A Wetback in Reverse Read online

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Books by Frederick Martin-Del-Campo

  The Journey Begins ...

  To the Wilds of Hispanic America I Go

  Learning about Mexico in the Movies

  Biblical Plagues in the Land of Maiz

  Getting in Touch with Long Lost Friends

  The Pig Virus Strikes Again

  A Wetback on the Move

  Connecting with the Folks Back Home

  Getting the Dirt First Hand

  Jesus Christ, Save Us from the Pigs!

  Thunder Rolls Over Aztlan

  Across Borders, and Class Divisions

  Getting Wicked in Veracruz

  Knowing yet Not Knowing about Nothing

  The Poblanos and the Pigs

  The Unique Hell of A Mexican Mother

  Dirty Little Secrets Betrayed

  The Days Pass, and Life Goes On

  Humor to be Found in the Porcine Flu

  Stocking Up on Hope

  The Vagaries of Wayward Vagabonds

  Waiting Around for Something Nice to Happen

  Beating A Dead Horse

  Cry Damnation for the Pathetic

  “I Want, I Deserve”

  The Music of ‘Good-bye’

  Towards the Western Horizon

  Under the Volcano of Fire

  Domestic Troubles

  Family Feuds

  Drug Pushers and Dopers

  Jews in Mexico

  The Treaty of Hidalgo and the Trouble with Wetbacks

  Drug Addiction in the Family

  A Pirate’s Life for All

  Misconceptions about Mexico

  Hijackings and Kidnappings ~ Mexican Style

  Have It Your Way at McMexico

  Pantyhose Wearing Terrorists and Other Weirdos

  A Smoker’s Delight

  Getting My Moxy Back

  A Multitude of Sins

  Playing Cat and Mouse in the Streets

  Indefensible ... Irresistible

  A Season of Evil and Hate

  Red-Light Livelihoods

  Guns and Gangsters on the Run

  The Pity Problem with Prostitutes

  When the Lights Went Out at the Movies

  A f t e r s h o c k

  The Storms that Bring Out the Stress

  The Reason Why I Was Named What I Was Named

  Forward Back to America

  E p i l o g u e

  Back cover

  A Wetback in Reverse

  Hunting for an American

  in the Wilds of Mexico

  A Memoir by

  Frederick Martin-Del-Campo

  CCB Publishing

  British Columbia, Canada

  A Wetback in Reverse:

  Hunting for an American in the Wilds of Mexico

  Copyright © 2013 by Frederick Martin-Del-Campo

  ISBN-13 978-1-77143-110-1

  First Edition

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Martin-Del-Campo, Frederick, 1965-, author

  A wetback in reverse : hunting for an American in the wilds of Mexico / by Frederick Martin-Del-Campo. -- First edition.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77143-109-5 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-77143-110-1 (pdf)

  Additional cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

  Contact Frederick Martin-Del-Campo at: [email protected]

  Cover artwork credit: Bryan Garcia Mitre, Randy Garcia Mitre, & Laura Mitre Rivera

  Note: Elements within this memoir have been fictionalized in the interest of privacy and the author’s creative license.

  Extreme care has been taken by the author to ensure that all information presented in this book is accurate and up to date at the time of publishing. Neither the author nor the publisher can be held responsible for any errors or omissions. Additionally, neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Publisher:

  CCB Publishing

  British Columbia, Canada

  www.ccbpublishing.com

  This book is dedicated to

  Bryan, Randy and Laura,

  Thanks guys. Your story, your struggles, your suffering was the stuff of inspiration as well as compassion.

  Live, rejoice, and suffer all that you can stand ... and then let me write about it!

  Books by Frederick Martin-Del-Campo

  On the Hill of Contemplation

  Bound for the Promised Land Part 1:

  The Trials of Manhood

  Bound for the Promised Land Part 2:

  The Sentiments of a Woman

  The Island of Estasia

  The Donation of Constantine

  Chronicles of War and a Wanderer

  The Meditations of Misery

  A Wetback in Reverse

  and his latest work in progress...

  Children of Anger

  The Journey Begins ...

  “I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am not grateful to those teachers.”

  ... I have no idea who spoke these words, but they form my guiding motto through this unique experience of traveling through a Tequila inspired “Lala-land!”

  Or, as my father would say, “Asi me gusta, que se expresen como macho con huevotes!” (“That’s how I like it, that you express yourself with the balls of a real man!”)

  ... Well, so be it!

  The beginning of any voyage, indeed of any adventure, is always laced with uncertainties, particularly about things which you may have seen or experienced in the past. You may be afraid they might return fraught with mysteries, especially about things which you likely have never seen or experienced before. They are strewn with many riddles, which are bound to crop up in the course of experience, and trouble your dreams thereafter.

  It was such a beginning that greeted me when at last I’d made the decision to get up, shore up, pack up, cell-phone and lap-top specifically, and send everything else to Hell. Like the song in the musical Sweet Charity says, “There’s gotta be something better out there,” and so I headed for the border: I was bound to go Mexico Way, come Hell or high-water!

  And, no sooner had I made the fateful decision when uncertainties, mysteries and riddles placed one obstacle after another before me on the road to nowhere, not to mention the Hell that greeted me upon arrival, and the high-water that nearly drowned me along the road of perdition. I was bound to realize a personal quest, and that’s all!

  Many Mexicans and other foreigners entering the United States arrive illegally, without proper documentation, are derided for their ignorance of the law and lack of consideration for the customs of the country they hope to adopt for their own. Mexicans, in particular, are regarded as Wetbacks because of the arduous journey they must undertake, which includes crossing the Rio Grande or enduring the awful heat of the South-West, drowning in their own sweat. Whatever route they chose for their exodus from their home country, they end up all wet. In my case, however, I would be known as the wetback in reverse ~ an American-born Mexican who was heading back for the homeland of my fathers because life in the USA was becoming more and more uncertain and expensive; because the global financial melt-down forced me to confront hard choices about the future, and job prospects were nil and void; because I sudden
ly felt the impulse to take off and search for my ancestral roots; and because life in the USA was unendurably boring in the extreme. Thus, I felt I needed some of the stimulating vulgarity, violence, vanity, vagaries, vexations, vituperation and vacuous venality that make up survival in most Mexican towns in order to get the old wheels and turbines of purpose and devotion cranking again. Also, just to get my jollies off, I’d thought to try my journalistic hand, and this country would be just the place to put myself through the investigative ringer, as it were. There is much to be said as well for the simple, unobtrusive, undemanding existence of Mexican village life, however, where-about, most often, you have to chase down and kill your own supper!

  Well, here I am, here I am stuck, to live, experience, to suffer a year in the life of Great Mexico!

  To begin with, Mexico is one of the worst (many Mexicans themselves believe) racist regimes in the world. The majority Mestizos frequently find ways to sideline minority Indians and even the privileged Criollos. The Mestizos are generously assisted by the Government, which fears their political backlash if they don’t cater to their demands. They are given scholarships, loans, grants, business opportunities, even cash hand-outs just to placate their half-blood resentments. They even fix examination results so that minority groups, especially Amer-Indians of the South like Zapotecs of Oaxaca or Maya tribes in Chiapas, score lower to make the Mestizos from the Valley of Mexico and other densely populated areas appear smarter. However, well-to-do Criollos and some Indian communities have learned to prosper in spite of adversity by going overseas and making their money there on the one hand, or have found ways of undermining the local practices of corrupt officials working within their communities on the other.

  The egotistical way of thinking, “I know and you don’t,” is dividing all Mexicans. We all know nothing! The “right,” then, is no “right”... we all read from some book, most likely a religious book, the reason for our belief in the “right,” but what we really want to believe in is that we alone are in the “right,” for what it is worth. How do we know what we read today will not be proved wrong tomorrow? None of us will be there to even defend it, regardless of what that “it” might be, and few Mexicans will defend their rights.

  DOES ANYONE REALLY KNOW ANYTHING!!!!

  to the wilds of

  hispanic america I go

  In the smug comfort of my California home, I realized I was deprived of my identity. Hence, I resolved to discover the reason for my name. It would be a quest to come to terms with my past, my heritage, and secure the future with identity in hand. I would visit old friends, beg them to help me with my quest, and discover in the process the wilds and wonders of the land, which had shaped the lives and legacy of my ancestors. I would go forth to find myself amidst the shadows of forgetfulness and obscurantism.

  Upon crossing the border into Baja California from San Diego, California, I headed for the nearest Tijuana bus station and hopped on the first bus out of there regardless of the destination. Well, to my consternation, the first place I ended up in was Reynosa, located in the state of Tamaulipas, across the Rio Grande in Northern Mexico. Indeed, it is a strange place with a large population, and even larger poverty statistics, yet with a bustling economy. There isn’t much around to recommend it, very few remarkable landmarks to boast about, but I found it typical of many a Mexican town I would traverse or visit in the course of this extended trip. It is located on the extreme north-east point of the country, and an unlikely place in which to begin my sojourn, but here I am to wonder what crap will be flung at me the minute I get off the rickety, air-polluting bus, which I somehow managed to survive. No sooner did I arrive in Reynosa when the wires were all burning up with news that there was a fire-fight between federal soldiers and narco-traffickers not far from the hotel-dump I’d just entered.

  As I heard it, 30 masked soldiers in combat gear, and acting on a tip, busted down the door of a boarded-up house to find 55 terrified migrants; all hostages of the Gulf drug cartel. Amid screams and the smell of urine and sweat, they found a blood-spattered room and a nail-encrusted log used to beat the captives and extort money from their families; $3,000 each, or so the locals reported. I, for one, found it hard to sympathize since many of the victims were once perpetrators of the wicked trafficking, which, to boot, provides quite a decent living for many starved out and desperate natives. So, at once I don’t sympathize, but at the same time I pity them and have to understand why they do it.

  This is not quite what I was expecting by way of a welcome from the ever accommodating Mexicans, but it was the noise of gun-fire and reports of blood spillage that provided me with a cheap thrill.

  Hence, as the events unfolded while I looked for another cheap hotel to stay at (the other one, to my unceasing horror, was full of roaches, human as well as the six-legged variety, and bed-bugs), many of the bystanders rumored about, like a bunch of haphazard reporters clawing each-other to be the first one at the scene, that five suspected kidnappers were hauled off in a military truck, including the alleged leader ~ the son of a local police officer. So be it for counting on the honesty of the police officials, and, or their relatives to uphold the law! Yet, this first run-in with the corruption inherent in Mexican Society was a tiny taste of what was to cross my way in the course of this already haphazard sojourn.

  LEARNING ABOUT MEXICO

  IN THE MOVIES

  Whilst I went about exploring the interesting (sometimes) sights, and irritated by the unpleasant sounds of the town center, I came across a heavy, mustachioed, more than 90 year old buzzard of a man sporting a wide-brimmed hat, resting his hands on an elegantly carved cedar-wood cane who, allegedly, spent hours every day at the local tavern, “La Aguila Desnuda” (The Naked Eagle), recounting stories of his self-aggrandized life as a movie-maker throughout the golden age of the Mexican Cinema during the 1940s and 50s. He would be the first really weird character I would come across during my experiences in this country, and as my journey progressed, his weather-beaten old face would haunt me, especially during the wee hours of the morning when I’d be inside a crowded bus en route to the next destination.

  He couldn’t be bothered by reports of a shoot-out or a narco-trafficking drug-bust. He only talked about two things, according to a couple of drunks that would pace their drinking according to the length of his anecdotes: himself, and his fall from artistic grace.

  Apparently, he had actually suffered the alleged downfall, and was persecuted by the semi-socialist PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) regime of the time, because he was no longer thought of as a wild and crazy radical but had matured into a staid and dull reactionary while using his influence to turn the youth of Mexico against the by-then paternalistic and corrupt government.

  His name, I later learned, was Fulgencio San Roman.

  San Roman was a typical product of Criollo parentage: large, gray, robust and spoiled by inherited wealth. Soon I gathered sufficient dirt on this fellow to be able to relate that he flourished as a movie-maker until his own pride brought him to the gates of ruin. The younger generation, despite his very liberal attitudes, just did not click to his narrative style during the 1960s; they found his stories too intense, overly-dramatic, almost Wagnerian, that celebrated a revolutionary Mexico that no longer appealed to their forward-looking imaginations. They were looking for something that would make them twist and shout along with every other member of that libertine 60s generation. Upon gathering more research about his singular achievements, I discovered that his most notable works were made between 1940 and 1960, and they included such classics as Thunder Over Aztlan, about the state of Mexican society after the 1910 Revolution; The Eagle and the Serpent, about the struggle to maintain an independent democracy under Benito Juarez following the invasion of France and the installation of the Archduke Maximilian of Austria as Emperor of Mexico; Tonantzin, Our Lady of the Roses, which took a biting look at the devotion of the common masses to their idol of Guadalupe; The Return of Quetzalcoat
l, about the prophecy of the return of the Toltec God of the Wind, of civilization and the arts to liberate Mexico from the tyranny of the Aztecs; The Wind that Swept Mexico, a grandiose epic depicting the drama of the revolution against the Diaz regime; and finally, Once Upon a Time in Old Mexico, which took a hard, poignant look at the feudal conditions still existing, and the oppression of the Indian and Mestizo peasants by the landed gentry, in the haciendas just prior to the Revolution.

  According to his own accounts, however, San Roman’s downfall was due to his self absorption. His first movies, going back to the late 1930s, are more story or drama centered, and have some old-fashioned insight into characters. By the late 1950s they had become increasingly superficial, self indulgent and outlandish for no good purpose, though many would argue, including me, that those later films (once I had a chance to see a few of them) were, visually, among his very best.

  Camera wizardry, outlandishness of plot, and weirdness of characters were not, according to his ardent critics, enough to carry a film. Of his earliest films I can’t say much except that I hardly understood what they were about, whilst others placed more emphasis on plot and characters, but they were still devoid of the style and color that marked the later ones.

  The self-admitted self-absorption reflects that of Mexico’s society more than anything. It is a society not unlike America’s, and there are few things on this planet that are more self-absorbed than a typical Mexican, particularly in regard to his culture and origins. This society is one where a vast majority of its people live in abject poverty, fighting always for water, space, and beliefs (the latter a courtesy of an idol-strewn Roman Catholicism with a uniquely Mexican flavor to it) that replace scanty food for the living flesh as sustenance for the soul.