D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
January 2010
Shooting and Scoring
In a town torn by violence and kidnappings, Palomas' high-school students somehow manage to win basketball games and academic contests.
Some readers of this paper were probably floored when they learned that Dr. Ricardo Fierro was abducted by armed men from his office in Palomas on the day before Thanksgiving.
Fierro has the largest dentist's office in Palomas. He's been there about 30 years and is a respected man.
I heard this news from a family in Palomas just two days after it happened and before it appeared in the Deming Headlight.
I was planning on taking part in a candlelight peace march that evening, but I lost my nerve when I heard about Fierro. The march didn't look as if it would get going (although it did later), and I sort of slunk out of town as it got dark. It seemed as if everything had changed for Palomas.
I had interviewed Fierro a year before. I'd said to myself that he was a good person to talk to, honest and intelligent. He wasn't in denial about the violence, as many business owners are. My friend Martha, who worked at the human rights office there a few years ago, told me Fierro had donated things for them to distribute to poor people.
As of this writing, no news has been released about Fierro. The family just asks for prayers. Two of his sons had been in prison for selling drugs, and one was released a week before the kidnapping. The events may be related.
When I talked to a woman on the street about Fierro, she just gave me a blank look. There's a disconcerting apathy toward the violence sometimes in Palomas. I think there's also a life-affirming positive attitude that takes things with a dose of humor. Sometimes it's hard to tell the two apart.
Many people in Palomas have never stepped foot in the dentists' or oculists' offices in town. These businesses are out of the economic range of most people there. They didn't know Fierro.
Ordinary life goes on for most people in Palomas despite the violence and the grim economy. Life doesn't just stop.
Children go to school, babies are born, a public "pajama party" is advertised, both churches and bars carry on their trades, businesses limp along, and life is pretty normal for the most part.
There's a kind of expansion and contraction of fear going on, an inhaling and exhaling. Someone prominent gets killed, or someone in one's family or on the block gets kidnapped, and people retreat behind doors for a couple days or weeks. But then it starts seeming silly to be scared, and life relaxes again.
I've just been learning some pretty amazing things going on at the high school level — in the "prepa" or escuela preparatoria — despite the problems.
Someone told me about the Palomas girls' basketball team winning a state tournament. I followed that story until I found the team's coach.
He's Cesar Chaparro, and works at the Farmacia Express. With a quiet smile he tells me that the team — los Jaguares — won the state championship in Chihuahua City in 2008. They lost to the Chihuahua City team by just 53 to 51 in late November 2009.
This is an incredible thing for a team from such a small town. Palomas has shrunk to about 4,000 people this year, according to city hall. They're competing against Juarez, Chihuahua City, Cuauhtemoc, Casas Grandes and every other town in the state. There are only 80 students in the three-year prepa in Palomas.
The team practices at the basketball court in the elementary school that hugs the border to the west of the Port of Entry.
"The electricity is not very good," says Chaparro. That means it's cold and the lights are dim. The hoops aren't good, he says. But local businesses donate new uniforms for the 10 girls, who look sharp and self-confident wearing their droopy shorts and sleeveless tops in the posed photos Chaparro shows me.
He holds a picture of a small, pretty girl in front of me for few seconds, and I'm not sure why. "She's like a daughter to me," he explains fondly.
I ask him if the girls watch girls' basketball games on TV. He says no. "They just love it!" he says, meaning playing rather than watching.
The Palomas school system teaches kids basketball and soccer skills from primary school on up. Elementary kids take trips to Ascension and Casas Grandes for games. That's one reason for their success.
At the city hall Christmas party on Dec. 19, I learned about some other prizes the prepa has won. Ninfa Romo, the wife of the school's director, Arsenio Morales, told me the school won the statewide chemistry and math contests for 2009, too.
Obviously, the prizes Palomas is winning are the result of dedicated teachers with a love for their students.
Morales is from Veracruz in the south and went to UNAM, the national university in Mexico City. He's working in Palomas "to raise it up," according to Romo. I used to like talking to him when he worked at a pharmacy in town a few years ago, because he's someone who cares about human rights issues.
Although Palomas seems like a hollowed-out "pueblo muerto" (dead town), its life-pulse is still beating strong.
At the Christmas party, 450 presents were given out to children and some adults. It was a happy event. They had one of the street bands in town play on the steps for a while instead of using the raucous sound system with recorded music they usually have, due to low finances this year.
Afterwards I went driving around Palomas and getting lost as usual in the sign-less streets. I stopped at someone's house and asked directions.
Her name was Celia. She pointed out where I should go, and then I talked to her a while. Her husband was working this year in the chile fields of Colonia Victoria, a half-hour south of town. She said he made about $60 a week, to support seven people.
Her husband's work was going to wind up at Christmas. She said she wasn't sure how they'd make it through the winter, a chronic problem for fieldworkers in Mexico. Sometimes they eat one meal a day, or skip entire days, during the off-season.
I really couldn't tell you how they'll make it, either.
People in City Hall said that a lot of people came to their offices two days before Christmas saying they needed food, but they didn't have anything to give them. Fortunately, a couple of people from Columbus were in Palomas distributing food packages that day.
We've gotten a generous outpouring of donations this December and hope to get more.
Borderlines columnist Marjorie Lilly lives in Deming. Contributions to help fight hunger in Palomas can be sent to: Maria Lopez/DIF, c/o Desert Exposure, PO Box 191, Silver City, NM 88062.