THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

Sometimes they are not actual railroads.  It could be a border guard on the rim of Europe, catching a few coins and looking the other way while a truck chugs in from Bulgaria or some other odd place with a load of people hungry for a better life.  Here in California and nearby Arizona, the long, desert Southern border is a sieve and there are guides and paths and even water bottle sites to prevent unpleasantness along the way.  So naturally we get a big percentage of Mexicans in the mix of illegal aliens that includes everybody from every continent in the world.  Still, let’s take a closer look at one of the little known underground railroads. 

I had my bi-annual hair cut at the local shop a few weeks ago.  The owner doesn’t like me much, because he doesn’t approve of such long durations between clippings.  So he gives me to one of his apprentice clippers.  This time I got a lady from Nicaragua.  They know I am a writer, and one of the other cutters started pestering me to write up the story of his ‘best friend’, who was serving a life sentence for participation in a murder he didn’t commit. 

“That is a nothing story,” my lady from Nicaragua said.  “You should tell my story.”

“Which is?” I politely asked.  You don’t turn surly when the sharp blade is inches from your throat.

“I was raped over and over by Mexican soldiers.”  The clippers zoomed and dove in a menacing pattern over my head.

“Oh,” I said, hoping we’d come to the high point in her agitation. 

“Then I get here, I cross the border and am robbed of my last money by guides and dumped on the street in San Diego.  I get picked up by an old lady.  I work like a slave for six months, no pay, no time off, doing everything, and then when I show I am with baby, I am dumped on the street in front of a hospital.  I end up with no baby, naked, selling my body for dinero.”

Lurid as that sounds, I was the ultimate captive audience.  “How did you get to the States in the first place?”  I was thinking about the tough Mexican border to their south.  If you were caught trying to get into our Southern neighbor, you were beaten, jailed and if you were lucky, booted back to your own country.  And it is thousands of miles from there to San Diego. 

“I pay the Mexican soldier.  They rape me, but they take my money for transport.”

I promised I would look into it, but once I was free I scooted for the door.  It was only later that I paused to think the waitress at the nearby Pollo Amigo  was from Panama.  And my own gardener was from San Salvador.  Since he was coming to clip the hedges the next day, I asked him if there was a way to get across Mexico. 

“Sure,” he said.  “Mexican underground railroad.  More expensive than it used to be, but they still do it.”

So there you have it.  Our neighboring country to the south shows outrage that we not treat our Hispanic illegals with more courtesy, dignity and free health care and education, and they have a hidden railway to transport unwelcome immigrants across Mexico and into our country.  So the next time you are considering nations from the Mideast, Africa or Asia as your friends, look a little closer to see what that really involves.