giving something away, and he didn’t want to miss out on the freebies. Just to clarify, a Catholic does NOT take communion until he’s gone through a rite of passage, at around seven years of age, in which he learns that he’s become part of the community of believers (communion, community. Get it?). It’s a very important ritual for any young Catholic (marked by family photos showing off new clothing, as well as gifts of rosary and missal) so it’s obvious to me that the Honduran peasant had no real awareness of his church.
But that’s perhaps the result of the imposition of Catholicism on the natives of America and the Philippines by the Spanish. Their forced conversions were probably done more to avoid the wrath of the friars than out of real belief. Besides that, the Spanish Catholicism was the 16th Century version, the most rabid and vicious type, that same one evidenced by Torquemada (what a lovely man, eh?) prodding Queen Isabel to expel the Jews and Moors if they refused to convert or suffer the wrath of the Inquisition. That’s the heritage people of the old Spanish empire live with daily, where priests have exaggerated power and prestige in their communities. In contrast, Catholicism practiced in nations colonized by northern Europeans, is more attuned to democratic ideals, where there is no majority church and folks just seem to try to get along without imposing on others.
In my hometown we Catholics had only one parish while there were many Lutheran and a few evangelical types of churches. While Catholics are 22% of the US population, in my hometown we must have been less than half that so any incorrect perceptions about us may have been exaggerated a bit. One time the parish was building a new wing and the priest loved hanging around the construction site and chatting with the workers, most of whom were non-Catholics. One time one of them said “You know Father, we’ve been digging around here for weeks and I still haven’t seen any of the arms you Catholics supposedly have buried here to use on us Protestants!” Joke or not, it still indicates some latent Old World animosity. And I should add here that in my town there were no Irish nor English names in the phone book, so this event cannot be linked to the Troubles in Northern Ireland that erupted later.
In all the eighteen years I spent in that parish, we had the same priest. We did have a couple of assistant pastors but they were young and clashed with the old guy. One of the young ones was even helping young people escape the draft and courts martial by getting them to nearby Canada. The old guy was much too conservative to put up with that and the young ones were soon transferred out. But Father really did need some help because he was aging noticeably; his homilies droned on and on and were so repetitious that we all joined my dad’s “Thanks be to God” when mass was finally over. After I’d already left town my younger brother married a girl from a nearby village and moved there. He thought he was finally free of old Father Rousseau and said he enjoyed going to mass again. But before two months had passed the bishop retired the old man and placed him. . . . . . . yes, you guessed it! In my brother’s village so he could have a lighter workload.
My brother’s village is a curious place. There is only one Catholic church and one Lutheran church, each having about half the population. But since the village was a bit remote for both denominations, their bishops tended to assign either very old or very young pastors. Father Rousseau finally had to be institutionalized due to age and infirmity. The new young priest and the young unmarried Lutheran pastor became very good friends and fishing buddies. No rivalry or animosity there! Just like in the movie “The Quiet Man”.
After having written the above I see how much the religious community of our youth sets us up in life and defines who we are and what we do. Even after all these years, and no longer being a practicing Catholic, that upbringing remains at my core. I remember how the late-night talk show host Tom Snyder often humorously reminisced about his experiences with the nuns and monks in Catholic school. And Jewish comedians often base their routines on that which is unique to their experiences as well.
Puede Na!
Recently I took my girlfriend and her boy to Manila to see the zoo. We did it a couple of years ago but at three a kid doesn’t really get it all. Now he’s five and can understand and appreciate it more. We went early to be the first at the zoo and that was a good move, a very good move because by noon the place was packed and we were ready to leave.
We then went for a long lunch to regain our energy and since we still had plenty of time we moved on to the Children’s Museum. The place advertises on TV and newspapers like it’s the best damned thing ever. I’ve seen one or two kids’ museums in the US and they are really well-done. This one appears to have been well-built when it opened but it’s the Filipino idea of maintenance that is killing it. It almost appears it was built by a foreign contractor to foreign standards and then left in the hands of the locals. Just like Mexicans, the Filipinos have this “Oh well, this is good enough” attitude about repairs and replacements, with everything slipshod or undone.
It’s funny that both Mexicans and Filipinos actually have catch phrases in their languages for this attitude. It’s as if they recognize it in their cultures, enough to even laugh at themselves a bit, but not enough to actually stimulate change in attitude. Mexicans say “Ahí se va!” and for Filipinos it’s “Puede na!”. This museum even had sections roped off because some of the exhibits were not working. Like hey, guys!, isn’t that the job of maintenance to FIX those things? And they were not even complicated things, just simple kid stuff really.
Gawd! What a disappointment. The zoo, we’ll do again. The Children’s Museum, not likely.
Short-time hotel
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you! I had my very first experience with a short-time hotel here in the Philippines. Sure, I’ve taken babes to hotels before but they’ve always been the traditional hotels. I’ve always shied away from the short-time places thinking they’d be miserable environments with semen stains on the walls, torn carpets, missing or broken bath tiles, seedy characters lurking around stairwells, etc.
But nope, it just ain’t true. You can’t miss the Sogo Hotel chain in Manila; they and their signs are ubiquitous. The buildings are painted in a distinctive red and black pattern. They’re all over town, sometimes two or three branches within a single kilometer of a major intersection. And besides their many buildings, the company apparently gives away free signs for other businesses on condition that a third of the space shows the Sogo logo. So there are sari-sari stores and tire recapping places and dressmaker’s shops that remind us that a Sogo is always available for our short-time needs.
Well, I did it, went to a Sogo hotel and was amazed at the cleanliness and efficiency of the place. And it is a very nice hotel indeed. Desk staff wear nice red uniforms with cute bell-boy caps. Very nice décor in both lobby and the rooms, as in any upscale hotel. The only indication that it’s a short-time hotel is the presence of mirrors on the ceilings and walls of the rooms. Rooms also have the usual vanity, cable TV, table with chairs, as well as a bed with a superior mattress. Oh yes, each room also has a wall safe for storing your valuables, just in case you don’t fully trust your partner of the moment.
And efficiency, good gawd!, they could have taught Henry Ford a thing or two about production methods! Lemme tell you, short-time hotels have got to be a real money-making business. What other hotel can routinely rent a room several times a day? The economy special is two hours for 170 pesos but they have many other options.
As you walk into the lobby you just fall in a fast-moving line behind all the other couples, look over the chart of options, and when it’s your turn you just say what you want and hand over the money. No register to sign, nobody around corners giving you and your partner surreptitious glances and snickering. Nope, just hand over the money and a key is on the counter; you then walk to the elevator and join two or three other couples who are also on their way to short-time pleasure. From street to room is no more than two minutes!
There is a steady stream of couples going in as well as couples descending the elevator and going out the door. After exiting the elevator you just drop the key at the exit counter and you’re back on the street in seconds. Cripes! Like a factory’s assembly line. What a business!
Ifugao houses
The Rice Terraces in northern Luzon are considered one of the great Wonders of the World. And after having seen them I fully agree. Lowland Filipinos tend to put down the highlanders, saying they are only a hundred years from the loincloth and headhunter stage. While it may be true they were once a fierce warrior culture, that’s hardly reason to diminish them. We so-called, and self-called, advanced folks of the West haven’t been very successful at keeping the Dogs of War on a short leash either.
To build and maintain those terraces required that the Ifugao have a very structured social order. In that environment one person doesn’t, can’t, just go out and level off a piece of mountainside to plant his rice. He has to coordinate his work and energy with others to define boundaries and allow drainage so all other terraces get equal access to water run-off. This clearly has to be a coordinated community effort. And they began doing this more than 2000 years ago when many of our own ancestors in the West had a primitive existence.
Frankly, however, I found the Ifugao houses more impressive than the terraces. I stayed at the Native Village Inn, a hotel where the guest “rooms” are really native houses. Because of the laid-back lifestyle there in the mountains I’d often return to my cottage to read or relax. But I’d find myself instead looking up and studying for long periods the complexity of the interior of the houses. They really are works of some very intelligent engineering.
Lowland Filipinos lived, and many still do, in simple houses of nipa grass around a frame of four poles. F. Sionil Jose, in his Rosales series of novels wrote about how lowlanders would migrate with just the four poles since the rest of the housing material was easily found and replaced. Instant housing, if you will.
But the Ifugao clearly built for the long term. Their houses are of solid hardwood columns and beams, joined with dowels and rattan cordage, or with mortise and tenon. Not a nail anywhere, and yet the houses appear to last for generations. The resident manager of the hotel told me her own family, now living in a modern house in the nearby village of Uhaj, has a house like that on their land on the far side of a nearby mountain. The house was built during the Spanish colonial period and is still as solid as the day it was finished.
She said that while a similar house could now be put up in a matter of weeks because they have chainsaws, in the past it took several family members months of very intense work.. The Ifugao used bolos, a tool we would call machetes, to cut the trees and trim the lumber, all of which was hardwood. She proudly added that, unlike lowlanders’ houses, their’s are earthquake and typhoon resistant.
They are massive structures that must weigh hundreds of kilograms. At the base are four vertical columns mounted in the ground, about 1.5 meters high. Then crossbeams lay across the columns, followed by another set of beams crossing those, covered with solid lumber to make the floor. More vertical poles, just short of a meter high, rest atop the floor, then more crossbeams to make the shelf space that forms the widest portion of the house. From that level upward they place vertical poles that converge at the peak of the house, linked again with cordage and dowels. Then the exterior is covered with matting of horizontal half-inch sticks covered by cogon grass as thatch. Only the cogon thatch needs to be replaced periodically.
Primitive people the Ifugao? I don’t think so. There is a lot of very impressive and intelligent action behind the building of those houses as well as the terraces.
Mexico exploits Central American migrants
Mexicans facilitate the passage of Central Americans planning to illegally cross the US border, and make a tidy profit doing so.One time I’d been in Guatemala and was returning to Mexico. I crossed the border near Tapachula, the largest Mexican city in the region, and purchased bus fare to go to Mexico City. The sold-out bus departed about 5 PM and we moved without stopping for several hours. During the night the bus stopped in an unpopulated area and the driver opened the door but did not turn on the interior lights.
A man boarded the darkened bus, ordered us to show our documents, and then proceeded to use his flashlight to inspect them. After taking each passport he ordered the passengers, one by one, off the bus and into a nearby shack. He never shined the light in our faces but only on our passports. All of us, except my seatmate, who showed his Mexican national identification card, were ordered off the bus.
We entered a small shack near the road, where we saw another man standing near an old steel office desk. The one from the bus entered with our passports and stood behind the desk. Under the bright light I saw they wore green uniforms similar to that of the army but with insignia of the Immigration Service.
The officer began sorting the passports as if they were a deck of cards, with one stack for Salvadorans, another for Hondurans, etc. He came upon an American passport, mine, and paused a bit, glanced up but didn’t see me since I was in the middle of the crowd. He shrugged and put it down near the other stacks and continued sorting.
When he finished that task he announced that there is a twenty dollar immigration fee for each of us. Central Americans are mostly of an Indian culture and are usually very submissive and unassuming. One however was bold enough to say “Hey, we all have visas to be in Mexico; our passports were checked at the border. We don’t have to pay you anything!” Both officers stood erect and the leader opened his coat to remind us he was armed. He said “You’ll pay it or you don’t get on the bus!”
He then picked up the top passport from the first pile and read out the name. After a short pause the passport’s owner appeared from the crowd with a twenty dollar bill. The officer handed him his passport and told him to get on the bus.
As this was going on I was thinking “No, no no. . . I’m not going to let this guy get away with this. If I’m forced into this extortion I’m going to make a lot of noise when I get to Mexico City, calling newspapers and television stations and just generally make a real pest of myself.”
The officer continued working from that one stack of passports, collecting the money and ordering the passenger back on the bus. He finished that stack and moved to the next, then appeared to recall that lone American passport off to the side. He picked up my passport, looked around until he saw me, read out my name and simply handed it to me and said to get on the bus. He must have picked up the negative energy I was sending out because he didn’t ask me for money, but also wanted me on the bus so I could not witness what he was doing. Well, he was a bit late for that!
I got on the bus and began talking to the other passengers. They were all angry but felt trapped into complying. My Mexican seatmate said that every bus on that route is stopped like that. Our bus alone yielded a net profit of $900 for those two officers, quite a nice income for just 15 minutes of work.
When we got to Mexico City, all the Central Americans got off the bus about two blocks from the terminal, fearing another shakedown from officials there. Mexico City was my final stop, as it was for my Mexican seatmate. All the others were going to the US border hoping to cross illegally.
US visas are very hard to get but Mexico gladly “sells” its visas to Central Americans, knowing that those people have no plans to tour Mexico. Mexico earns a lot of money by facilitating the movement of Central American illegals to the United States, not just from the legal fees for visas, and the illegal collection of other “fees”, but also revenue that bus companies, hotels, and coyotes generate.
Earthquake
I used to live in Texas and traveled a lot to Central America, especially to Guatemala. I’d always stay in the same modest hotel in Guatemala City but one time they didn’t have any rooms available. I started to leave and the clerk told me that they do have some very small rooms up on the top floor. I checked one and it seemed adequate so I took it.
It looked like this floor, the fourth, had been the roof of the building but these rooms had been added after the original construction, possibly as employee’s quarters.
So one afternoon I’d gone back to my room and was resting. The building began to shake, the bare bulb hanging from its wire was moving in rhythm to the picture swaying back and forth on the wall,the water glass and pitcher jiggling across the night stand.
GOODGAWDAWMIGHTY! It’s the big one I’m telling myself, this is the day I might meet my maker. My mind races with silly thoughts: Hey, they’re going to find my body nude. Even if I survive the collapse of the building, I’ll be embarrassed by not being dressed. Should I get up and put something on? No, better to stay prone on the bed because at least that way I’ll have some cushion under me if it collapses. But maybe I should at least run across the room and grab my passport and money. No, better stay put. I’m on top floor so if it does collapse there’s some chance of survival since there’s just one layer of concrete above me. Glad I’m not on the lower floors. Then after a few seconds of this it stops. I sigh with relief.
That evening I met some friends and I asked them about their experiences with the quake. What quake? They didn’t know what I was talking about.
Now I’m really confused. Was I in the Twilight Zone or what? I’m beginning to doubt my own sense of reality. When I got back to the hotel I just had to try to validate my experience and hesitantly asked the desk clerk, “you felt the tremors this afternoon, didn’t you?”
He laughed and said that wasn’t an earthquake. The hotel’s laundry room is on the top floor too, and sometimes the load in the big industrial size washing machine gets out of balance, causing the building to shake like that.
Spending some time in the world of illegal immigration.
Let me return to the theme of illegal immigration, since it seems George Bush is determined not to let it go away. He and his cabal are apparently willing to defy the will of the citizens and ram this amnesty bill into law by any means they can.
As I wrote in my previous entry about immigration, those who will benefit from amnesty are not the kind of people we need as fellow citizens. They are not community builders but are rather net takers from the community.
I lived several years on the US border with Mexico as well as in Mexico itself. I’ve had a lot of contact with illegal immigrants in various ways: as a volunteer English teacher for them at my church, as their co-worker and supervisor, as their neighbor, and as a frequent traveler in that region.
Let me tell you about Jorge and Enrique.
But first my credentials, okay? I’m an admirer of Spanish culture, have read as many books in Spanish as I’ve read in English, and speak both languages equally well. I have a BA from a Texas university in history with a concentration on Latin America and the Spanish Empire. I also did graduate studies in Latin American Studies in Mexico. But let’s be clear on what’s Hispanic okay? The word origin denotes something or someone from Spain, Hispanic coming from the word España. I will, however, use it here in the way Americans use it, albeit incorrectly.
I’d be willing to accept any Spaniard to the US as an immigrant. But those who come from Mexico and other nations in the Americas are not really Hispanic, but are in fact predominantly of a tribal and Indian culture. They may speak Spanish but that’s clearly the only link to Spain that they carry. You can bet that few, if any, of them have ever read (or heard of?) Cervantes, even if they can read. Most read at a very limited level; comic books are very popular in Mexico and Central America.
Okay, back to Jorge and Enrique. When I was studying in Mexico I returned to the US one time on a semester break. I’d left my car at my sister’s house in northern Minnesota and was going there to get it. I traveled by bus from Mexico City to the border at Laredo, Texas, about a 20 hour ride. Then continued by bus with Greyhound going north. At our stop in Dallas two young Mexican men boarded the bus and it was quite obvious they were illegals. We conversed a lot during the long bus ride as well as at the many stops along the way.
They were from the Mexican state of Chihuahua , the one that borders west Texas, and crossed the border near El Paso . Their plan was to go to Minnesota because they’d heard from others that jobs might be available there. They knew nothing about Minnesota but just had some vague idea that’s where they wanted to go. So near El Paso they hopped a freight train carrying automobiles, telling me they rode in air-conditioned comfort because the keys were in the cars. The train stopped in Dallas and they then found their way to the Greyhound station where I met them.
They had just enough money for bus fare to Minneapolis and spent almost nothing on food at the rest stops. It took a couple of days to reach that destination so I got to know them very well. They were not the kind of people I’d seek out as friends (they had about as much intellect as a box of rocks) but under the circumstances they were entertaining. And I was getting some really interesting insight into the world of illegal immigration.
We arrived in Minneapolis at about 5:00 AM. and I immediately asked about my connections to continue to my sister’s house. I learned that she lived on a one-bus-a-day minor route that leaves Minneapolis at 3:00 AM., making for a fun-filled 23 hour layover for me.
So I stayed with my illegal friends for a while longer. As soon as we got off the bus they asked me where Minnesota was. I said Minnesota is the state and they’re IN it. The name Minneapolis meant nothing to them and they were visibly distraught at not finding themselves in a place called Minnesota. The concepts of city and state were meaningless to them, although their country has the same political structure as mine.
One of them had heard that a used car lot on Broadway hires illegals. This was ALL they had to go on, the only reason for traveling across a continent without money for food or to return home if things didn’t work out. I imagine this snippet of information came out while drinking beer with some folks back in their home village. They had nothing written down, had no names of cities, streets, or people to work with.
I’d lived in Minneapolis before and knew my way around so I offered to take them to Broadway but warned them it’s far away and that it’s also a cross-town street, meaning it would be hard to find which used-car lot is the right one. They didn’t want to spend money for a city bus so we walked to one end of that avenue, then began trekking across town.
I was getting pretty impatient with these cretins and their disorderly and unfocused minds but gritted my teeth and persevered. . . for my own learning experience. I also began thinking that there’s potential for writing a novel about goofy characters like these.
So we spent most of the morning walking from one end of the city to the other, stopping at each used car lot on Broadway. At each Jorge would study the sign to see if it brought up some recognition for him, to try to recall if THAT was the name his fellow beer drinker had said.
These guys were really out of their element not having any other Spanish speakers to talk to. They asked me several times where Minnesota was, perhaps suspicious that I might be tricking them. One time we met a Latino-looking man on the sidewalk and they tried to ask him where Minnesota was. But the guy just shrugged his shoulders and moved on, apparently not being a Spanish speaker.
I’d made up my mind earlier in the day that I was not going to rescue these guys from their own stupidity. If they are so stupid to travel thousands of miles on wisps of rumored information and do it without funds, well then they deserve their fate. But by noon I was hot, tired, thirsty, and footsore. They were ready to admit defeat and wanted to go back to the downtown area. I broke my own rule that one time and paid our fares for the city bus.
We had an inexpensive snack by buying a couple of rolls in a bakery, each of us paying for our own food. Jorge and Enrique began to show irritation with each other and that soon turned into a loud argument, ending with Enrique reproaching Jorge for suggesting this fruitless journey.
The men knew my plan was to pick up my car at my sister’s house and then drive it back to Texas so they asked if they could ride with me back south. I said no for two reasons: one, my sister is a law-and-order kind of woman and would not appreciate my taking outlaws to her house, and two, I was just getting pretty tired of these guys by this time.
I figured I now had to get them connected with the Hispanic (sic) community so they could use the resources it offered. I checked the yellow pages and found a non-governmental organization that seemed to fit their needs. I called and after explaining the situation was told to bring them over.
After another long walk we arrived at that agency only to find that the counselor, although of Mexican descent, did not speak Spanish well enough to deal effectively with these guys. She was eager to help them, however, and asked me to stay and translate for her.
Minnesota is about as socialist as any American state can be, and this girl really knew her stuff about tapping into all of that state’s public and private sources of help. First thing she did was get us a free meal at a nearby community center. While we were eating she interviewed Jorge and Enrique and filled out some forms.
Then she drove us over to the state’s welfare office to get the men on the dole. While driving she tried to converse with the guys and asked them what they did in Mexico. Enrique had worked on a ranch. Jorge stated that he “helped” people cross the border, saying it in a tone that suggested he was a man of compassion. The woman followed that up by asking “And did you charge them for that help, Jorge?” SILENCE. . . Jorge knew he was caught and I burst out laughing at both their naivety. I don’t think she intended to entrap him like that; I really think she was just trying to converse, to be friendly.
So that friggin Jorge had been a coyote, eh? Those guys charge not hundreds of dollars, but thousands, for “helping” people cross the border. And where did he invest his earnings? Probably on women and wine and entertaining friends; he surely didn’t invest it wisely because here he was stranded more than 1500 miles from home with about two dollars in his pocket.
Well my esteem for these guys had been hanging around the zero point all day anyway but at this point it dipped really low, far, very far into the negative range.
The counselor got them enrolled in Minnesota’s welfare system, enabling (how appropriate is THAT word in this case, eh?) them to have a few days in the state’s welfare hotel with meals. The idea was to get them off of the streets. . and maybe jail. . and time to link up with sources of employment. It gave them breathing space.
She was kind enough to get me a room at the welfare hotel too so that I’d have place to hang out until my bus left at 3:00 in the morning. And since I was on the welfare rolls for those few hours, I also got a free meal that evening, thanks to all you kind taxpayers.
That evening I walked around the hotel a bit and ran into Jorge and Enrique chatting with other Hispanics in a recreation room. They were still asking where Minnesota was. Cripes!
So I got to spend some time in the world of illegal immigration. George Bush and Teddy Kennedy, folks who should know better but insist that we legalize 12 or 15 or 20 million of these types. What are they thinking?
This is a population unlike our own, one that cannot plan their lives beyond getting the beans for the next meal, one that has no sense of propriety or legality or truthfulness, and apparently one of very limited intellect.
Airport Security
When I went to Clark to check in for my flight last weekend I first had to go through a security check near the entrance. Then at the check-in counter of my airline the clerk said I couldn’t take gels and liquids on board. I just had a small bag that weighed about two kilograms but checked it in just to avoid having my lotions confiscated. Then I paid the airport terminal fee and went to the gate area for the second inspection. As my little shoulder bag went through the x-ray machine the guy who’s scanning alerts somebody. That guy then takes it and asks if I have medicine. I say “Yeah, I think I have some pain killers.” He roots around in the bag and comes up with my nail clipper and with a smile of triumph says I can’t take any sharp objects on board, that I’ll have to leave the nail clipper unless I agree to have him break off the little nail file. I say “Sure, break it off”. He does so and totally ignores the folding scissors that are hanging by a beaded chain from the nail clipper.
In the same pocket he found that nail clipper I also had my house key with two attached folding knives, one of which is a cheapie but the other is a real weapon of minor destruction, that will cut an artery in a flash. He ignored it, although it not only is prohibited on aircraft it’s probably illegal to carry on the streets. Uftah!
Then he spots my extra batteries for the digital camera, says I can’t have that. Says nothing however about the batteries inside my camera. Says I can’t have my umbrella either. Cripe! He allows me to go back to the check in counter and put the umbrella, alcohol hand wash, and the batteries inside my checked bag. The baggage folks didn’t seem to mind going back and find it for me so it must be a common event for them. I didn’t want to risk losing my nice knife however by allowing the baggage people to see me put it in the bag so I kept it.
Then I went right back through security one more time. . . with the knives and was not challenged.
Hmmmmph! So much for airport security.
