Loose Ends: Mexico City 2018: Dreams and Nightmares

In winter 2018, I spent a month in Mexico City. My accommodations, originally a Friends (Quaker) guesthouse, gave its third floor over to some refugees from the second caravan coming north from Central America. 

In the sala, I talked with Patricio (a pseudonym) from El Salvador. He had received troubling news: the government had informed his family that it would take their land unless they built a house on it by a certain date. There is an issue with documents and a signature that I don't understand. 

How does one take care of such family business when one is a refugee? Patricio and his wife have a four-year old son. With luck, they will join Patricio in February. 

Patricio shared with me a photo of his son, along with phone recordings from conversations between him and his little one. 

Nightmares awaken Patricio. 

~~~~~~~~

My Spanish isn't good enough to understand the specifics of Patricio's situation, but below are relevant issues, any one of which could touch on his family's predicament: 

• August 2024, Tico Times: The Battle for Land: Coastal Salvadorans Fight Eviction as Tourism Rises
• June 2021, Waging Nonviolence: Unable to claim title to homes they paid to own, Salvadorans unite to fight developers for land rights

Loose Ends: Mexico City 2018: Deportees

In winter 2018, I spent a month in Mexico City. My accommodations, originally a Friends (Quaker) guesthouse, gave its third floor over to some refugees from the second caravan coming north from Central America.

Some women and men deported from the US also passed through the guesthouse. I've given them pseudonyms. 

Some new folks arrived today. 

A married couple came up with the first caravan from Guatemala. They'd been deported from Austin, Texas. They believed it best for their two young children, ages three and five, to leave them in safe hands in Austin. 

Another man, Juan, originally from Chiapas, arrived. He'd been living in Chicago for a number of years, working for a landscaping company. Deported just last week. Instead of returning to Chiapas, he plans to stay in Mexico City for now, as there are more opportunities here. 

A third man, Guillermo, who'd lived in Nevada for more than 20 years, was visiting New York when tapped. He's lived in Mexico City for almost a year now, and plans to move to his own place here in January. Originally from Jalapa in Vera Cruz, he says, smiling: "Yo soy jalapeño." Chuckles. 

Loose Ends: Mexico City 2018: Emergency Health

In winter 2018, I spent a month in Mexico City. My accommodations, originally a Friends (Quaker) guesthouse, gave its third floor over to some refugees from the second caravan coming north from Central America. 

One of the asylum-seekers became ill, and I wrote this:

So when you are vomiting blood and have no money, what do you do? 

In the case of one of my housemates, you go to a pharmacy for a consult - in some pharmacies free and in others, for a nominal fee (but even this is inaccessible if you have no money, so one of your housemates pays the consulting fee for you - about 35 pesos). 

The pharmacist takes your vitals (blood pressure, pulse, temperature, and throat check), but no blood, stool, or urine tests. 

The pharmacist takes a history from you, considers the possibilities, rules some out, and recommends an endoscopy. Which, of course, is outside your financial reach. 

The pharmacist suggests there is an irritation in your esophagus or at another milepost along the gastrointestinal boulevard, and to eat fruits and vegetables, and avoid spicy foods. If still producing blood in two days, do what you can to get that endoscopy. 

What could be the cause? 

The violent blows to your torso, delivered 10 days ago by fellow caravanners from a different country than  yours, who maybe took umbrage at your membership in the caravan's LGBTQI group? Or the cocaine you ingested yesterday evening, even though you've never had such a reaction before? Or stress? Or malnutrition? Or an ulcer? Or a pulmonary issue? Deadly? Or a passing health incident, self-repairing? 

Does an affliction care if you are kind and amiable, that you sometimes engage in risky behaviors, are poor, have left all that is familiar to you, and your access to food, shelter, and employment is insecure? No, it does not; it is impersonal. 

Maybe there's a biological tipping-point algorithm at play: stress+malnutrition+uncertainty+a beating+cocaine+compromised immune system from the cold virus that's been visiting the house = a crocodile crack on a corporeal byway = vomiting blood. 

A truism: Time will tell.   

The Meaning of Yellow Flowers

Yellow flowers and rain gutter near Campbell and Fort Lowell. Tucson, Arizona. May 2019.

Yesterday, as I lay on my airbed reading a young-adult science fiction novel, I was warm; the surface supporting my body, soft. If I had to go to the bathroom, the toilet and sink were literally around the corner of my bedroom. Hungry? Get up and walk a few steps to my refrigerator or pantry, in clean socks, on a clean floor.

In a parallel universe, in Mexico City, was a young guy who'd slept on the street last night. It dropped into the 30s. In the past 18 months, he'd survived:

• Journey in one of the caravans from Honduras to Mexico City
• Journey into the US, where he was detained in an "icebox" for some time
• Illness and despair when he returned to Mexico City
• Year, in all, in Mexico City, with food and shelter insecurities
• Isolation from family and friends back home, and the friends and short-term security he'd held while at Casa de los Amigos
• Faltering hope

Such long-term hardship - beginning before he embarked on a self-rescue mission, when he joined that caravan from Central America - has pushed his spirit into a crevasse, and this weekend, maybe he is on a bus to Chiapas, Mexico, headed back in the direction of Honduras.  Honduras. Whose nickname from the Reagan era was: USS Honduras. 

He told me: "I don't want to keep suffering."

Here's the thing. There will be suffering in Honduras, too. But maybe it will be closer to family and old friends, so perhaps a more familiar suffering, with people who love him?

I say this with a question mark because I really don't have a clue. I can have an intellectual grasp of his life in this moment, but not the gut understanding of one who has also lived through a war. Because a war, it is, for the usual things: power and greed, both in-country and from out-of-country, and where men, women, and children, individuals like my cheeky, charming young guy are just collateral damage.


Oh, right. The yellow flowers.

In the U.S., yellow flowers bespeak happiness and joy. In Central America, death and funerals.