D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
March 2010
Hungry Town
You can't give poor Mexican people more than they return to you. But now is a good time to try.
Just a half-hour from where I live is a place where there are a lot more hungry people than there are here in Deming (and there are quite a few here).
I mean Palomas, of course, and it's on the other side of an invisible line called a border, on a patch of ground belonging to another country.
There's pretty much a consensus among people in Palomas that hunger is worse this winter than it was last winter. And winter is the worst time for hunger because there's no work in the fields.
Mayor Maria Lopez says that this winter 30 families asking for food have made their way to her office, as opposed to 15 last year. That's one way of measuring the crisis.
There are of course many other people going hungry.
I went to Palomas on a Saturday in mid-February during those mild days of grace we had then, with weather in the 60s and windless.
After the all the rain, the streets had many puddles of a magnitude beyond ordinary puddles. I avoided more than one black bog by driving around the block. I had a fear my car would pitch over into the puddle's dark depths.
Maria Lopez said at that moment they couldn't grade the streets, because the city's grading machine might get stuck in a puddle and they wouldn't be able to extract it.
Saturday is a day when a lot of people in Palomas put out second-hand clothes to sell for a dollar or two in front of their houses. I stopped to talk to one short woman with black hair streaked with gray.
She said yes, that it was hard, that she made very little money and there were days when they didn't eat at all. She looked very worn. Her husband, elderly like her, was riding his bicycle back from buying a foot-and-a-half-long canister of propane that he carried on the handlebars.
Kitty-corner across the dusty street, a woman named Matilde was selling clothes and other second-hand things on tables. Another family down the street had used clothes sprouting on their fences, too.
Matilde said, "I tell people that we're punished sometimes because we need to change the things we do." I wasn't sure that's what was going on, but I nodded my head slightly. What about the people who have nothing to do with the drug trade or the collapsed economy in the US?, I thought. Or the children.
I drove to one of the small tiendas de abarrotes (grocery stores) a few blocks away, and an elderly man standing outside offered to clean my windshield. When I came out I paid him a dollar and asked him how much he made in a day. He said usually about one dollar.
I know a young guy, Felipe, who's making something like $3.50 per day or even less as a limpiabotes (shoeshine), weather and health permitting. His mother was single, so he always felt he had to work instead of go to school. He used to make about $20 a day, which was better than working in the fields.
He and his girlfriend Sabina are planning to leave for greener pastures, maybe in Torreon, Coahuila, once they've saved up enough money for the bus. But twice I've stopped by to see them when they've had no food. I don't know when they'll get the money.
I helped them out a little with food, and Felipe said his brother-in-law could
fix my leaking oil tank for free if I bought the gasket. You can't give poor
Mexican people more than they return to you. It just boomerangs back.
I stopped by to see Maria Lopez at her house, but no one was home. I thought I saw her mother-in-law out in back of her house across the street, so I headed over there.
Clementina is in her 80s and lives with her second husband. She speaks with the rough, crabbed accent that comes out of her poor rural background in the dry lands of Durango, a lot like Chihuahua. She always wears a plain white kerchief.
I asked Clementina if her son-in-law's family helps them out. She said no, not very much. She said at times she and her husband go for a day without eating.
When I've distributed food with Maria and Tere, I was a little uncomfortable sometimes because Maria would give Clementina some of the food I brought. But now I'm not uncomfortable with that.
Maria returned from wherever she was, and we went inside to talk at her kitchen table.
The last time I'd stopped by, on the previous Saturday, only her husband was home. She explained that she and Tere had been out bringing food around to 20 families. With a catch in her voice, she said these families had come to the mayor's office because they'd run out of food for their kids.
Maria had cashed her entire paycheck for a two-week period to spend on food for them. That amounted to P6,000, or $500.
She brought me into two rooms in their house where the ceiling is almost caving in and told me they had intended to use that money to buy lamina (corrugated metal) to repair the roofs. I'd always thought her house was well maintained, in a neat, conservative kind of way.
"Maria la Bella" is a phrase a male friend of hers kept saying in a joshing way to her last summer in front of his family's home. She was leaning out her car window trying to talk him into coming to a demonstration against the state electricity company for overcharging their debtors.
"Maria la Bella" was what people called the Mexican movie star Maria Felix, a beauty of the caliber of Rita Hayworth or Garbo. Maria is no Garbo — she struggles with her weight and hairdos — but I got his point.
Just about 4,000 people live in Palomas now, down from the 6,000 there were a year ago. They keep leaving.
There have been only about three or four killings or kidnappings so far this year. It's not all that much more than Palomas has been used to for decades, although most tourists and customers of the dentists and oculists hadn't been aware that was going on.
But it's hard to say whether this is a continuing trend. If the trend keeps up, it might be time for Americans to go back to Palomas.
In any case, Palomas has a special need of aid for food and other essentials right now. This period will go on through early May, when agriculture goes into full swing.
This month you can make a donation by filling out a check to an organization with a non-profit status: Our Lady of Palomas/Hunger Project. Their address is POB 622, Columbus, NM 88029. They work closely with Maria Lopez, and you can get a tax write-off.
Borderlines columnist Marjorie Lilly lives in Deming.