Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
About her life, she said, “My house becomes a lake in the rainy season.
Still, we are thankful to have this place. Our land was very cheap. We bought
it from a man receiving death threats. He l ed to America. While we make
$144 a month in the city, the minimum out in the countryside is much
less—only $70 a month. Nearly half the families in our country are living
on $1 a day per person. To survive, you need a home that is already in your
family. You have one light bulb, corn, and beans. h at is about all. Living on
minimum wage is more dii cult now than before the war. Before, electricity
cost about $1 a month. Water was provided. Today electricity costs $19 and
water $14—that's about one-quarter of my monthly wage. My mother has
a tumor in her head. h ere is no help possible. I have no money.”
Beatriz's 22-year-old
daughter, Veronica, was
as strikingly beautiful as
one of the Latina stars so
hot on the popular scene.
She dreamed of going to
the US, but the “coyote”
(as the guy who ferries
refugees across Mexico
and into the US is called)
would charge $6,000,
and she would probably
be raped before reaching
the US border as a kind
of “extra fee.”
As a chicken with a
bald neck pecked at my
shoe, I surveyed the inge-
nious mix of mud, battered lumber, and corrugated tin that made up this
house. It occurred to me that poverty erodes ethnic distinctions. h
ere's
something uniform about desperation.
Beatriz and Veronica prepared for us their basic meal: a corn tortilla.
As I ate a thick corn cake hot of the griddle, it felt like I was taking com-
munion. In that tortilla were tales of peasants who bundled their tortillas
into a bandana and ran through the night as American helicopters swept
across their skies.
