{"id":95,"date":"2009-05-20T18:11:47","date_gmt":"2009-05-20T23:11:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/garyborders.atomicnewstools.com\/pages\/?p=95"},"modified":"2012-01-29T18:58:40","modified_gmt":"2012-01-30T00:58:40","slug":"jaime-and-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/jaime-and-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Jaime and Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

Print this entry<\/a><\/p>

Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 first walked across el<\/em> Rio Bravo de Norte<\/em> from Mexico into Texas in 1998. He waded the river during the dry season and paid a coyote<\/em> to drive him the 300-plus miles from the border to Deep East Texas, in the back of a truck with a dozen or so other men. Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 is what, in a less politically correct time, was called a wetback. Now people like Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 are called undocumented workers.<\/p>\n

I call him my compadre<\/em>. Loosely translated, that means he is my pal. Not my amigo<\/em>; that would presume too much on my part. Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 calls me his patr\u00f2n<\/em>, though I\u2019m but one of several Anglo men who contract for his labor and became closely attached to him because of his work ethic, integrity, intelligence and cheerful nature. Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 and I have spent hundreds of hours together over the past eight years, working, eating lunch, driving back-and-forth to one project or another, discussing politics, music, old movies (he\u2019s a big John Wayne fan), and sharing a couple of beers at the end of the day.<\/p>\n

Ja\u00ecme \u2019s home is an unmapped village in the interior of the state of Veracruz, below the pyramids of El Taj\u00ecn, a pre-Columbian archaeological site that\u2019s 2,000 years old. The closest large city is Poza Rica, known now mainly for its oil refineries and misfortune for getting hammered by hurricanes. The Tecoluta River runs close enough to his house that when its banks overflowed in 1999, Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 had to go home to help his wife repair the damage. After a few months, Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 returned to the United States. He again sneaked across with the help of a coyote<\/em>, making his way through McAllen on the border. Then, once again stuffed in the back of a box truck with a dozen or so other men, he returned to Nacogdoches, a small city that claims to be the Oldest Town in Texas. That\u2019s where several of his brothers had already located \u2014 all undocumented, all employed.<\/p>\n

For the next five years, Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 worked in Nacogdoches and nearby towns every day of the week \u2014 the only exceptions being if there was bad weather or nobody hiring. He repaired fences on ranches, painted houses, did yard work, minor carpentry, plumbing repairs \u2014lo que<\/em>, as he said \u2014 meaning \u201cwhatever.\u201d As in whatever it takes to send money back home. He returned home for a year at Christmas 2004, intending to raise a few cows and chickens and enjoy the financial fruits of time spent away from his family: a completely remodeled home made of concrete block surfaced with stucco, an ornate red-cedar front door as well as air-conditioning, ceramic tile floors and a marble-floored bathroom.\u00a0 The photographs are impressive.<\/p>\n

Just thirteen months later \u2014 in early January 2006 \u2014 he phoned me as he did periodically, sounding as always as if he were next door instead of 600-plus miles away in the interior of Veracruz. Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 had called several times in the previous year to say hello, to wish me a Happy Birthday, to see how things were going, to let me know how life was back home for him and his family. But this time, Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 was literally next door, back in Nacogdoches. The lure of cash to make life better for his wife and two children, a boy now 11, a daughter now 9, tugged stronger than his desire to live with his family. That is the lure for many of the \u2014 pick a number \u2014 8 million, 10 million, 13 million undocumented workers in this country. Once again he had waded across the Rio Grande and paid someone to take him to Houston, where his brother picked him up and brought him back to Nacogdoches. A cousin in California loaned him the $1,300 to pay the coyote<\/em>. He wires the cousin a bit of money each Saturday evening to repay la presta.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I first met Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 in the spring of 2000, when I went looking for someone to do yard work. In Nacogdoches, the day laborers \u2014 nearly all Hispanics with a scattering of blacks in the crowd \u2014 gather at a park just south of downtown, lining up along a bridge that crosses Banita Creek. When a vehicle approaches and slows, the race belongs to the swift. Up to a dozen men rush to the driver\u2019s side of the vehicle. Usually the driver, if experienced, will hold up one finger, meaning only one worker needed, and so forth.<\/p>\n

Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 was the first to get to my Jeep that day, jogging over in a pace that is now as familiar as the purring of my cat. He climbed in and immediately began talking, admiring my Jeep in rapid Spanish interspersed with occasional English phrases. He and I have worked together many weekends since \u2014 painting rent houses, fixing fences and working cattle during my brief foray into gentleman farming, once building a bridge across a creek, planing rough-hewn red oak and black walnut for furniture projects. Lo que<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 is a talker. He believes, apparently, that if he speaks Spanish long enough the person to whom is he talking will learn it by osmosis. Actually I have<\/em> over the years learned more Spanish from Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 than I ever learned in school. We call it Spanglish here in Texas, with bastardizations such as la trucka<\/em> for truck, la rufa<\/em> for roof. I like to believe I\u2019ve helped him learn enough English to communicate with the folks who hire him and have no interest in learning his language, which would be most people here behind the Pine Curtain, the popular nickname for the heavily forested part of East Texas where I live.<\/p>\n

A few years back, my then-wife and I were hosting two junior-high Japanese exchange students for two weeks. I introduced the students to Ja\u00ecme , who began speaking rapidly to them in Spanish.<\/p>\n

\u201cJa\u00ecme ,\u201d I protested. \u201cThese girls are from Japan. They don\u2019t know Spanish.\u201d<\/p>\n

He looked at me and replied rather haughtily, \u201cWell, I can\u2019t speak Japanese.\u201d Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 continued talking away en Espa\u00f1ol<\/em>.<\/p>\n

My compadre<\/em> is now 47(CHECK) and delights in pointing out he\u2019s five years younger than me. He\u2019s short, with a modest paunch that bothers him enough that he\u2019s foresworn cheeseburgers, drinks only Diet Coke and loves our miserably hot summers, since he loses weight by working outside. It\u2019s hotter back home in Paso del Correo<\/em>, his home village. Its name means \u201cpost office.\u201d There his wife feeds him a steady diet of tortillas, refried beans and other carb-and-fat-loaded foods. Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 has shed probably 20 pounds since returning to America nearly two years ago \u2014 an anomaly in a nation rapidly expanding its collective waistline.<\/p>\n

Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 sports a thick-black moustache, equally dense black hair kept in check with a stained gimme cap, a pock-marked face, and a ready smile. He is hands-down the most cheerful human being I\u2019ve ever known, and one of the most observant. Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 misses little and possesses a Rain Man ability to recall dates and events, such as, \u201cMr. Gary, four years ago today we started painting that rent house.\u201d Or, sadly, \u201cMr. Gary, my brother died one year ago tomorrow,\u201d as he told me not long ago.<\/p>\n

He prefers the slow pace of small towns such as Nacogdoches and Lufkin \u2014 which is where I now live, 20 miles south. Both towns have roughly 35,000 residents. The latest census count says about 18 percent are Hispanics, a number that simple observation indicates is laughably low.\u00a0 In both towns upwards of two dozen businesses have sprung up in the past few years to serve Mexican immigrants \u2014 from tortillerias<\/em> to cambios<\/em> for wiring money back home, to hair salons and discotecas<\/em>. These tiendas<\/em> provide an international flavor to our towns that I enjoy, though that seems to be a minority view among the Anglo majority \u2014 unless they\u2019re looking for someone to do yard work. Considering Nacogdoches in particular was founded as a Mexican colonial outpost, and many of the county\u2019s most-venerable families sport Hispanic surnames, it\u2019s ironic there\u2019s this antipathy to a rejuvenation of the Mexican culture.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For a time Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 and his family lived in Mexico City where he worked as a security guard at the Mexican corporate headquarters for Costco, the big-box discount store. He liked the job but hated the pollution, crime and fast pace. So Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 quit, moved his family back to the village in which he was raised, and headed north.<\/p>\n

Mexican workers migrate, I\u2019ve gathered, largely by word-of-mouth to certain geographic locations. Thus, in Deep East Texas towns like Nacogdoches and Lufkin, many of the workers are from Ja\u00ecme \u2019s region of Veracruz. At least thus far, there is little worry here about la immagraci\u00f2n<\/em>, though that appears to be changing. Recently Pilgrim\u2019s Pride, a poultry company that has two huge processing plants, one in each city, announced it was laying off a significant number of workers who couldn\u2019t prove they weren\u2019t working with false Social Security cards.<\/p>\n

Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 doesn\u2019t carry a fake ID but proudly displays an official ID card from the Mexican consulate. He, like uncounted others, lives below the radar, doing the work others won\u2019t do. He\u2019s paid in cash, stays out of trouble, drinks no more than three beers even during a fiesta<\/em>, and sends money home every Saturday afternoon from El Tapatillo<\/em>, the cambio<\/em> located about five blocks from the run-down trailer park where he lives in a decrepit double-wide trailer with three other men. He\u2019s such a good worker that he can command $7 to $8 an hour in cash, a couple of bucks more than most folks are willing to pay. Roughly every two months, someone with a green card makes a southbound run in a truck down to Veracruz, delivering televisions, bikes, toys, clothes and other items \u2014 usually bought from Wal-Mart \u2014 from the men working here to their esposas y ni\u00f1os<\/em> back home. This is the fruit of their labors; they purchase products made in China, sold in East Texas, and then trucked back to Mexico.<\/p>\n

Now that\u2019s globalization.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Six months after Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 returned from his one-year sabbatical in Mexico, one of his brothers was killed on the loop in Nacogdoches. He had gone with some friends to a Hispanic rodeo at the Exposition Center, where he apparently got in an argument with some other men. He and his friends left in his Ford pickup and were headed down the loop, chased by the people with whom he had a dispute. The police had been summoned, and a patrol car switched on its booger lights. Ja\u00ecme \u2019s brother panicked, stopped his truck, got out and began running across the loop. He was struck and killed by another vehicle.<\/p>\n

Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 called me late that night to tell me his brother had been killed. There wasn\u2019t much I could do at the moment, and he knew that. He just wanted to know if the story would be in the newspaper so he could get a copy of the clipping. I made sure it was, of course.<\/p>\n

A few days later, an Anglo preacher called me. Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 had given him my phone number. The preacher had driven Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 down to the Mexican consulate in Houston to arrange for his brother\u2019s body to be transported back to Mexico. The preacher and I worked together to establish a bank account to raise the money needed to bury \u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022. I put a notice in the paper in both English and Spanish, and the preacher and I quietly seeded the account. About $2,000 was named, thanks especially to the owners of the local Spanish-language newspaper, who chipped in $500. The Reyes brothers run a weekly paper, a Spanish-language AM radio station, and a translation service, along with a host of community projects, such as an ever-growing Cinco de Mayo<\/em> festival. They are quiet hard-working heroes in my small town<\/p>\n

Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 took the death of his brother stoically, best as I could tell. He was back working for me the following Sunday, though I assured him that wasn\u2019t necessary. He talked about the difficulties of getting his brother\u2019s body transported back to Mexico, how thankful he was for the money raised, how his brother had two wives and families \u2014 one here, one back in Mexico \u2014 who were now bickering over the pittance of an estate.<\/p>\n

Lo que<\/em>, he seemed to say, though not quite. Whatever.<\/p>\n

|\u2014\u2014\u2014|<\/p>\n

I sense a change in Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 during his latest tenure in America. He has always closely followed the news, and immigration reform is often a topic of discussion with us. He wants to become a documented worker here, if the laws are changed so that is possible. He doesn\u2019t seem interested in becoming a citizen but would like the option of working here six months and spending the slow season (winter, in East Texas) back in Mexico.<\/p>\n

Now that work on his house is largely done, Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 has a bit of extra cash to spend on the gadgets most of us take for granted. He bought a cell phone a year ago, which he funds with a tarjeta<\/em> replenished at the cellular store once a week or so. That makes it both cheaper to call home and easier for the people who contract for his labor to find him. And about eight months ago, he bought a 1997 <\/strong>Ford Ranger pickup for $3,300 paid in cash over a couple of months. He is proud of his truck, which is dark green with a ding in the tailgate but otherwise pristine \u2014 though the air-conditioning doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

Ja\u00ecme , at my request, showed me proof of liability insurance, which I had strongly advised him to obtain. I\u2019ll leave it to others to figure out the inherent contradiction between an \u201cillegal alien\u201d able to legally buy a motor vehicle and obtain insurance, both paid for with folding money, though Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 doesn\u2019t hold a driver\u2019s license.\u00a0 I\u2019m just glad he has insurance.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s a cautious driver, certainly less of a risk than my teen-aged daughter, zipping about with a cell phone plastered to her ear, the stereo at eardrum-splitting level, and a Big Gulp between her thighs. At least I hope so.<\/p>\n

We both commiserate on the amount of money it takes to keep children supplied with the toys they want: video games, bicycles, dolls, Walkmans. I try to imagine what it\u2019s like for him \u2014 living in close quarters for a couple of years at a time with three other men, the only contact with one\u2019s family being by telephone. He sends most of his money home, lives here without sex (he assured me he\u2019s faithful and I believe him), without hugs from his children, or a sense of place. He ruefully told me one evening that most of the previous evening\u2019s phone call home had been a litany of complaints from his children. More money is needed to supply their wants: another video game, money to buy a new dress for an upcoming fiesta.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>\u00a0Ja\u00ecme just keeps working.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There are hundreds of thousands of Ja\u00ecme s out there, toiling away in the underground economy. They work as our landscapers, restaurant cooks, construction workers, farmhands and bricklayers. I once asked Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 how Pilgrim\u2019s Pride, the behemoth poultry processor that is the largest employer here, is able to staff its plants with legal workers. He burst out laughing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re not legal,\u201d he said. (I\u2019m paraphrasing since I wasn\u2019t taking notes, and my Spanish remains suspect.) \u201cThey all have fake Social Security cards,\u201d he said with a rather superior tone. Ja\u00ecme , for whatever reason, takes pride in not carrying a fake ID card.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have any answers to the sticky wicket of illegal immigration, just some observations. In small towns such as Nacogdoches and Lufkin, the two neighboring towns where I\u2019ve lived most of the past 35 years, our economy would sputter and stall if somehow every undocumented worker was vacuumed away tomorrow. That\u2019s not a stout enough argument for unfettered access, admittedly. A stronger case can be made, however, for making this country stronger by letting folks like Ja\u00ecme\u00a0 work here. He just wants to earn money to support his family, which is surely what drives most of us. He works incredibly hard, pays taxes, albeit indirectly, wears his seatbelt and never drives drunk. He keeps up with current events more closely than most 20-year-old Americans I\u2019ve encountered.<\/p>\n

In short, he\u2019s the ideal immigrant, and there are many more like him. People who will do whatever.<\/p>\n

Lo que.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Note: Ja\u00ecme returned to Mexico, presumably for good, in May 2009. This was written in May 2008.<\/em><\/p>\n

Print this entry<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Print this entryJa\u00ecme\u00a0 first walked across el Rio Bravo de Norte from Mexico into Texas in 1998. He waded the river during the dry season and paid a coyote to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tales"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":421,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions\/421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}