Thread: Mexicans in Iowa Head Home for Christmas

Updated December 25. 2008 7:17PM

Mexicans in Iowa head home for Christmas
By Alexis Charbonnier
Central Mexico News Service
Special to The Gazette

IGNACIO ALLENDE, DURANGO, MEXICO - They arrived like zombies in overloaded SUVs, slipping through the streets of this frigid Mexican highland town in the pre-dawn darkness.

Having braved a non-stop, 36-hour drive from southeastern Iowa, the people of West Liberty had come home for Christmas.

For the hundreds of thousands of Mexican citizens and their families who drive home for Christmas, it's a hazardous, compelling North American road ritual.

Both U.S. and Mexican southbound highways fill with pickups, SUVs and minivans packed to the rafters with clothing and appliances for Mexican kin. Border backups, armed bandits and extortion by Mexican officials are common. Making things even more dramatic, most Mexicans begin the breakneck drive on the same day, Dec. 19, squeezing in a final day of work and school, in an annual event reminiscent of the Oklahoma Sooners.

Holiday in full gear

In the early morning hours of last Sunday Mexican Iowans began arriving like clockwork in droves in Ignacio Allende, Durango, a chilly, impoverished highland town where buzzards roam the desert just outside the town limits. As the sun rose on this first day of winter, men in tattered Iowa Hawkeyes gear huddled around open-air, wood-fire carnitas vats to stave off the subfreezing temperatures. Most of the town was sleeping, in stark contrast to the lively anticipation of the night before.

The previous night Ignacio Allende was buzzing with excitement. At Victor Manuel Martinez's burger stand in the center of town, a Mexican-American Iowa family was enjoying an American treat.

Jennifer Aragon of West Liberty is home for the holidays in Ignacio Allende, Durango, Mexico with her husband and two daughters. She's planning to return to Iowa in the spring.

Jennifer Aragon, 22, who lives in Iowa City, went to West Liberty High School, worked at Hawkeye Pizza and has friends who went to Kirkwood Community College, was home for a spell with her husband and two daughters.

Both of the girls, Alyssa and Ariana, were born at Mercy Iowa City. Although she grew up in California, Aragon's mother was from Ignacio Allende. Aragon said her family was one of the first Mexican families in West Liberty.

"My grandfather would come and go between Mexico and the U.S. He worked in meat packing," she recalled.

Aragon said life was different in Mexico. "Here I don't work outside the home," she said, underscoring a key cultural difference. "My work here is my daughters."

Although Aragon said she was enjoying Mexico, she said she would be back in Iowa in February or March "to do my taxes." Her husband has immigration issues, she said, so she would go back to Iowa alone with the two girls. Aragon's husband, who requested his name not be published, said he was working as a roofer in Iowa City when he was deported after having lived in Johnson County for five years.

Martinez, the burger vendor, was excited to see the Iowans coming home. He estimated sales at his stand double during the Christmas holiday.

"For a week to 10 days, this town becomes a city," he enthused. "There are lots of cars in the streets. It's a shot in the arm for all the people who live here. The Iowans bring back everything they can possibly carry."

Martinez called the night of Dec. 20, "the night when no one sleeps." He said homecoming Iowans call their families with on-the-road progress reports, allowing their families to pinpoint their arrival time.

Long cultural history

Victor Manuel Martinez of Ignacio Allende, Durango, Mexico, says business doubles at his hamburger stand when West Liberty migrants head home for Christmas.

Echoing Aragon, Martinez called West Liberty, "el Allendito chiquitito", or "little Allende," bragging that Allende natives "slaughter 5,000 animals a day in West Liberty."

Martinez said a third of his family is in the United States, "all of them in West Liberty." He said a local man, Jesus Martinez, started working in meatpacking in West Liberty in 1988, and he began inviting local young men to join him.

Many Iowans choose to celebrate important events in Ignacio Allende at Christmastime, knowing that family members from both countries can attend. On the night of Dec. 20, a local duranguense band waited in a pickup in front of the church to serenade newlyweds in a nighttime procession through the town streets.

Another nightly ritual around Christmastime is the pickup parade on the town's main drag, featuring duranguense music at heart-pounding volume.

Migrating to the United States for Ignacio Allende's young men is about more than just economic necessity, it's a status builder. They come and go between Iowa and Durango, bringing or sending home hard-earned meatpacking wages and prowling the small town in Muscatine County trucks in search of love and status.

Maria Mercedes Martinez, 16, a native of Ignacio Allende, admitted, "I won't lie, I do have a look at the guys in the trucks, especially those who have two or three trucks." Martinez added that, "given the economic situation here, I wouldn't think twice about leaving."

Local police officer Raul Galindo said the 19- and 20-year-old single men who come home with shiny pickups at Christmastime, "come home to let off some steam," doing things they couldn't do in the U.S. such as underage drinking and noise pollution."

Galindo said he felt Christmastime visits were down this year, echoing the opinions of many in town, "because of difficult immigration and economic times."

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They drove from Iowa to Mexico in 36 hours? I dont think so.