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Posted on Sat, Feb. 04, 2006

The road from despair to dream

BY LINDA VALDEZ
Linda.valdez@arizonarepublic.com

ALTAR, Sonora, Mexico -- This town is a monument to Mexico's slow suicide. At the edge of the town there's a gaudy tinsel sign that says ``Viva Mexico.'' Right. ``Adiós, amigos'' would be more accurate. This place is about goodbye. Altar thrives because so many people pass through on the way to enter the United States illegally.

Across the plaza, a row of beat-up white vans waits. They were designed for 12 people, but the seats have been removed. About 30 men, women and children will cram in for the hourlong ride north to Sasabe, Sonora, which sits on the line between Mexico and the United States. Between despair and dream. Hope and realization.

Politicians and other demagogues in the United States call these migrants an invading army. Between the anger and the vulgar analogies, something gets lost. Illegal immigrants are people whose desire for work is fierce. Their journey is the equivalent of the job interview from hell. Survive it, and you'll work. Everybody knows that. Get across, and you get a job.

The humanity of these job seekers is what gets lost in the rhetoric about illegal immigration. They are easy scapegoats on the U.S. side and heroes on the Mexican side, where the remittances they send home prop up a Mexican political and economic system that utterly failed them. They are one of Mexico's most valuable exports. Only oil brings more foreign income into the country.

Journey to the U.S.

The three top candidates for president of Mexico promise to attract the investment and jobs that will keep Mexicans south of the border. Mexico's current president, Vicente Fox, promised the same thing six years ago. Meanwhile, poor Mexicans become what Tucson author Charles Bowden calls ATMs with legs when they go north of the border.

Even their journey of departure benefits Mexico's economy. In Altar, flophouses (politely called casas de huéspedes or guest houses) are plentiful. Tucked behind a dark storefront, the one I visited has a concrete courtyard where dozens of migrants mill around, waiting. A spiral metal staircase leads to a dormitory where the metal bunks are shoved together and stacked high. They don't have mattresses, just a thin carpet on which to sleep. A second-story expansion is under construction. The sound of mortar being spread was a monotonous reminder that there's work in Altar only because so many people want to leave.

They wait in flophouses, gather in the plaza, pray in the church and get in the vans when the smuggler says so.

About 45 minutes into the journey, the vans stop at the command of Grupos Beta, Mexico's self-described ''mano amiga del migrante'' -- ``a friendly hand to the migrant.''

In mid-January, Grupos Beta official Julio César Cancino Gálvez reported that 1,200 people had passed by that day. At least an additional 200 unfolded themselves from those sardine vans and got a lecture from Grupos Beta or Solchaga while I watched. Later in the spring, there will be 3,000 people a day going north on Camino Altar-Sasabe.

Grupos Beta gave some of the migrants little pamphlets warning of the dangers of crossing the Arizona desert, which claims the lives of several hundred people each year. Nobody turned back.

I was traveling with a group of reporters from the University of Southern California's Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism. Solchaga accompanied us on our tour, which was provided by volunteers from Humane Borders, the group that places water stations for migrants on the U.S. side of the line.

Walking for days

Some migrants waited in front of a little food store, their mood somber and expectant, their answers polite and predictable. We didn't see them walk up the road to where they would cross the line. They waited until we left. Once on the U.S. side, some would walk for days, some would fail to keep up and be left behind, some would be caught by the Border Patrol.

They were leaving a country in which they had little faith and going to one that believes in itself. That also gets lost in the rhetoric about illegal immigration. Border crossers risk their lives because they believe in the United States. Mexico failed them.

The next day, I watched as illegal immigrants who had been caught were processed, loaded into Border Patrol vans and returned to Mexico. ''I'll see half these guys tomorrow,'' said a Border Patrol agent who didn't want to be identified.

Mexico's lifeblood is flowing across the border. But it's the United States that's talking about building a fence. Both countries need to take another look at what they're losing and what they're gaining.