How I became an Illegal Alien in Mexico
I would check my passport to verify the dates, but it would do me no good. I think it was 2011, give or take a year, when I made my annual trek down to the Mexican state of Puebla to visit long-time friends, Ralph and Judy Reed. The Reeds have spent a quarter century translating a New Testament into Nahuatl, one of the several distinct Aztec languages. 1 I made this trip four or five times, my favorite wife going along on a couple of occasions.
Why? Because Ralph is a translator, and was intensely focused on all the minutiae that entails. My experience in the field of linguistics was as a “distribution specialist”. I was the marketing guy in The Philippines for a project that went pretty well, and I like Ralph enough to go pester him for a few weeks each year, and stir up some interest in his work. And Ralph puts up with me. (I am a free agent, while he is not. I can do things that he cannot.)
It no longer being safe to drive, I would buy my ticket in McAllen, Texas, then hop a shuttle bus over the border to Matamoros, go through customs, and be on my way on a Mexican bus into the interior. (Even that is no longer safe today.) I LOVE Mexican buses. They are nothing like US buses.
I knew the drill, but on this one occasion I was directed into an office with my suitcase to a customs supervisor, a very friendly chap who wanted to converse in English. We talked about his family, his pending retirement, corruption everywhere, etc. We drank coffee and we were fast becoming friends when a soldier ran in and said, “His bus is leaving!” So as I offered to open my suitcase, they all were hollering at the bus driver, told me to run and get on the bus, and so I did.
A lot of those drivers are prima donnas, and this one was not happy with me. He had backed out in to the driveway, making me a bigger spectacle. They had to open the cargo bay to store my suitcase. But I got seated. Sweating, breathing hard, but glad for the air conditioning.
The fellow across the aisle spoke great English as well, and immediately struck up a conversation. “Where are you going, etc.?” He worked on a ranch in Texas, was going home to see his family. We got along great. Until, that is, we slowed down for the military checkpoint. Suddenly it occurred to me that no one had stamped a visa in my passport.
I told my new amigo my dilemma and I thought he was going to have an apoplectic fit, he laughed so hard. “Señor, you are the first gringo wetback I have ever met. I want to shake your hand!” Funny? Yes. But I wasn’t sure the soldier with the rifle had a sense of humor. They’re always seem sort of up tight as they look for travelers who might try to kill them.
When the soldier got to me, I handed him my passport, he looked at the picture, he looked at me, and my buddy started talking, faster than I could follow in Spanish. He handed it back, went on down the line, and I was now irrevocably into the interior of a foreign nation without documentation. My buddy chuckled, “He probably doesn’t know how to read anyway. You were lucky – this time.”
“Ja, ja, ja,” I replied, which is Spanish for “Ha, ha, ha.”
Needless to say, over the next six weeks, I avoided every opportunity to talk to government officials, at least where I thought my passport might be required. But I soon found that the further in you go, the less interested they were in my passport.
After awhile it became a running joke, that I was the “Yanqui mojado” – the “gringo wetback”, etc. It made for some good conversation and language learning experiences.
Anuncios
This is a good place to tell my story of “anuncios”. These are generally in the category of what we would call advertisements that are painted on the walls and the houses all over the country. They feature tires and mechanics and perfume and politicians and coffee and “Mr. Egg” and everything imaginable. The only thing of a spiritual nature on these anuncios were murals of the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus.
One day I ran across a young man who was painting some lettering on the wall of a paint store. I inquired of his charges, which were very modest. I engaged him to come help me with a project at Ralph’s house. First, we put up Judy’s favorite Bible verse on the wall, in the house. Then we picked some choice Bible verses and he painted them high up on the walls of the house, which was situated on an intersection. So we had two long walls to work with. We chose verses like:
“Come unto me, all ye who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (In Nahuatl, not King James English, and not Spanish!)
Since most Indians had never seen more than a stray word of their own language in their own language, I was hoping this would intrigue them, and that they could read it.
While my painter worked on his second anuncio, I went to the market to get some veggies for supper. I hailed a taxi for the ride home. It was only about six blocks, but it was also up hill, in the heat, with my cargo, and for 25 cents, I was happy to pay it. I got in the car, he asked where, I said, “Allende Street”, and he said, “Oh, the house with the anuncios?” Just like that, we were famous.
After that, people would come by in groups on their way to or from the market, and would almost always stop and read. They read slowly, it being the first time in their history that they had something to read in their own language. They read out loud, and they read as a group. One would falter on a word, another would correct him or her, and would read a few words until it happened again. It was fascinating to watch from a discreet vantage point. Sometimes taxis would stop, several people would get out, they would all read the anuncios, then they would get back in the taxi and continue on their way.
This little tactic proved to be one of the most spectacular successes we had ever ventured. I never fail to be amazed at the power of the written word.
The next year when we visited, there were several houses in town with Bible verses on them, mostly in Spanish, and in neighboring San Jose village, there were numerous houses and walls with both Spanish and Nahuatl verses on the walls.
We paid a call to the town president, a notorious non-religious person, even though we were warned that he would tell us no. My worries on that score evaporated when we approached city hall, where I noticed a painting of the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus on the portico. We drank coffee and asked him for permission to paint some verses on the long walls that surround the town cemetery, and he not only agreed, he instructed his secretary to write a letter of permission, just in case someone asked for our authority to do such a radical thing.
So that’s how I spent my vacations for the past several years, and I didn’t even get arrested for being an illegal alien.
1 Their New Testament is now in print, has sold out of the first edition, and is being reprinted even now. That’s a good sign.
© Daniel D. New, Permission to copy, with credits, is hereby granted.-
