The Coyote's Bicycle by Kimball Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

interior. From any of the heights—Russian Hill, Bunker Hill, Spooner’s Mesa—one could see the sparkling blue bay and the gleaming towers of downtown San Diego. Compared to Mexico City’s low sprawl, this vertical skyline was stark—a dazzling precipice of glass and steel. A number of the southernmost California neighborhoods were also in view. To the west was the arch of the Coronado Bridge, and to the east, the snaking cul-de-sacs of salmon-colored tract homes that spilled out toward the mountains. If Pablo had known the location of the two-bedroom apartment his parents, two grown brothers, and two sisters shared in a south country barrio, he likely could have fixed its vicinity in the cityscape. The dream he’d harbored in the village would have looked different from up here.
    Prospects for food or a roof over his head in this part of Tijuana were slim. It was the absolute margin. Even the shantytowns thinned out and gave way before the boundary. One could sleep in a ditch, maybe, or a culvert. The downtown halfway houses that served migrants and deportees could board passers-through for only a few nights, and then the travelers were sent on their respective ways.
    Often the next step for the deported was to take up residence along the Tijuana River, the stinking and paved no man’s land. Here, the challenges of the disenfranchised were laid bare for the city to see—scrums of men surrounding acrid trash fires, faces sunburnt and blackened from exposure. Clustered plastic and cardboard hovels evoked a sense of establishment. These aboveground structures had cultivated a regional nickname, ñongos . But the crude holes that recent arrivals dug for shelter also had a term, pocitos , or “wells.” Many river dwellers existed virtually without a nation. Identification documents were consistently lost during the deportation process. In the streets of Tijuana, the lack of a voter ID card subjected one to arrest at any time; and gaining legal employment was impossible. Mexican federal law guaranteed the public use of water bodies and their shorelines, which made the river the only place to turn.
    New migrants like Pablo who didn’t have enough cash for a hotel room or the ability to pay a coyote soon found themselves in the same boat as the deported. Tijuana police kept their eyes peeled for pollos to sell, as each one was worth about a hundred bucks or so. Wandering men and women dressed in the clothing of peasants were stopped and questioned—amiably at first, but always with the threat of arrest. If the migrants didn’t have the ability to pay smugglers for their services they couldn’t be sold by police. In this instance, officers would take whatever they had in their pockets. Sometimes even belts and shoes were seized. To ensure that victimized migrants couldn’t make a claim, the police often took their identification, awound that was sure to hasten stagnation and hunger. Tijuanenses called potential crossers migrantes and this term carried a measure of respect for people out to do better for themselves. But just a short stint in the river garnered a new status, indigentes , the indigent—which suggested a person with fewer prospects than the outright homeless.
    To live in a dirt well, scamper from police, abide in a river community ruled by drug users—to slip farther from the lowly rung of migrante into the indigente —was not an option for Pablo. It was not the dream he nurtured. Yet it seemed that in the period before Solo arrived, Pablo was at risk of losing sight of his goals. The masses of cars and heavy trucks, the roar of jets out of Tijuana International, the multistory buildings that stretched higher than the tree line of his foothill village—they all created a dizzying sense of dislocation. Pablo coped only by keeping on the move, by hiking and walking.
    A lone juvenile who stalked the margins, keeping a distinct distance from the