...then there is no barrio(s)

A friend called. "We just drove by the new barrio - Colosio - it's being torn down. Cops are there, bulldozesrs, dump trucks." D. and I were getting ready to go to Popeye Beach, out toward the Estuary, so we decided to drive out to Barrio Colosio.

It was like something out of Mad Max. We'd just driven through there the day before and were impressed at the amount of work that had been done on the houses - plywood walls, wood beams. By the time we got there this morning most everything was gone. Piles of debris - or possessions - burned. Cars and trucks and vans passed us loaded down with building material, blankets, chairs. Neighbors in real houses let people stack their belongings and material alongside their homes. Police cars sat at all roads leading into the barrio.

We decided to visit another barrio, the one we'd heard was also to be torn down. On the way we stopped at a home rented by some gringas and they said the bulldozers were there now. They said the homes were being torn down to make way for that rumored marina...rumored for decades. The barrio was on the road to the estuary so we headed there only to be met with lines of police cars - brought in from Hermosillo - and people standing about watching a bulldozer raze another home.

I got out of the van and wandered around with my camera, hoping not to catch the attention of the police. We were told to move our vehicles back so I did then got out for more picture taking. A white truck came down the hill from where a fairly large home was standing, people surrounded the house, stood in a line along the top of the dune. A policeman yelled and cops went running toward the white truck. More police trucks arrived with masked and armed officers standing in the bed. I went back to the van and sat inside, shaking at the horror and the potential for violence. A policeman yelled for me to vamos. He didn't have to tell me twice.

We found an alternate route to the estuary, spent an hour or so there, then returned via the back road to the highway, past a new dump site where they were dumping people's belongings.

That was on Thursday. The next day we made another trip to the estuary, this time with a group of women to kayak and paddle board. We didn't know if the road was blocked but we didn't want to risk it so we took the road from the highway, past the new dumpsite. This is what it looked like on Friday morning.

The dump area had grown. Now people's possessions were covered with dirt, to be burned? Or to discourage rummaging, looking for something of value, maybe that photo of the abuela, maybe a rusted coffee pot?

I don't know the details of the razing. It seems to be true that the people in the more established barrio had been given notice since January that this was going to happen. It seems that these are the people who hustled out to Colosio looking for a new place to live. But apparently they were there illegally so they had to leave. I keep asking "but where are they supposed to live? where are they now?"

It's no wonder people risk their lives to cross the desert into the United States. Their lives are all they own.

Border Bars

On our way north to Nogales we saw a place in Santa Ana that looked like a bar. The sign over the door said El Bar Co. We were in a hurry to get to El Regis saloon in Nogales so we kept driving, thinking maybe we'd stop at El Bar Co on the way home.

The only glitch on the ride north was at the military checkpoint where a couple trucks managed to block the automobile/bus/RV lane so we followed the other cars when they drove down the embankment to the dirt road in the median. It was a steep embankment. We were in my cargo van. Demo worried we would tip over. Coming out of the ditch was even scarier but we managed and were soon once again barreling north.

First stop: Ueta duty free shop on the U.S. side of the border - liter of Tangueray $18, same for a liter of Absolut Citron. As we waited for the security guard to escort us into Mexico Demo said, "look at all those gringos" as though we were somehow excluded from that demographic. We carried our booze into Mexico and headed straight for El Regis.

El Regis is my kind of bar - old, dark, lots of wood, stained glass. It's a Mexican bar but gringos go there too. Ramon was working and he was totally smitten with Demo. On the shelf over the cash register was a display of food items - spam, potted meat, vienna sausages, smoked oysters. We opted for the oysters.

Next stops: the bars in Rio Rico - Hilda's and the new bar I don't know the name of. After Hilda's we sat outside at the new bar I don't know the name of and watched the full moon rise over the Santa Rita Mountains. The air was cooling, softening. A typical southern Arizona evening. It's why I fell in love with the place.

A bottle of wine with our pizza dinner at Nonna Vivi's then after-dinner drinks at the bar at Esplendor resort where we met a nice man from France who came up to our room. We chatted for hours.

Needless to say we were quite hungover the next morning. Not pleasant when faced with hours of shopping followed by the 5-hour drive to Kino but we're troopers; as we neared Santa Ana we decided to stop at El Bar Co and check it out.

I pulled up and Demo went in. When she came out she said it was a restaurant only. She said it smelled good and it was cute, decorated like the interior of a boat. We looked at the sign: El Bar Co. Well, shit: El Barco. The Boat. That gap between bar and co is what threw us. We chuckled over our stupidity all the way home.

Vamanosing to Took-sohn

We caravanned north - Demo with me in Vanna, following PJ in her truck. Smooth sailing. At both checkpoints - the military/truck and the federales - they wanted to pull us over and examine the van but they knew we were with PJ and they had waved her through so out of consideration they sent us on our way too.

What did Demo and I talk about on that five-hour drive to the border? Food. All the food we were going to eat in the states. She was even looking forward to the generally uninspiring cuisine on the Big Island of Hawaii where she would be staying for two weeks. We talked Thai, Italian, Japanese, even Mexican - the kind of Mexican food us gringos are used to, dishes loaded with sour cream and peppers and tomatoes and guacamole.

We had a 45 minute wait at the border. Not too bad. Can the vendors there find any gaudier items to hawk? Those bracelets and paintings and hair clips shimmered and glowed in the afternoon sun. The guy in the wheelchair wasn't there but the blind man was so we gave him pesos. (Shoot, now that I think about it, he probably preferred U.S. money. Try to spend a peso in Nogales, Sonora...it's nearly impossible.)

And suddenly I was....home. Santa Cruz County is my heart's home. No other place has ever touched me in such a way - not even Portland, a city and people I love dearly. That stretch between Nogales and Tucson is where I belong.

Just north of Nogales we exited I-19 at Tumacacori so I could stop at the Santa Cruz Chili Factory. Then we continued on the frontage road to Tubac. A lot of restaurants close in August but Shelby's Bistro was open so we stopped there.

As with walking into the Galleria Mall in Hermosillo for Movie Monday, Demo and I once again fell into each other's arms out of sheer joy. Food! Wine! English! Poor PJ could not relate. There is nothing she likes more than caramelos and carne asadas and coctiel de camarones. And speaking Spanish. We probably embarrassed the hell out of her with our giddyness.

Salads! Pinot Grigio! For lunch we ordered a beautiful salad with gorgonzola and other fancy food doodads, a pepperoni pizza, a burger. In August, Shelby's bottles of wine are half price. We had two.

The beauty of living simply is that the simple things - friends, food, wine - carry more beauty than we realize. Or appreciate. Go without Barilla farfale pasta for ten months and suddenly those bow tie pastas are the most treasured items in the world.

It ended up being a long day. It was after 8:00 when Demo boarded the shuttle for Phoenix. I went in search of a hotel, found a mid-range place with a very nice bartender and a very lovely pool.

Now I'm in Bisbee. I have friends here but this town is not my town. I'm already looking forward to being back in Kino. And figuring out how I can make my home - even part-time - in Santa Cruz County Arizona.

A headline like this...

...will send me on a rant.

Mo Brooks, R-Alabama, "will do anything short of shooting them" to keep illegal immigrants out of the United States.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/13/mo-brooks-illegal-immigrants_n_897210.html

I'm waiting for El Vikingo to show up. He's been working on the roof of my van which is a real bitch because there are areas where it has rusted through. The Viking is not an expert body worker and he made that known from the get go. So what he did was take my van to the welder's shop and there he got some pretty good advice and the use of the welder's tools. In this mosquito-infested heat he's labored away for 100 to 150 pesos a day. That's 8 to 12 bucks. A DAY.

The Viking needs a cell phone and a car so he can do this work. Gasoline is around $3 a gallon. He drives a Volkswagen which is economical. (I wish I had that Volkswagen. The front passenger seat is gone which allows whoever is in the back seat to stretch out their legs, like cabs in Mexico City. And he's glued fur to the dash - a real Viking!).  At his house he pays for electricity, water, propane. Food isn't all that cheap unless you're living on tortillas and beans or eating at a taco stand. Some tools are less expensive here but most are more. And don't even think about buying electronics which is why so many people ask us to bring TVs, laptops and MP3 players from the States.

The Americans and Canadians go positively apeshit if you pay more than 150 pesos a day or if you leave a good tip at a restaurant. "You'll spoil them," they say which is condescending in itself but what they're really saying is "you'll spoil it for us." They'll lose their cheap labor pool.

Yes, the cost of living is less here compared to the U.S. but could you live on 10 to 15 dollars a day?

Back to that quote. These are PEOPLE crossing the border - not illegals. They risk everything and now they have to face murderous drug smugglers. They are not taking away jobs unless you're willing to work picking fruit or as a day laborer or fast food worker. I imagine my old database manager job would be safe and that IT programmer's...oh wait, his job is being done by someone from Pakistan. And damn, most transcription work's been outsourced to India or the Philippines. Why aren't we more pissed off about that??

So Rep. Brooks needs to get his head out of his ass. People in positions of power need to be careful about the words they use. Haven't we seen enough of what putting someone in the crosshairs will do?

Crossing at Nogales

One day my friend Kathi and I went to Nogales on a booze and cigarette run. While waiting in line to declare our citizenship and our purchases, we witnessed a way to cross the border illegally right under the customs agents' noses.

There were two lines open that day and the third, the line next to ours, was closed. A trashcan had been placed in front of the turnstile. An older Mexican man was directly in front of me. In front of him a younger man. At a signal from the older man, the younger guy dropped to the floor and scooted over to the turnstile and moved the trashcan out of the way. There he squatted just a foot from our agent's back. After another signal from the older man, he got back in line.

The Reaper's Line

Lee Morgan II is someone I'd probably enjoy running into at the Longhorn in Amado, Arizona. We'd sit down over beers and he'd regale all present with tales of his life as a Customs Service Special Agent busting drug smugglers while having to deal with corruption on both sides of the border. Mr. Morgan never holds back - not in his language, not in his feelings about both governments, not in naming names. I was curious to see if he would mention an old neighbor of mine who used to work the border and sure enough, there he was, a man Lee has no respect for and he doesn't hide that fact.

I wish more people would read this book given today's illegal immigration fury. Lee writes how important it is to make a distinction between the dope smugglers crossing our southern border and the poor people who come north looking for jobs. He paints the Minutemen and other vigilante groups as racist and a dangerous hindrance for law enforcement. I was sickened by the chapter on the Barnett brothers who own a ranch in Cochise County and who at one point wanted to have "safari adventures for people who wanted to track down illegal aliens."

It's also interesting to read about the obstacles agents face in trying to do their jobs - for instance, they have no radio contact with highway patrol. How crazy is that? Pretty fucking nuts and he'll guarandamntee that!