Angelica, a dark-haired young woman, smiled and
looked straight ahead. She was wearing a new dress and shoes and
sat behind a table in the schoolhouse of a remote village in the
mountains of Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico.
“Mi esposo se fue al norte,” she replied, when a health worker
asked why her husband had been absent during the last treatment
rounds for a disease called river blindness. In Chiapas, the
government health service is giving out the drug Mectizan free of
charge to everyone in this coffee-growing region. To prevent others
from getting the disease, everyone must be treated, and the
authorities were concerned about the many absentees, most of them
young men.
River blindness is a disease transmitted by
blood-feeding black flies that develop as larvae in the small
streams trickling down the steep, volcanic mountains. These flies
exist only in Mexico and Guatemala, so the disease is not a threat
to the United States.
“Norte,” or north, is their word
for the United States. Her husband had left their tight-knit ejido
community four years ago to make the dangerous journey, seeking a
better life for Angelica and their four children. They knew he had
arrived safely because she had been receiving money orders
regularly. Still, she was concerned about raising their children
alone and had moved in with her in-laws. Here, family bonds are the
bedrock of community structure; family is the only institution they
can trust.
Angelica?s situation is not unusual. Many men
from the Chiapas highlands, and from rural communities throughout
Mexico, have gone. Sometimes the whole family goes with them. A few
have vanished, never to be heard from again.
Walking
through the village, the health workers pointed out houses
belonging to families whose men had successfully made the journey.
Those homes had solid doors and windows, electricity and a TV dish
on the roof. At the village center, I paused to watch a soccer game
taking place on a cracked slab of cement.
One of the
smaller boys, his thick black hair combed into a forward cowlick,
dominated the game. He raced over the rough court, bouncing off the
other players to take passes and score goals, after which he
trotted down the field to receive “high fives” from his teammates.
This future Pele wore a sparkling new pair of Nikes with red
swooshes, while the other boys chased him barefooted.
Many U.S. citizens are rightly concerned about illegal immigration
— why it happens and how it can be prevented. More than 1 million
illegal immigrants are apprehended along the border each year, and
in the Tucson sector alone, 400,000 are caught. Yet the Border
Patrol estimates that untold thousands attempt the dangerous
crossing over and over again, until they finally make it.
The truth is that illegal immigration happens because people want a
better life and their country has failed to give them the
opportunities they need.
In Mexico, the country?s vast
wealth and rich resources are concentrated in the hands of the few,
while millions live in poverty. Given the basic human drives to
better oneself and provide for a family, no iron wall or border
army can stop the exodus that has been occurring in biblical
proportions. Only internal reform in Mexico can change this
well-established pattern, yet Mexico?s leaders almost always
include many who enrich themselves by maintaining the status quo.
For America, the leaky border has provided hidden
benefits which our politicians and others have failed to fully
acknowledge. Among these is an eager labor force highly motivated
for the right reasons to do the work Americans no longer care to
do. More importantly, it has been a safety valve of hope, without
which Mexico might well have exploded in violent revolution — as
it did in the early 1900s, and as occurred throughout Central
America less then 30 years ago. To be desperately poor without hope
that things can get better is a tragic — and dangerous situation
— for all of us.
Richard Collins is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia,
Colorado (hcn.org). He is a field biologist who writes from his
family ranch in Sonoita, Arizona, near the border with
Mexico.
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