D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
February
2009
Border Notebook
Sometimes little news is good news.
Starting around Christmas Day, there was an almost complete lull in the killings in Juarez that lasted a couple weeks. I don't know if some kind of truce was arranged among the warring cartels or what. I suppose even the sicarios (hit men) went home to go see their mothers over the holidays.
Molly, the woman at NMSU who sends out a border news service, e-mailed me that this may have been due to the cold weather at the time. When I told that to a couple of women in Palomas, they laughed out loud. I agreed with them. "We'll have to bring them some warm jackets," I joked.
I don't like bad news, but the experts, wherever they are, expect that 2009 will bring increased violence in Juarez. But for now, little news is good news.
Recently I went for the first time to the public library in Palomas built by the previous mayor, Talaco Sanchez.
There were a handful of kids outside waiting to get in after school, and several more arrived until there were about 10 kids in the large, unheated space. The room was filled with cheerful chatter, as if the "Be quiet" signs didn't exist, just as in libraries I've been to in Zacatecas and Guatemala.
The library has been stocked with all kinds of shiny new books provided by the Mexican government. A few that grabbed my attention were a book of riddles in Nahuatl, Azul by Nicaraguan literary giant Ruben Dario, and a collection of works by 19th century liberal theorist Luis Mora. I want to spend more time there when the weather warms up.
It was a beehive of activity, worlds apart from the empty, lonely aisles of the markets and stores in Palomas these days. The town appears more and more deserted, partly because it's winter, I guess.
But in the library you could feel the future being constructed bit by bit, word by word. It was like a birdfeeder around which happy little birds were being fed seed by seed.
In October I traveled by bus to Casas Grandes. I'd been on Mexican buses only once before, about three years ago when I went to Copper Canyon. This time I was writing an article about Mata Ortiz potters.
I really hated the thought of paying the almost $50 required to bring a US vehicle across the border. I also heard that local transport goes only once a day from Casas Grandes to Mata Ortiz. So when a couple from Casas Grandes I met at the weaving co-op in Palomas said they could drive me around Mata Ortiz, I jumped at the offer.
But when my bus arrived at 3 p.m. instead of the planned 1 p.m., I felt it had been a really hare-brained scheme to go without my car.
When I got off the bus, the grandmother, Rosalinda, stepped up to me and kissed my cheek, defusing my frustration. Her daughter Mari was funny all the time, so the drive was agreeable, but I had a pretty pointless trip to Mata Ortiz. I didn't have enough time. I knew I had to go again the next day, and they invited me to stay overnight.
We picked up Mari's husband Julio that night at his job as a security guard. When driving back on a busy four-lane street, Julio beeped his horn lightly for no apparent reason. I giggled and asked him why, and he said he always beeped when passing his mother's house to let her know he was OK. He had a fast, enthusiastic way of talking.
I stayed at Rosalinda's house, because Mari and Julio's house was too small. Besides, they let poor people from little towns stay at their house when they were going to the hospital. (I wasn't clear on whether it was for a pre-hospital stay or to recuperate afterwards.)
Rosalinda's late husband had worked in the US and they had a bigger house, where her niece and little son also lived. The room I slept in was large. In the morning there was a big basket of pastries for me, brought by Julio and Mari. I felt so comfortable and secure sitting and chatting with them.
Later Julio got down on all fours, making an incredibly cute little-boy laugh. I've thought especially about Julio. He struck me as someone vibrant with purpose, just in his role as family man. There was no need to condescend. There aren't a lot of people more happy than this family.
About a week after I got back to Deming, I heard the shocking news about the famous four heads that were delivered to the police station in Ascension.
I calculated that the box with the heads had been sent via the same bus company I used — Estrella Blanca — over the same route, just two days after I returned from Casas Grandes. The box could have gone on the very same bus, in the luggage compartment.
I felt as if I'd passed within a hairsbreadth of perhaps the most revolting event that happened over the past terrible year on the border.
There's a fragment from a famous song, "Gracias a la Vida," by Argentine folksinger Violeta Parra, that holds special meaning for me.
I think of it in relation to a few months I spent in Guatemala in 1985, where they were going through violence a lot like what's happening on the border now, mutilations and all. But I stayed in Antigua, a relative haven from violence, and fell in love totally with the warm, funny people. I couldn't connect what I saw and heard with the barbarity going on:
Gracias a la vida
Que me ha dado tanto
Me ha dado el corazon
Que agita su marco. . .
Cuando miro el bueno
Tan lejos del malo
Thanks to life
That has given me so much
It's given me my heart
That shakes its frame. . .
When I see the good
So far from the bad.
Desert Exposure and the Palomas Hunger Project have been delighted with the thousands of dollars donated to the project because of the Borderlines column. But people are still going hungry in Palomas, and contributions are still appreciated. Send to Maria Lopez/DIF, c/o Desert Exposure, PO Box 191, Silver City, NM 88062.
Borderlines columnist Marjorie Lilly lives in Deming.