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Migrantes al sur

February 15, 2009 | posted by Lars under mexico, updates

These are excerpts from my recent journals.  While they’re not a comprehensive look at the past several days, hopefully they’ll at least be a picture for you.

February 12, 2009 (Thursday)
Freer, TX - Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, MX : 68.5 miles

An early start helped us finish the day’s ride before the heat of the afternoon.  Sunrise and the morning light seems to re-enliven all the world - even the brush desert.

Sunrise -
even the tumbleweeds
bloom with freshness.

We spoke with border patrol officers at a checkpoint 40 miles north of Laredo (there are checkpoints on every road north out of Mexico), at the border, and also called the USBP Laredo office in homes of getting a tour of a detention facility, etc. with no luck - apparently they don’t get the question much.  They were nice enough people, it just seemed like they were unwittingly caught as part of the gauze on the wound of someone who’s been taking anticoagulants for years.  They’re just not stopping the flow, not addressing the issue, and arguably making the situation worse by trying to clean the wound constantly.

We crossed the border, though (it wasn’t hard for us - no documents were necessary to leave the US) and made our way to La Casa del Migrante, a migrant hospitality house run by the Roman Catholic Scalabrinian order.  While we waited outside for the house to open, our bikes (and our gringo-ness) made conversation with the other men who were also waiting.  Some wanted to practice their English with us, others simply asked, “¿Qué haces?” “What are you doing here?” and others asked about the load we are carrying or the brands and costs of our bikes.  Generally, it seemed, we were seen as novelties, as curious aberrations from the typical migrant - we are heading south, after all - but as migrants, nonetheless.  In the midst of one of these conversations, a man from Honduras told us, “si eres un amigo a los migrantes, eres un amigo a Dios,” “if you are friend of migrants, you are a friend of God.“  From him, it was an especially poignant reminder of the upside-down kingdom, the politics of gentleness and love upon which Christ’s community is built.  Between moments like this and fielding questions about how much we spent on our bikes, we had plenty to think about before anyone even opened the doors of the shelter.

All of the men we spoke with on the street raved about the hospitality of the Scalabrinians (though they spoke of it as “La Casa del Migrante”) and assured us - without our asking - that they would also take care of us.  And they did, but not without a bit of to-do and the calling of superiors.  See, we are not your usual migrants who are forced to emigrate for economic reasons and do not have means to stay elsewhere besides the house, so we don’t quite fit in the center of the mission’s mission, one could say.  They did finally decide to host us - there was plenty of room in the inn - and made sure to tell us that we would be treated no differently from the migrants, to which we responded that we assumed nothing differently.  So, sure that we would not be displacing anyone who was heading north, we registered and joined the other men who were lounging about the interior patio, giving each other haircuts, and washing their clothes.  After supper, a man from a local newspaper came looking for workers for the next day, we were lectured about the house rules (there are many, thanks in part to the human and drug trafficking so closely linked to migration here), and after free time filled with casual conversation and our obligatory shower (it’s in the rules!), all 70-80 of us bedded down by 10:30, set for a 6:00 wake-up and 7:00 on the streets for the day.

February 13, 2009 (Friday)
Rest day in  Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, MX

As we left the house for the day, I saw a woman in line to leave and this evening I saw another.  This may seem like an odd observation, but it’s quite apparent when you spend any amount of time in groups of migrants - here or in the Shenadoah Valley, for that matter.  Both appeared to be with their husbands; I imagine that very few single women travel north alone.  I have seen no children here at all, save for the young men on their first trip north.  I’m sure that some of them would still be in high school in the US.

We spent most of the day trying to find and unlock cell phones for use in Mexico.  This entailed riding our bikes from shop to shop - and there are plenty - and asking if they carried “celulares cuatribandas” and if they could unlock Jon’s cell phone.  Since just about every block in Nuevo Laredo’s downtown has a storefront for both of the country’s major cell providers, and each of these is independently owned and operated, we received any number of responses to these questions, from “¿Qué es cuatribanda?” to offering to unlock Jon’s phone if we left it with them until Monday, when we hope to be on the road to Monterrey.  Mostly, though, the quad-band phones are exorbitantly expensive and the stores don’t know what to do with Jon’s phone -it’s a bit of an anomaly, apparently.  Our search for Mexican cell service will have to wait until Monterrey, next week.

Back at the Casa del Migrante for the evening, we played Dutch Blitz with some of the guys, which was a hit.  We started playing with two others and soon there was a crowd gathered around the game being played on the cement patio floor.  We were called away from the game to hear from a Nuevo Laredo Public Works officer looking for people to help clean the city the next day.  We signed up with at least a dozen others, and though we won’t be paid, we’ll get lunch, and hopefully be re-admitted at the Casa tomorrow night wih the signature of our supervisor and a description of the work we’ve done, as is required for all the migrants.

It’s time for lights out - 10:30.  En punto.