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The barrio beyond the barrier

Carlos Dominguez climbs above the wall separating San Luis R'o Colorado, Mexico, from San Luis, Ariz., to check the location of border patrols. Bonfires are lit to confuse thermal scopes used to detect illegal border crossings.

Photo by Ted Richardson

Barbara Barrett, Washington Correspondent

SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, MEXICO - North Carolina Army National Guard troops stand on a levee in San Luis, Ariz., with the border wall a far sight near the horizon. The soldiers are trained to spot the movements breaking out into the United States.

It can be tough, distinguishing between nations.

"You'd see something moving, then think, 'Oh, wait, that's on the other side of the border,'" says Sgt. John Burt of Fuquay-Varina.

"The desert's tricky anyway," he says, "trying to judge distance."

What the North Carolina soldiers cannot see beyond the 15-foot-tall, corrugated metal wall is a small community teeming with activity: Two ponytailed girls pull a baby doll in a pink carriage. Laughing men, their eyes reddened, splash in an irrigation ditch on a hot afternoon. A trio of loiterers pretends to fish after sundown. They cast a net into the canal; marijuana smoke wafts above them as they watch the Border Patrol.

This neighborhood, a close-knit barrio where many of the residents are relatives, shows what migrants from Mexico often are trying to escape. Here, just a dirt road's width from the wall, the squat homes have ceilings barely as high as the tallest person living there. The structures are built by hand, using concrete blocks, plywood and discarded sheets of metal.

Livestock is penned in tiny yards, and the stench of animal manure, caked in the ground among clumps of grass, blends with the scent of dust that constantly rises from the dirt road running the length of the wall.

A small girl chases two chickens that skitter across the road and into the shade of a tree. A man sweeps his yard.

Residents in this neighborhood are not necessarily trying to cross into the United States. But many have worked there, either legally or illegally. And the community has been affected by the security buildup in recent years, including this summer's deployment of National Guard troops to the border. The N.C. National Guard is just completing its two-week mission, where many stood watch a distant sight from this wall.

Every day here, residents see the Border Patrol helicopters buzz overhead. At night, there are the shouts of smugglers guiding groups of people through the breaks in the wall, into empty fields in the United States.

"Run! Run! Run!" the voices yell. Then, "Go back! Go back!"

Maria Solorreo, doing yard work by her home, says she first spied the National Guard troops two weeks ago by peeking through the holes in the wall.

Guadalupe Murrieta says she heard about the troops on the news. Now, she washes dishes in the late afternoon before coming outside to lean against the wall of a makeshift patio. Her daughter appears at the open window with Murrieta's 1-year-old grandson. The toddler grins from the kitchen counter and stretches a tiny hand outside, into the open air.

Murrieta has lived here 15 years, she says. Asked what she thinks of the community, she laughs.

"I like it," she says in Spanish, the breeze rustling her hair. "I've always liked it."

It's close to the stores, close to town. Long ago, only a chain link fence separated the two countries, and she could look from her yard into the United States.

But a few years ago, workers came and put up that metal wall.

"I felt very different," she says. "I felt closed in."

Down the road, children play. A little boy pedals his toy car through a yard and past a barking dog, yelling "aaahhhh!" as he steers toward two companions. On the dusty road, an older boy speeds through on a four-wheeler, kicking up clouds. "Aaahhhh!" he yells.

Two young brothers go by on their bicycles. One is 4-year-old Randy Pineda, his bare feet the color of the road.

Behind him is 12-year-old Jesus, walking his bicycle and tugging his dead dog, Negro, by a rope. He thinks the heat got it.

Now, Jesus must dispose of it. So he drags his pet down the road, past homes and other barking canines, past the strange looks of two old men, into the dry Colorado River bed at the end of the border wall. Jesus tucks the dog out of sight under a bush and leaves it.

When the water comes, the boy says, he hopes it will take care of Negro.

Many homes here have electricity and running water, but little more, at least by American standards. Windows are broken or don't seem to exist at all.

What else do I need? asks Victor Lopez, wearing a N.Y. Yankees cap and walking back toward his house after watching the two boys playing.

"That's my truck, my dog, my house," he says, waving behind him to the pickup under the tree, the low-slung home, the tired brown dog he calls Lobo.

Come, Lopez says, sit. He pulls up kitchen chairs scattered in the dirt for guests and a big white bucket for himself to sit upon. His wife is here, his sister-in-law. They smile politely at visitors.

"I'm happy here," Lopez says.

He knows more than what this community can offer. Lopez worked in North Carolina in the 1960s, boxing up blooms for a florist in Concord. He loved the job. People were friendly, the state beautiful. It was easy to cross then.

So Lopez understands why the young men go north to the United States, why they summon their families and children. The jobs pay more, Lopez says.

Here, some people earn just $10 a day. He has heard that in North Carolina, workers can earn $25 an hour. "They pay the best," he says.

But at 70, Lopez has done his life's work. Standing at the border with the United States, he cannot see the National Guard troops watching from the distant horizon. But he thinks they are no problem.

"It's their job trying to catch people crossing over," he says. "It's just their job."

Working and waiting

At night here, as the swelter of the day lifts away, a warm breeze transforms the evening into a balm.

More children emerge, playing in the streets. Women chatter. Young men light fires along the wall. The towering lights that Border Patrol has planted on the U.S. side of the wall come on one by one, blanking the stars.

A shirtless man named Igenio Moreno sits on a cot, watching a tiny television screen outside a concrete-and-plywood structure that resembles a child's treehouse.

Moreno works legally in the United States, catching a bus at 3 a.m. with hundreds of other workers and spending his days picking watermelons in the nearby town of Yuma, Ariz. He earns $60 a day.

Others here worked in the United States illegally, were kicked out and now are desperate to return.

Ricardo Mann, whose father's family is from Germany, is biding his time.

He worked in Sioux City, Iowa, then in Phoenix for years in meat-processing plants.

He hears about North Carolina and smiles. "You have turkey, too," he says.

Mann, who is 47, married a U.S. citizen and fathered two boys before being busted for heroin. Now he is back in Mexico and must wait years before he can return to that family.

His other relatives live here, in this neighborhood: "All this is family right here. My aunts, my cousins, my uncles."

Still, Mann says, "I want to be legal. My sons are growing up."

Sometimes, he looks at the young men testing the border, and he is tempted.

"People keep going and going," he says. And if the migrants cannot cross here, from this community hidden behind the wall, they will find another place, he says.

Some other community, some other jumping-off point.

"They don't care if they die or not," Mann says. "They want to be there."

Down the road, graffiti colors the Mexican side of the wall. "Jesucristo is el senor de SLRC," it says.

Jesus Christ is the lord of San Luis R'o Colorado.

(Staff photojournalist Ted Richardson contributed to this report.)

Washington correspondent Barbara Barrett can be reached at (202) 383-0012 or bbarrett@mcclatchydc.com.
Staff photojournalist Ted Richardson contributed to this report.