Trabajadores
Men young and old from impoverished towns
in the Valley of Oaxaca and from the drought-stricken mountainous Mixteca congregate
on streetcorners or vacant lots in the city of Oaxaca hoping a truck or pickup
will swing past and the driver or his passenger will hop and shout “Cuatro, I can use four!” and jab his
finger you! you! and you! Seldom is pay discussed, or what
the job demands or how long it will take. Always there are more willing to work
than jobs to be offered; payment seldom exceeds $20 pesos an hour (about $1.60
U.S.) and often is less.
But if one has a connection one doesn’t have to stand on a streetcorner—not always, at least. Manuel de Jesùs Rojas had such a connection. Tall, slope-shouldered, with a small vulturish face, Rojas lucked into an excavation project that lasted nearly seven weeks. Rains forced delays and the foreman, an asthmatic and somewhat myopic ex-policeman, asked Rojas to help him hustle up extra hands. From a cubbyhole miscelanea half-a-block from the excavation project Rojas telephoned his brother-in-law in a village forty kilometers away. The next morning the brother-in-law and half-a-dozen of his neighbors were at the work site. They rented side-by-side units in a slovenly hotel and slept four-to-a-room, ate streetcorner blandas and tlayudas and worked ten and eleven hours a day although they only were paid for eight. When the job ended the foreman told Rojas “keep in touch,” other jobs were in the offing. Some only required two or three workers, some eight to twenty. Whenever he could, Rojas returned to the village tucked against a mountainside in the lower Sierras where his wife and three children lived. They talked about moving to the city of Oaxaca but “Where would we live?” they asked each other. Work wasn’t steady; they couldn’t afford to buy or rent; at best they would become shantytown squatters piecing together some kind of structure away from the security—and poverty—of the village in which they’d been born. That September, just as he, his brother-in-law and some others from their village had finished dismantling a dozen or more old schoolbuses for salvage parts the ex-policeman gave Rojas the name of an “ingeniero” who was assembling a work crew to begin construction for a new supermarket. The ingeniero, slightly balding and “parecido a un chilango” (looked like a Mexico City type), offered Rojas and his brother-in-law $1,800 a week (approximately $145 U.S.) as albañiles (construction workers) and some of the younger men $1,150 as helpers. The crew of twenty-four, over half of whom were from Rojas’ village, started work the following Monday digging trenches and framing the foundation. When they finished work on Saturday the ingeniero told them he didn’t have enough money to pay all of them but would loan each of them $450 pesos to tide them through the week then pay them the full amount owed them the following Saturday. Rojas and the crew objected but “if it’s that or nothing” one of them grumbled “no hay remedio”--there’s no recourse—we have to accept.” All but two of the twenty-four showed up to work the following Monday. Throughout the week they mixed and poured concrete and studded the outer walls. One of men from Rojas’ village complained that his wife had had to borrow “what pesitos she could” from her family to make it through the week; another that he wouldn’t have eaten if a pozolero hadn’t accepted his promise to pay for his meals when he finally got paid. More than once during the week the ingeniero laughed and assured them “no problema, you’ll get paid.” That Saturday, as customary at Oaxaca construction sites, the crew knocked off early and the ingeniero cracked open two cases of cold Corona. As he’d promised he paid them for the two weeks of work—but at wages reduced by 200 pesos a week from the promised $1,800. Again the workers complained but again “no hay remedio”--those from Rojas’ pueblo couldn’t go home without money for their families and many of them owed for lodging and food in Oaxaca. The worker who’d first asserted no hay remedio argued that once an employer reneged on promises he’d continue to do so but Rojas’ brother-in-law convinced him to stay with the crew, that longer terms jobs were scarce and the $1,600 a week was better than nothing. Curses against the “pendejo chilango” ingeniero, the hard work and poverty in Mexico interrupted bursts of laughter and exaggerated accounts of falling off ladders and lost shoes that night as the crew members from Rojas’ village bumped back and forth on the forty-kilometer bus ride to spend Sunday with their families. As always the workers encountered things “bueno y malo”: grandmothers with la gripè, a child bitten by a scorpion, a cumpleaños with tres leches cake and piñatas, unpaid electric bills. To Rojas’ complaint “it puts us short of money” his wife snapped, “We’re always short of money!” then apologized, “It’s just so hard, you’re not here, the children need things.” But as his brother-in-law countered, “There’s no work in the pueblo. We finish this job and maybe find another better.” Always that hope: something better. And always the down-pulling realty It never gets better. No matter how hard one tries. Just before noon the following Tuesday a support beam gave way, fracturing a portion of newly framed wall and injuring two workers. One of them, an ayudante—helper—hobbled to a nearby pharmacy for pain pills but barely could walk and spent the rest of the day huddled against a retaining wall. That night the doctor in a generic pharmacy clinic confirmed that two bones in the young man’s foot were broken. Nevertheless, he showed up at work the following morning but the ingeniero told him to return on Saturday to collect his wages for the day and a half he had worked. He showed up but his wages didn’t. Nobody’s wages did. “We can’t work without being paid!” Rojas insisted. “Yes, yes, I understand!” the ingeniero responded. “I’ll have the money for you Monday. Monday at three o’clock!” No pay and no work Monday. Short $1,600 pesos; nothing to take home to the families. “We ought to kill the pinche cabròn!” the worker who’d counseled no hay remedio cursed as the crew watched the ingeniero drive away but “what good would it do? We’d still be without our money” the villager whose wife had had to borrow from her family muttered. Shortly after three p.m. Monday the ingeniero drove up to the work site. He didn’t get out of his pickup but beckoned to Rojas and with attempted hail-fellow-well-met joviality explained that he didn’t have the money but would have it at seven o’clock Wednesday morning. Rojas argued that they couldn’t wait another day, they were broke, their families were desperate. “Sì, sì, entiendo!” the ingeniero shouted, slammed the vehicle into gear and gunned the engine. Rojas and two others tried to stop him but he swerved onto the thoroughfare, almost sideswiping another pickup. As Rojas turned to explain what the ingeniero had said one of the workmen assailed him with, “It’s your fault. You’re in cahoots with him!” “Chinga tu madre!” Rojas retaliated. The workman shoved him and Rojas lunged towards him, swinging both fists. Companions pulled them apart but sides were drawn: “If he doesn’t come across Wednesday there’ll be hell to pay!” Half the work crew sided with Rojas, others with the dissident workman. Several of the men returned to the village; Rojas promised to pick up their pay for them. He told his brother-in-law that he neither could sleep nor eat because of the conflicts. “I just want to work, get paid, provide for my family” and his brother-in-law agreed, “That’s all that any of us wants to do.” Both sections of the divided crew—those who sided with Rojas and those who blamed him—arrived early at the worksite on Wednesday morning. Seven o’clock: no sign of the ingeniero with their money. Eight o’clock: still no sign. Finally at a quarter to nine his pickup appeared but he wasn’t in it. A younger man, small, nervous, and a uniformed policia stepped out to face the work crew. They explained that construction was being suspended until the ingeniero returned from Mexico City with the money needed to pay the workers. Both those who supported Rojas and the dissidents pushed forward, gesticulating. The policìa jammed his two-way radio against his ear and called for reinforcements, then as he backed away shouted that they’d all be arrested if they didn’t conform. It was not an idle threat: Already the workers could hear sirens approaching. Nevertheless, before they could leave the construction site, several of the dissident workers attacked Rojas. He, his brother-in-law and those with him fought back. As Rojas explained afterwards, “Some of were fighting, others were trying to pull us apart. Bloody noses and skinned fists, that’s what it amounted to. All of us were angry. Angry about not getting paid. Angry with the ingeniero. Angry with each other.” Rojas and his brother-in-law tried to contact the parent company for which the construction was being done but officials there told them they had nothing to do with hiring or firing, they had hired the ingeniero’s firm to erect the building and had no control over how he managed labor relations. Rojas and his brother-in-law also notified state agencies responsible for adjudicating labor complaints and were told that they could file against the ingeniero but so many cases were pending that it would be months, or years, before theirs could be resolved. They wrote letters to the editors of the city’s newspapers, contacted human rights representatives and, in Rojas’ words, “faced our angry wives and hungry children with nothing in our pockets.” So along with hundreds of others on streetcorners, in vacant lots, they shouldered what tools they had and waited, hoping a truck or pickup would swing past and the driver or his passenger would hop and shout “Cuatro, I can use four!” and jab his finger you! you! and you! Seldom was pay discussed or what the job demanded or how long it would take. One did what one could, got paid what one could and when one could shared a beer or two with others whose wives and children talked about their friends and neighbors whose husbands, fathers or children sent money—“lots of money back to Oaxaca”—that they earned working illegally in the United States. From Fox Cry Review, 2014 . |
Tricksters, Avengers and Guardian Spirits
The child, they said, was old enough to collect leña--kindling—from the rugged Chiapas hillsides and to mount and ride a burro. His peasant parents called him “hombrecito”--“little man”—and trusted him to care for the few chickens and goats that provided the family with sustenance. One moonless night, awakened by the barking of dogs, he crept past his sleeping brother and sisters to investigate the commotion. How long he was gone depends upon who is telling the story but the boy returned trembling and screaming about horrible, evil things out there in the dark.
For weeks—months—he refused to leave the family’s tiny thatched hut after nightfall. Nor could he explain what the “horrible evil” was, only that it was there and he was mortally afraid of it. Finally his father, exasperated by the little hombrecito’s fear, took him out of the hut and up the hillside to prove to him that no horrible, evil things existed in the dark. Again the stories vary. Some say there was a flash of lightning, others the howls of wolves or the leap of a jaguar. The father, startled, turned, momentarily losing his grip on the boy’s hand. The boy vanished. The father spent the rest of the night and the days following calling and searching but the little homebrecito didn’t appear. At least not in human form. Residents of that part of Chiapas still catch sight of his ghost. Many insist that it is important to heed his appearances because he foretells disasters and other horrible events: hurricanes, fires, contagious diseases. Or, more recently, criminal or drug dealer attacks. Like many Mexican ghosts (of which there are hundreds) the little hombrecito neither is good nor evil: He merely is. Throughout the Western Hemisphere pre-European inhabitants incorporated the existence of non-corporal forms into their daily lives. Ghosts, spirits and those thought to have died but who have retained earthly forms appear constantly in both Mexican folk tales and in nineteenth-, twentieth- and twenty-first- century Mexican literature. So prevalent is the belief in otherworldly contacts that throughout Mexico families, churches, businesses and politicians celebrate November 1 as “El Dìa de los Muertos”—the Day of the Dead. Frequently ghosts of persons who died violently remain on earth to guard treasures or haunt the places where they were last seen. A victim of the “Evil Priest” is one of these. According to accounts passed orally from one generation to another several hundred years ago this evil priest hoarded the gold coins given to his church as offerings. When one of his parishioners learned of the thefts he confronted the priest and demanded that he return the coins. The priest killed him and draped his skeleton over the buried chest in which the treasure was hidden. On his death bed the priest recanted and confessed his sins, including the thefts and slaying. A caretaker overhead the confession and unearthed the chest but as he tried to open it a glowing ghost emerged from the skeleton. The caretaker dropped his shovel and tools and fled, so frightened by the apparition that he refused to reveal where or why he had seen it. Some storytellers insist that other adventurers who attempted to uncover the treasure disappeared and never were heard from again. Priests, good and evil, frequently appear in ghost reports. So do beautiful woman betrayed by husbands or lovers. One of the latter, “La Llorona” (“The Weeper”), driven mad after her partner abandoned her, killed their two children and for over two centuries has wandered the countryside seeking them. Or, according to some versions, kidnapping young children to take their places. Whether the mysteriously beautiful woman who appears beside a highway in Baja California Sur and disappears after motorists who give her a ride crash into cliffs or roll down canyons was betrayed by a husband or lover seems not to be known. There seems to be nothing ghostlike about her appearance—or her seductiveness—when she is offered a ride. When questioned “What were you doing out there, beside the highway, alone?” she merely smiles and whispers, “I’ll tell you later.” But later for the driver is a disaster, not a rendezvous. The ghost of a beautiful Mexico City nurse is more benevolent. The nurse fell in love with a young doctor and was certain the romance that united them would last forever: She didn’t know that the doctor was prometido to wealthy heiress. One day he left “to attend to family business” in another part of Mexico, “business” that turned out to be his honeymoon. The news so devastated the jilted nurse that she could neither eat nor sleep and she wasted away despite all attempts to revitalize her. She continues to haunt the hospital in which she worked and often heals patients assigned to the room in which she died. Other ghosts seem merely to want companionship, like Consuela who died before she was able to attend her first grand ball and reappears where a young lover or husband has gone to divert himself without his partner. Only he can see her as they whirl around the dance floor together, however; to others he seems to be dancing alone. The ghosts of priests and deceased monks commonly protect believers and ward off evil. The ghosts of military heroes and political figures also abound, particularly during national elections. They cast hundreds of ballots, usually for incumbents, even though no one sees them vote. The ghost of controversial revolutionary hero Pancho Villa thunders through northern Mexico waving a pistola and riding a jet black horse. For years a myth circulated that Villa had not died and that another body’s had been placed in his grave. He was seen in Sonoloapa, in Torreòn, in San Pedro de las Colonias, in Chihuahua. Finally it became apparent that a living man could not appear so frequently in so many places. It had to be his ghost. Some historians believe that Villa had his head shaved and the map of his most extravagant treasure tattooed on his scalp. After his death grave robbers decapitated his corpse to learn where this wealth was buried. The headless Villa rampages after them seeking the missing part of his anatomy. The ghost Villa also is said to be a seducer, as is the mischievous Don Ludo, who reputedly steals young women’s maidenheads while they are sleeping. Like many otherworldly creatures he can alter his appearance and become young and handsome or appear disguised as a bird or a cat. During his days of revolutionary banditry Villa sacked the British- and United States-owned mines of Durango and Chihuahua, emptied state treasuries and leveled the richest haciendas that existed in Mexico at that time. When drinking or boasting about his exploits he would throw off hints about hidden treasures: ten million in gold in Pulpito Pass concealed beneath the corpses of the ten men who helped bury the cache; even more in a cave in Barranca de Cobre in the Sierra Madres; almost as much in Maniquipa Canyon in Chihuahua; at least as much buried on the slopes of Mount Franklin, visible from El Paso, Texas. Not only Villa’s ghost guards these treasures but also the ghosts of those who were murdered to keep from revealing the hiding places. Villa’s friend Trillo Torres of Parral apparently knew of at least one of these locations. Torres told treasure seekers that the way to one of his lost fortunes was marked by the blood of the Indians that Villa hired to haul and bury the gold, then had executed. Torres refused to attempt to retrieve the treasure because the ghosts of the Indians surge from the rugged canyon in the form of vampire bats to attack those who come close to the treasure. Unlike Villa the avenging spirits of the Yucatàn are not precisely ghosts but gremlin-like apparitions called aluxes (pronounced “alushes”). Several years ago while I was attending a carne asada in an impoverished little town in the center of Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula several locals told me they had seen dwarflike creatures less than a meter tall splashing in the rain or antagonizing and frightening dogs. These aluxes are guardians of the crops and play malicious tricks on those who do not believe in them. They love sweets and insist on recompense—cakes, jellied fruit, honey—for the protection they offer. Not only that, but they can drive humans insane with their laughter and babbling. Many Yucatecos insist that aluxes inhabited Yucatán for thousands of years before the first humans arrived; an older participant at the carne asada declared they could bring rain, start or end insect plagues and cause the earth to shake. Still another averred that they loved to play tricks but couldn’t be tricked in return because they could read a person’s intentions. Not all Yucatecos or visitors to the state believe in their existence, however. Apparently a tourist named William Ditchbrun was one of these. A few years ago Ditchbrun failed to return from a guided tour to the archeological site Uxmal. Three days later, hypothermic, exhausted and suffering a broken ankle, the sixty-nine-year-old Englishman told rescuers he’d been led astray by child-like voices that kept calling to him. He’d followed them into the rugged mountains, aware that they belonged to tiny figures whose presence he could sense but couldn’t see. They wouldn’t let him sleep, chattering at him in mocking voices. They threw tiny pebbles at him and when he almost had caught up with them he tripped and broke his ankle. Only then did they leave him alone. Many Mexican ghosts do not leave the places they lived or died. So replete with ghosts is Guadalajara’s Panteòn de Belèn that visitors can take nightly tours through the array of monuments and tombstones to catch sight of them or feel their presence. The ghost of Juan Soldado visits his final resting place in a cemetery in the border city of Tijuana. Strange glowing and the sounds of laughter emanate at night from panteones in many parts of the country, particularly in Veracruz and Oaxaca. In fact, midnight in almost any rural Mexican cemetery will make a believer out the most dubious adventurer for the emotions that the wind, the mist, earthly and unearthly noises and changes of light can bring. “It is best to bring gifts with you,” a Oaxacan neighbor of mine advised, “otherwise…” He left the rest to my imagination. Ni modo, I always take something with me when I visit a church, or graveyard, or abandoned settlement. They could be someone’s home. |