Read Online Imperial by William T. Vollmann - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: William T. Vollmann
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answers were a series of lifeless banalities and feeble negations. Had he ever raped any hens in his flock?—No, he replied greyly (what else would he say?). How much had he charged?—Twelve hundred, the same as everybody else.—How many pollistas went with him?—Sometimes one, sometimes two, sometimes none.
He was less evasive than dull. Perhaps he had not suffered much; or he might have lacked the aspirations of his pollos. But now he was here, and must make a life for himself like them.
I asked him whether he wanted to make good money again.
The coyote looked upon me with the black gaze of an owl on a gate in full daylight, turning his head and blinking. He said he didn’t think that he would try his old career again. Maybe he was only being politic.
Really he was like his chickens—shy, inarticulate, uneducated, hungry. He was no villain, merely a failure. He lurked and crept through life . . .
A BORDER PATROL SUCCESS STORY
Who was winning, the bodies or the body-snatchers? The rising price a pollo had to pay was one testament to the Border Patrol’s success. And every pollo or coyote who ran scared was another.
In Mexicali I met a clean man of thirty-three years whose occupation was to pass out leaflets advertising dental implants. He usually slept in the street, but took a shower every day. He said: I tried to cross the border seven times, and I almost made it at Tecate. The coyotes took me out of Mexico with no money. But the Border Patrol catch me in Chula Vista. It was hard for me to come back. They kept me three days. They let me off in Juárez.
How did they treat you?
They feed you, but they verbally abuse you.
Do they beat you?
No, but sometimes they push you against the wall if you talk back to them.
Will you try again?
No, I don’t wanna try. It’s too hard.
And then there was Rubén, who’d lived in Las Vegas and Sacramento until he’d been caught. Now he was working in a taco stand in Mexicali trying to save up enough money to return to Nogales, where the coyotes charged only five hundred dollars instead of twelve hundred and he might not even need a coyote at all because the border crossings were so much easier; after all, he’d lucked out there before, saying to the officer: Hey, I’m a citizen, man, but my papers were stolen. He couldn’t afford a Mexicali coyote now.
Before I started working here, said Dan Murray, I guess I thought our border was like the Berlin Wall. Well, when I saw all the holes and raggedy-ass places, I couldn’t hardly believe it.
It was more like the Berlin Wall each year.
Nowadays, it’s very clean out there, said Gloria Chavez in Chula Vista. Operation Gatekeeper began in 1994. At that time we had seven hundred agents in this sector. Now we have two thousand two hundred and fifty. We’ve established a nationwide database on each person we capture, along with fingerprints. This sector contains sixty-six miles of border, of which forty-four are fenced. There are twenty-four point two miles of secondary fencing. Fencewise, and it’s very sad to say it, before Gatekeeper we had only eight miles. Before Gatekeeper, we were arresting half a million people a year. In 1998 there were only two hundred and forty-eight thousand in detention.
So you’ve cut the number in half, I said. Her statistics reminded me of the numbered sections of rusty landing-mat fence marching up and down the dry hills against which Tijuana pressed and strained.
That’s right, she said. And we’ve cut the number of deaths also. In 1995, eighty-two aliens died in this sector. The main cause of death was homicide. The second cause was accident on the freeway. In 1998 we had only forty-two deaths, the leading cause of which was hypothermia. A hundred and forty-two were rescued. We’re gonna do everything it takes to save those lives.
EPITAPHS IN A NEWSPAPER
I opened up my hometown newspaper and it said: At least 168 people have died during the past 15 months trying to cross
He was less evasive than dull. Perhaps he had not suffered much; or he might have lacked the aspirations of his pollos. But now he was here, and must make a life for himself like them.
I asked him whether he wanted to make good money again.
The coyote looked upon me with the black gaze of an owl on a gate in full daylight, turning his head and blinking. He said he didn’t think that he would try his old career again. Maybe he was only being politic.
Really he was like his chickens—shy, inarticulate, uneducated, hungry. He was no villain, merely a failure. He lurked and crept through life . . .
A BORDER PATROL SUCCESS STORY
Who was winning, the bodies or the body-snatchers? The rising price a pollo had to pay was one testament to the Border Patrol’s success. And every pollo or coyote who ran scared was another.
In Mexicali I met a clean man of thirty-three years whose occupation was to pass out leaflets advertising dental implants. He usually slept in the street, but took a shower every day. He said: I tried to cross the border seven times, and I almost made it at Tecate. The coyotes took me out of Mexico with no money. But the Border Patrol catch me in Chula Vista. It was hard for me to come back. They kept me three days. They let me off in Juárez.
How did they treat you?
They feed you, but they verbally abuse you.
Do they beat you?
No, but sometimes they push you against the wall if you talk back to them.
Will you try again?
No, I don’t wanna try. It’s too hard.
And then there was Rubén, who’d lived in Las Vegas and Sacramento until he’d been caught. Now he was working in a taco stand in Mexicali trying to save up enough money to return to Nogales, where the coyotes charged only five hundred dollars instead of twelve hundred and he might not even need a coyote at all because the border crossings were so much easier; after all, he’d lucked out there before, saying to the officer: Hey, I’m a citizen, man, but my papers were stolen. He couldn’t afford a Mexicali coyote now.
Before I started working here, said Dan Murray, I guess I thought our border was like the Berlin Wall. Well, when I saw all the holes and raggedy-ass places, I couldn’t hardly believe it.
It was more like the Berlin Wall each year.
Nowadays, it’s very clean out there, said Gloria Chavez in Chula Vista. Operation Gatekeeper began in 1994. At that time we had seven hundred agents in this sector. Now we have two thousand two hundred and fifty. We’ve established a nationwide database on each person we capture, along with fingerprints. This sector contains sixty-six miles of border, of which forty-four are fenced. There are twenty-four point two miles of secondary fencing. Fencewise, and it’s very sad to say it, before Gatekeeper we had only eight miles. Before Gatekeeper, we were arresting half a million people a year. In 1998 there were only two hundred and forty-eight thousand in detention.
So you’ve cut the number in half, I said. Her statistics reminded me of the numbered sections of rusty landing-mat fence marching up and down the dry hills against which Tijuana pressed and strained.
That’s right, she said. And we’ve cut the number of deaths also. In 1995, eighty-two aliens died in this sector. The main cause of death was homicide. The second cause was accident on the freeway. In 1998 we had only forty-two deaths, the leading cause of which was hypothermia. A hundred and forty-two were rescued. We’re gonna do everything it takes to save those lives.
EPITAPHS IN A NEWSPAPER
I opened up my hometown newspaper and it said: At least 168 people have died during the past 15 months trying to cross
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