The Jaguar's Children by John Vaillant Read Free Book Online Page A

corn—those are pages from the original codex.”
    That’s how it is with César—if he pays attention to you, you remember the details, even when you don’t know what he’s talking about.
    I take some water now and put some drops in César’s mouth, but only a little because I must make it last.
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    Thu Apr 5—20:11
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    I am so tired, but it is not possible to sleep. The tank is cold now and the bottom is wet with everything so you must sit or lie on your shoes, your bag, whatever you have, but how long can you do that? You have to move, but where do you move when everyone else is right there? Once, my friend’s brother hid under a car seat for three days with only water and tortillas. It was a Mitsubishi Pajero and they didn’t let him out until Virginia because they said that even far from the border the police will see a car of Mexicanos and stop you for nothing. He couldn’t walk for two days after, but then he got a job killing chickens. You can live with the pain, he said, but you can’t live without the money. I think about that and how he never complained. Also it is Lent. We are giving up a lot in here already, but I will try to give up complaining also. The anger will be harder.
    Do you know how many Oaxaqueños do this—go up to el Norte to work and to live? I have read in the newspaper one out of three. So Oaxaca, you can say, is bleeding men. All over your country. There are Zapotec barrios in L.A. where my mother’s brother lives. Mixtec too. Strange things happen to us up there. A friend of mine from secondary school called Blanquito for his pale skin was gone four years—three months picking apples and the rest in a jail outside Spokane for la mota. He swears he only smoked and didn’t sell, but they put him in there anyway. Now he’s back in Oaxaca teaching English because he had so much time in the jail to practice.
    I understand there are some in your country who hate Mexicanos and even try to kill them. There are vigilantes and your Minutemen hunting us on the border. My tío told me that besides some indios there is no one else in el Norte except immigrants—es puro migrante. So how do they decide who to hunt? But maybe it is like in Mexico—the more white you are, the more rich and free, the less you are hated or need to hate yourself. And the longer you will live.
    Before NAFTA it was not so hard to get into your country and many of us did it—a few months up there working and then home again every year in time for the village fiesta. When I was young, my tío worked like this on a ranch in Arizona. It was next to a big military base and he told me about the planes they have there, especially the one called el Cerdo—the Pig—a jet with cannons on it that is so crazy fast that all the noise—guns, jets, exploding—comes only after the plane is gone. So the sound is roaring by itself like thunder in the empty sky, and you are dead before you know it. He said not even God can save you from such a thing. There were bombers too and some of them are as big as the cathedral in el centro, but those didn’t worry him so much. You can see them coming, he said, you still have time to pray.
    One time, my tío came back to the pueblo for our fiesta and when a vulture flew over he said, “Look! There goes the Mexican Air Force.” He was smiling like it was funny. Before that day I never thought much about the Mexican Air Force, but that vulture with its tattered wings and shaking flight—that is how my tío saw himself, saw all of us, after working in el Norte. Along with the used Ford Bronco, Air Jordans almost new and the Sony CD player, this joke is what he brought home with him. This and the feeling that he was a halfman among princes and magicians. I asked him one time if the Pig is used to hunt mojados on the border, and he said maybe. I don’t always know when he is joking,