If there’s one thing I’ve learned from deportees, it’s that deportation is the easy bit.
Being handcuffed and forcibly returned to Mexico, be it through a border door or a plane deeper into the country, is bearable. Few are treated with respect and many are treated inhumanely, but over the years I’ve spent covering the plight of returning migrants, the vast majority have the same attitude: “Fair enough, you got caught. What else did you expect?”
Take David, whom I met in Guadalajara earlier this month. He’s from Cochoapa El Grande, in Guerrero state, the most impoverished municipality in Mexico. I’ve been there too.
It’s a mountain town, a two-hour drive up into the pine-jungled hills above Tlapa. Half an hour up the route, the asphalt comes to an end and the bright orange dirt road, cut at a right angle out of the hillside and furrowed by the streams of these sierras’ constant drizzle, takes you to the arches at the entrance to the town.
It looks much like any other town in this area. Adobe walls where the rock plaster has been chipped away, exposing the large rounded slabs. The colorful bubble-lettered graffiti promoting the visit of a music band two months ago. The town square, lined with topiarized square bushes and the see-through glass box containing jicama, chile powder and wasps.
Below the town there’s an enormous social housing development. One hundred identical houses built by a federal government stand in eight identical lines. The houses are deserted. Their windows smashed. You can see children running in between them.
It’s not because they’re bad. It’s because the town itself is underpopulated. Anyone with half a chance in life leaves. What good’s a roof over your head if there’s no work outside your door?
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