Migrant Community

Vigil

A cool breeze tempered the mid-morning heat. Mariano, Eduardo, a few friends, and I stood in the shade of a huisache tree on a hillside, and sipped Tequila mixed with Sprite from plastic cups. In a house below, José’s coffin stood open. The funeral director had placed a candelabrum with a white candle at each of the coffin’s corners and a screen with an image of Christ at the head.

“You know that I arrived in California in September 2001,” Mariano said, “just one day before the terrorist attack on the twin towers. I stayed there until 2004. I arrived home on Christmas Eve. Everybody from here is there. My brothers are in Santa Monica; my wife’s, in Van Nuys.” ³

Tequila and Sprite came with a double take that accompanied references to “there,” “here,” and “there,” striking a parallel in the nature of two distinct places. Mariano arrived in California in the foreground of another event that would signal a second reality to be known through destruction and signs of death. The people who undertook the attack died, and those who supported them reside in conversation about security threat advisories and bomb attacks on a Madrid train (March 11, 2004), in the London underground (July 6, 2005), and other places, each operating figuratively as metonyms for modernity. Mariano retraced his steps to California in memory of his son’s. He went to salir adelante (get ahead), an effort that became all the more imperative in reference to signs of death.

Mariano’s recollection of California coincided with the approach of a young girl. She was 5 years of age with long brown hair pulled behind her head in a braid. She climbed the hillside gingerly to negotiate turns in a path that led to the house. She picked up a plastic bottle and poured Sprite into a cup.

“Drink my daughter, drink,” Mariano said.

* * *

The liquid disappeared, and neighbors accounted for their steps to and from el otro lado (the other side). “I have traveled all over the United States,” Daniel said, who was in his early 30s. He wore blue jeans and a t-shirt with a logo indicating S & J Liquidators, a company that dismantles and sells hotel furnishings prior to renovation. “California, Colorado, and Texas,” he continued, “from place to place. We never had any trouble. Once when passing through Blythe, California, we were stopped by the border patrol. The officer asked us if we had our papers. We just said, ‘yes,’ and he waived us on.”

“Did you know José?” I asked.

“Yes, I was the one who took him to the United States over a year and a half ago. The news [of his murder] really affected me. I took him across the desert. The heat was intense, but we made it. Then I stayed in Arizona, and he continued to California to be with his uncles. I felt like he was in my care. They murdered him. I came back to be with Mariano and his family. He was a good boy.” ⁴

The steps, whether across states, the desert, or back home, trace threads of loyalty and comfort that hold together a social universe. Imagine the feeling that Daniel and his coworkers had on being pulled over by the “border patrol,” only to forever remember the “officer” who “waived them on.” In a similar way, migrants remember other people, including officials and employers, who have helped them. They wear company paraphernalia and carry business cards with names and contact information in their wallets, often for years after their migratory days have ended. And Mariano will remember Daniel because he cared for his son and then for his family. People remember those who define themselves against inconceivable forces that accompany their steps and become known through mention of things like the “border patrol,” “desert,” and “they” who carried out the murder. These words reference people and places as if suspended beyond the scope of one’s vision, indicating a fracture between manageable circumstances and doubtful ones, tangible things and shadows. The words make one aware that things are not always what they seem, that surfaces contain unrecognizable depth, drawing out curiosity and self-consciousness. Migrants are acutely aware of themselves every step of the way as if being watched by unfamiliar eyes located elsewhere.

* * *

The funeral director had opened the coffin’s lid. José’s hair was cut close to the scalp and his face, gaunt and pallid, showing a youthful demeanor. He was dressed in a white gown as customary for an “angelito” (little angel), indicating his unmarried status. Later in the evening, his godparents would place a crown of thorns on his head and dress him as St. Joseph, “the patron saint of a good death” (Lomnitz, 2005, p. 131). Joseph was the husband of Mary, a father to Jesus, and a carpenter known for the protection of his family. He died in the company of Christ, the savior.

Women, children, and a few men waited near the doorway to José’s room, filing in two at a time. Each peered briefly into the coffin as if looking for signs of the person once known, made a sign of the cross, and exited, allowing others to enter.

Carmen watched from a chair located about 20 feet (609.6 cm) from the doorway. “My little José,” she cried. “Why must you return like this?” ⁵

* * *

The mid-day sun had burned off the cool morning air. Mariano poured Tequila into a cup. He added Sprite. Daniel, friends, and I also poured the liquid into cups and drank. We waited for the delivery of a metal stand to launch cohetes or airborne explosives. People launch cohetes at the funeral of an angelito to commemorate youth and innocence (Rodíguez Álvarez, 2001). People also use the word “cohete” as an adjective meaning drunk to characterize how one goes in different directions.

“He was fine here,” José’s cousin, Tomás, said. “He was nice. He worked hard. But then he got involved with bad things.” ⁶

“He didn’t have any vices, didn’t drink or anything,” Daniel said. “Maybe he’d have a cigarette once in a while.” ⁷

They noticed a change in José that coincided with coming of age. He was, indeed, “fine here,” in the village, the hills, where he worked alongside other boys tending animals. Boys undertake this activity in the afternoon. They untie cows from fence posts or release goats from pens and take them to fallow pastures. In the rainy season from mid-June through October, the distances are short. But when the rain goes away, the boys walk longer distances to reach a sufficient amount of grass and shrubs for the animals. Sometimes they walk together or meet at a predetermined place where they allow the animals to mingle and wander. The boys hang out under trees, on top of earthen fences, or wherever a vantage point enables them to track the animals with one eye and talk to each other with the other eye. On occasion, a boy has to go after an animal that has strayed too far and bring it back to a line of vision and the company of other animals. They don’t ask, as I did naively, what animals belong to whom. They know by observation calves and their cows and kids and their nannies just as they know every ravine, tree, rock formation, and water source among other geographical features.

This knowledge grows over time. Older men tell about changes in weather patterns, periods of rainfall, and drought. They tell about changes in the landscape, sources of water, and the spring that “filled the stream that ran through the valley.” That is until engineers capped it and built a dam “to collect water for irrigation” and then let the water flow “right through [the valley] to Jalisco” and into Lake Jalapa, a popular destination for tourists and American expatriates. ⁸

Men go back even further in time to tell about the owners of the hacienda, the Macías family whose patriarch was José Natividad Macías, an advisor to President Venustiano Carranza (1917-1920; Cumberland, 1972). ⁹ Cesar Serrano, a friend who lives east of the old Macías home, talked about how José Natividad, his son, and daughter-in-law “weren’t very good administrators. They were more from the city than from the country. They were interested in money but not in the land.”

“I sometimes sleep here, out here in the open,” Cesar explained about his property. “It’s quiet in the moonlight. Then I stay all day long, looking after the trees, watering them. I pick the avocados when they’re in season. And I prune them.”

The Macías’ successor, Reynaldo Maldonado from León, was also interested in money. Men tell stories about his “really cheap rent,” “complaints about money,” visits to Macías’ daughter-in-law, “treating her really nice,” and land purchases amid promises to “take care of the people.” Reynaldo and his son, Rey junior, own most of the land in the region. They grow strawberries and broccoli for U.S. markets.

“Rey came around once,” Cesar said, handing me a taco from his lunch. “He thought that I owned this land only by squatting on it. He’s very ambitious. He thought he could run me off. But he found that I have a title. He never came back.” ¹⁰

* * *

Rey also made promises. I learned about them one day on passing by Susana Loro’s house. A puppy squeezed through narrow bars of an iron gate. “Don’t worry,” Susana said, “he’s only playful.” These words framed a conversation about her mother next door and husband who started drinking when her “eldest son was seven years of age, never stopped,” and “died three years ago.” Her mother owned a lot large enough for two cinder block houses and a yard where the puppy lived.

She’d owned much more, about three hectares. “The land extended,” Susana said, raising her hand and motioning toward the East, “to where the road curves. The man from León came. He promised to take care of my mother. He said that he’d bring her food every other week. She sold it all to him. He never brought anything.”

“We’re alone here, just my mother and I,” Susana reflected before directing her attention to me. “I saw you at the wedding of Leo’s son,” referring to a neighbor. “You, your wife, and those beautiful children. You should bring them here to stay. Are you going to your country one day? Life there seems very sad. Two of my children live there. One is in Atlanta. The other lives in Phoenix.” ¹¹

I didn’t ask about a title or terms of sale; these details seemed unimportant in light of other matters—the curve in the road, children in Atlanta and Phoenix, and sadness. The curve in the road indicated a 5-minute walk at best, but for Susana, the distance was much farther. Her gesture in that direction also accounted for time that went back many years and became a measure of loss—of her husband, children, and land—as if family members and a place of their own had deteriorated into a mere abstraction for the sake of memory.

One can imagine the deterioration that came with daily consumption of alcohol, the man from León, and the children’s departures, including her eldest son who was then 34 years of age. Susana’s mention of these events incorporated tone, rhythm, and speech pattern that tracked an extension of feeling across space and to events and people. Maurice Merleau-Ponty observes that this extension shows how the body becomes a “medium for having the world,” sometimes restricted by “literal” or pragmatic “considerations for the conservation of life” (1962, p. 169). The man from León, U.S. departures, and alcohol consumption involved literal considerations in fulfillment of immediate needs. An attractive price for the land and the promise of work, wages, and remittances in the United States enabled Susana, her mother, and sons, respectively, to forget momentarily about poverty and proceed down a path that these exchanges had cut for them. Similarly, women say, “men drink to forget,” and always stop short of explaining what needs to be forgotten. ¹²

The body also builds on events, Merleau-Ponty explains, moving from literal to figurative meaning and enabling a person to experience “new significance” and “project[ion]” into a “cultural world” (1962, p. 169). This transition from literal to figurative meaning enables people to enrich their lives according to meaningful experiences that define sociability and cultural orientation. Susana expressed this way in the opposite direction; the body extended across space and to events only to show where meaning became opaque, sociability, undone, and cultural orientation, fragile. I was flattered by the invitation to bring my family, live “there,” and escape a life that seemed sad.

* * *

José had been fine “here.” He’d spent his afternoons herding goats. He’d been with friends. They had looked after animals in the same way that Cesar looked after his avocado trees, attending to their needs according to seasonal rainfall.

The friends also had looked after each other. If a boy had something to eat, say tacos and fruit, he’d give some to the others. Sometimes they pooled pesos to buy chips or sodas at a tienda (small store) on their return to the village. José had shared common ground that family members, friends, and he had formed over time through customary gestures. Each sustained self-awareness through a sense of well-being in the presence of others.

“Don’t worry,” Susana had said. One could also hear these words resonate in Daniel’s account of the “officer” who “waived them on” and in Cesar’s about the man from León who “never came back.” The words signal attention to new conditions to ease whatever anxiety one might have by orienting the body with other people. Utterances of this kind act as a bridge between the intellect and senses, traveling to faraway places to make sense out of imperceptible circumstances (Turner, 1967). These utterances do the same of circumstances in plain view by attending to details, such as sharing food and dressing an angelito as St. Joseph, that connect a person with another. The words work in concert with customary behavior to support a way of speaking (Hymes, 1974) and being-in-the-world—perceptible and imperceptible—to emphasize human connections that form, as Geertz observed, “a network of social understandings” (1983, p. 156).

Logically, the man from León also said, “don’t worry,” on occasion. He must have said as much with his demeanor on approaching Cesar to inquire about the land. The man certainly said, “don’t worry,” in conversations with Susana’s mother. Similarly, José likely told his mother, “don’t worry,” when he “got the idea of going to the United States.” ¹³ Each time signaled a blind spot as if careful attention to details circumscribed an empty space. The space becomes important because whatever the content, it defies logical incorporation into the appearance of things. The space serves as a placeholder or a symbol that stands for a “missing quantity,” “any of several alternatives,” or as in math, for “no value,” as in a zero next to a decimal point. ¹⁴ In human terms, the space acts as an empty promise that on acknowledgment makes a person aware of being subject to several alternatives. Each is unknown but persists as a mere abstraction that characterizes a person’s separation from known sensual and cognitive conditions of life to be taken to somebody else’s and transformed into something else.

* * *

The sun was high overhead, and the huisache tree provided only a small area of shade. Men expressed condolences among empty bottles. Mariano, Eduardo, Daniel, friends, and I walked away.

Procession

Family members, friends, and acquaintances gathered behind a black Chevrolet Suburban. Its double rear doors featured an insignia, Funeraria San José, Silao, Guanajuato. The vehicle moved slowly to the center of a dirt road, and the people filed in behind, each walking in the steps of another to follow José to his burial.

The people were to walk a short distance in contrast to what many had traveled. Daniel had arrived from Phoenix; and Eduardo, from Santa Monica a few days before. José’s brother Francisco had returned from Van Nuys. They joined others who’d come from other U.S. cities or nearby villages. The steps, slow and uniform in cadence and direction, contrasted with another sort of journey that had begun shortly after the death and would continue in the near future.

Words about José’s death had spread quickly through villages. “He got involved in bad things,” Tomás said. “He was smoking marijuana. He’d cut his hair really short. He didn’t want to work. He started hanging out with my cousin [his brother]. So my uncles kicked him out [of the apartment in Santa Monica where he had been living].” ¹⁵

“He’d taken malos pasos (bad steps),” a neighbor explained. “He never communicated with his parents, never sent money home. People get involved with bad people. The same could happen here. And now he’s gotten himself killed.” ¹⁶

“They say that he was trafficking drugs,” Ester Espinoza said.

“Who says,” I asked.

“They just say; I don’t ask who. These things you don’t ask about. It could be true. I heard that he wasn’t working and that he’d started to dress cholo (like a gangster). They want easy money. They have nothing here.” ¹⁷

Something came from nothing. Marijuana, drugs, and malos pasos were “bad things.” They marked parameters that separated realities of work, family obligations, loyalty, friendship, and pastoral care from dreadful things entertained with the imagination. One can imagine how the uncles felt on throwing José out. His appearances had changed. He didn’t work. Yet he ate and lived idly, depleting resources as opposed to contributing to them. He threatened the livelihood of the household and its connection to the livelihood of households in Buenavida. José’s malos pasos had encroached on the uncles’ world. And the uncles turned the malos pasos back to where they’d come from.

Reference to the uncles’ efforts to preserve the household heightened a sense of vulnerability. José had indeed gotten himself killed. He also directed people’s attention toward other frightful details, including loss of communication and remittances. People acknowledged the “bad people” who in one instance were there, somewhere in Southern California, and in another were here, in or around Buenavida. They were the “they” whom “you don’t ask about.” You don’t ask to keep distance from them and peace of mind only to rely on their voices to tell you bad things. They were close at hand, having arrived from nowhere certain to remind everybody that nothing—no child, son or daughter, no person or thing, not even yourself—should be taken for granted.

* * *

A cool breeze blew down valley and through a riverbed. Clouds moved across the sky and periodically sheltered the ground from the sun.

Francisco helped his little brother, 8 years of age, repair the tube of a bicycle tire. He pushed the tube down and into a tub of water, extending his forearms. He wore a white tank top that revealed a letter “V” in gothic font tattooed on his right shoulder and below the collarbone. A letter “N” marked his left shoulder. He and his brother watched for air bubbles to rise to the surface.

His aunt and mother, Carmen, sat in plastic chairs under a mesquite tree. His mother held a baby wrapped in a blanket. The baby nursed, and a sister made drawings with a stick in the dirt. In her 5 years of life, the sister hadn’t spoken or moved well. “She wasn’t born well,” Carmen said.

Francisco lifted the tube out of the water, placed a forefinger on an area and said, “There.” His brother made a yellow spot with a pen, marking the place for a patch in a line of numerous, old patches.

“She is my sister,” Francisco said, pointing toward the one who played with the stick. “There is my youngest sister,” referring to the baby in his mother’s arms. “There are a lot of thorns,” he said as he sanded the tube’s surface and prepared it for rubber cement. He then cut a square piece of rubber from an old tube.

“Are you from there?” Carmen asked, referring to the United States.

“Yes,” I said.

Carmen and the aunt took the baby into the house.

“My brother liked to go out at night,” Francisco said. “He’d go out at any hour to get a soft drink or cigarettes. He didn’t see the danger.”

Carmen and the aunt took their seats again. “It’s peaceful here,” Carmen said. “There’s always a breeze and no noise, just dogs that bark once in a while.”

“Why don’t you come here and sit in the shade?” Carmen asked looking downward with her hand held close to her mouth to shield her teeth from view.

Carmen poured a pail of beans into her lap, holding them with her skirt. She plucked rotten ones and threw them over an embankment and into the riverbed.

“My grandparents used to live there,” the aunt commented, referring to a house on the other side of the riverbed. The house’s roof had collapsed, and the adobe walls, crumbled in most places. “They died.”

“The river fills up almost to there,” Francisco said, pointing to a water line on rocks. “It’s beautiful when it does.” ¹⁸

Francisco and his brother placed the tube inside a tire. Francisco attached a pump valve to a stem and moved a lever to force air into the tube. The valve leaked. Francisco removed the valve. He then tore a strip of plastic from a bag, wrapped it around the stem, and affixed the valve over the plastic and stem. The valve’s rubber lining had worn thin, making the valve inoperable without this modification.

* * *

Carmen and Mariano followed José. Carmen held the baby. Francisco, his sister, brother, aunts, and uncles were also there. They walked alongside tracks of land with furrows ready for seed and rainfall. They approached a brick wall 2 meters high and proceeded toward an opening that gave entry to a cemetery.

In the cemetery, the people fanned out. Each person walked with family members, kept the pace, and negotiated narrow paths among gravesites.

* * *

Francisco and his friend Carlos sat under a huisache tree on a hillside. They viewed tracts of land dividing the landscape below. Commercial jets descended on the horizon in preparation for landing at the international airport.

“It’s beautiful,” Carlos said. “You should see this valley when the rain comes; the land is green as far as you can see.”

“How have you been?” I asked Francisco.

“It’s difficult,” he said. “My brother and I were working together, picking broccoli in Santa Paula. Then he disappeared. He was killed.”

“How does a boy go from being a shepherd in Mexico to dead in San Fernando, California?” I asked.

“Here we have a simple life,” Francisco explained. “We herd animals and grow corn. There, it’s a big city. You can learn where the streets go and how to get around. But you don’t know how the people are. Where we lived, you can’t go out at night. You come home from work and you stay inside.”

“I used to go out at night,” Francisco reflected further. “I’d come home at one or two in the morning, and nobody ever bothered me. I knew how to talk to people there. My brother didn’t. He was innocent. It’s like putting a goat in the mouth of a wolf.” ¹⁹

Conclusion

An apt metaphor: Francisco drew on familiar bearings to describe events in a faraway place. The strategy makes sense because he’d started like so many others before, attending school, enjoying weekend soccer games, and looking after animals. These events signal rhythms that one generation passes to another and become absorbed into self-awareness. The rhythms work like an internal clock whose beats, which designate changes in activity and sense of direction, work out in habits.

Boys share these habits, enabling them to find common ground. Consider Francisco, his forearms pushing the tube down and into the tub of water. His brother watched attentively for air bubbles. Don’t be too mindful of the gang insignia on Francisco’s shoulders or references to the place where José died. Francisco and his brother handled these signs through their interactions, one pushing and the other watching until an air bubble revealed the source of a problem. “There,” Francisco said. The brother made a yellow mark, each gesture in sync with the other as if following intuitive moves to create an aesthetic of human connection.

An aesthetic of this kind prevails over frightful appearances. Francisco motioned and said, “She is my sister” and then pointed to another in his mother’s arms and a small network of people that held together in the face of outside threats.

No wonder Carmen said, “Are you from there?” mindful of the place that had taken away family members and sent one back in a coffin. I was mindful of where “there” was and what I might have come to represent. A cloud released sunlight, and heat grew intense. I heard, “Why don’t you come here and sit in the shade?”

One can look for beauty in these moments. The people, as Ester Espinoza said, have nothing “here” or at least little in terms of material resources. Whatever resources they do have, including houses, bicycles, and even their bodies, appear in decay or worn out. The resources still provide for nominal subsistence and direct the mind’s eye toward signs of loss—the house of the grandparents who’d died or the bean thrown over the embankment and into the dry riverbed. Francisco followed the trajectory, signaled by his mother’s hand to see a different reality. The riverbed would fill with water. The rains would make the valley green with corn. Boys would take animals to pastures close to home. Francisco and Carlos would sit on the hillside and take in the view despite commercial jets that descended periodically from elsewhere and through their line of vision.

Boys take care of animals, hang out, or coordinate activities that show a desire for survival. The desire finds expression in small things that act, Mary Douglas suggests, like a “kind of prophylactic against the effects of death,. . . a protection, not against death but against madness” (1966, p. 178). The younger brother watched as Francisco cut the patch from the old tube to repair the newer one. The patch didn’t protect the tube from loss any more than the other patches indicating previous repairs. The patch protected the brothers from the effects of loss, the despair or, possibly, “madness” that could come on acknowledgement of a life that never had a chance to start well. There were “a lot of thorns.” There were also a lot of wolves.

Wolves are strange creatures. Everybody’s aware that they are out there, somewhere. They reside outside a boy’s line of vision where animals stray. One might enter a familiar space and provoke utterances like, “don’t worry,” or inquires about where it might have come from. The inquiries track lines of flight in any of several directions, to a tree, to a curve, or up a hill. The directions might cover greater distances in reference to the desert and California. The directions lead to things—area of shade, a van, corps—with uncanny distinction that upsets transparency, provokes anxiety, and refracts one’s gaze back to immediate surroundings, people at hand, and a moment of uncertainty about the nature of the animal. Yet people know that wolves come to take whatever they can.

José got himself killed only after significant preparation. He’d heard stories about wolves. Boys tell them on looking after animals. The boys certainly had told the story about the man from León. They’d told about desert crossings, the streets, and the big city; all things one learns about over time, allowing them to take hold of the imagination and shape a way of thinking that comes with a way of speaking. One day José got an idea and said something to his mother about “going to the United States.” The idea made sense amid circumstances characterized by signs of life, including land, food, houses, and bodies, in decline.

The idea came with words that referred to places to go and initiated ways of acting appropriate for new circumstances. Daniel had made the trip several times for steady work. So had José’s brother Francisco, his short hair, tattoos, and dress style showing experience in the streets. There were uncles in Santa Monica who could help him. The men signaled improvements that had come from their efforts, including support for their families at home. They also suggested how to get along in another world, realizing a role as a migrant and personhood as a man.

José took these words to heart. His activities signaled connection to home and entry into a life that modern society had cut out for him. Francisco said that he and José had been picking broccoli together. People said that José wasn’t working. Some said that he’d started smoking marijuana, and others, just cigarettes like at home. People commented about dress style; certainly he’d adopted the look of Southern California street youth. Yet he sounded like his friends in Buenavida, retaining a way of speaking that directed boys to pastures where they cared for animals and each other. José sent as many mixed signals about who he was as family members and friends suggested about whom he’d become. José’s efforts to get along meant entry into a space where Tequila mixed with Sprite, where multiple, heterogeneous signs worked to yield any number of outcomes—wage laborer, gangster, drug dealer. These outcomes are interchangeable because, similar to commodities in a capitalist market, they reside in a space that serves as a placeholder of relative values, mere abstractions that produce nothing substantive to sustain a life, family, and community.

Migrants travel to el otro lado, which they take as a temporary placeholder for life at home. They mention departure and return dates, count days, and quantify time to offset passages through uncertain spaces. The spaces include places such city streets, an apartment in Santa Monica, and a sidewalk in San Fernando, where work, domestic life, and discursive exchanges involve double takes, signs that common ground is not what it seems. Francisco suggested as much in his reflection on his brother’s innocence. He knew that José didn’t speak the right way, couldn’t see the danger, and received bullets meant for somebody who could.

The case is one of misrecognition and a placeholder. That is when a person stands for another as José did on stepping down from the van. He became the object of a line of vision followed by a trajectory of bullets. Family members and neighbors tracked the bullets from their vantage point, swapped stories, supported one another with details, and came to terms about what happened. They made events in a faraway place intelligible, holding them there at a distance for sufficient contrast to sustain an idea of community in Buenavida. The people also acquired peace of mind by ignoring the nature of their vantage point, details signaling loss and decay that compel boys like José to leave in the first place. They resided in a market of signs where careful selection sustained a unity of thought and feeling—an aesthetic that protected them, not from death but from possible madness. In this respect, José’s death was useful because it served as a placeholder, symbolic of a missing quantity, the truth about wolves that encroach on people’s lives with propositions and lies. As a placeholder, José’s death enabled people to sustain hope for another day.

Mariano, Carmen, family members, children, and friends gathered around the tomb made of cinder blocks and fresh mortar. They watched men lower a coffin that encased a boy dressed as a man known for having protected his family.