Land of Opportunity

During the crew’s first week home, Adrian and Chava tend to family matters first: getting to know their babies, reconnecting with wives, visiting their mother’s grave.

Adrian inspects the brick wall he hired masons to erect around his back yard in the summer. With his daughter ever-present by his side, he walks to the primary school to see his close friend, the school principal, who is simultaneously preparing for the Revolution Day parade and fiesta — and personally painting the school.

Kids swarm Maria Elena to see her new talking doll, asking to touch it and hear it talk.

“I’m hungry!” it says.

Maria Elena translates: “Tengo hambre!”

While Adrian settles slowly into Sauta, his nephew Baby goes immediately to work. On his first morning home, Baby helps his mom deliver drinking water to residents, a daily chore of the water-purification business she started eight years ago in a shed behind their house.

She began the venture with a small government grant and money from her brother Morgan, who installs tile in Mississippi. Morgan made the journey home last year for Christmas, but like many illegal migrants, he returns less frequently than the legal guest workers — generally, once every two or three years.

Sneaking back into the United States is risky, and hiring a smuggler to guide him on the journey costs as much as $2,000, although many illegal Nortenos still make the annual holiday trek home to Sauta, residents say, even with increased border surveillance.

While Morgan’s money helped launch the business, it’s Baby’s dollars that have enabled it to flourish. In October alone, he wired more than $1,500 to his mother. He also bought water pumps at Lowe’s in Rocky Mount to bring home with him on the bus, along with clothes and jewelry for his sisters.

It’s Baby’s money that allowed his sister Karen, 17, to become the first person in the family to finish high school, and it’s Baby’s money that pays to keep his 6- and 16-year-old sisters supplied with school uniforms and books.

Since Sauta has no high school, parents have to pay taxi transportation — about $100 a month — to the nearest high school 10 miles away. Only 20 percent of the kids in Sauta can afford to go.

On his second day home, Baby gives his mom money to buy food for a Revolution Day luncheon to honor the town’s elementary school teachers. Then, he drives to the larger nearby town of Santiago Ixcuintla to buy a new sombrero to go with the Western shirt, cowboy boots and jewelry he bought in Virginia, all to look good at the Saturday night rodeo/disco in Santiago.

Which he does, judging from the throngs of women who want to dance with him there.
With his wad of pesos, Baby also draws the admiration of the young men, who greet the long-lost Norteño with high-fives, laugh loudly at his jokes and drink the Negro Modelo beer he doles out like it’s bottled water.

Baby and his buddies preen for the women in the crowd, goofing off and chucking their empty beer cans into the bullring below. They even climb down into the ring, daring each other to stay when the bull comes bucking in. When the bull gets too close, the guys scramble up the fence and out of reach — all the while managing, somehow, not to spill their beers.

The dancing starts when the rodeo ends, and all Baby has to do is point to a woman he talked to earlier in the stands, and she’s his dance partner for the night. With a live band funneling Mexican pop through giant speakers, Baby and the beautiful brunette dance chest to chest, legs intertwined.

He caresses her back with one hand and his umpteenth beer with the other, and he doesn’t think at all about 10-hour days picking tobacco or hanging it to cure.

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