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The new local customs director learned who not to insult that day
By
ELIAS CASTILLO
for TheColumnists.com
One
of the very first words that I uttered was "papote,"
it was my pronunciation of pasaporte, Spanish for passport.
It was not just by coincidence that the word was ingrained in
my infantile mind. It was because I heard it so often as my family
daily crossed, then recrossed the border between Mexicali in
Mexico and Calexico in the United States.
Both towns, on the edge of the California-Mexico border, are
adjacent to each other, separated only by a tall cyclone fence
topped with barbed wire. Unfortunately, they are located at the
edge of California's Imperial Valley, a lush agricultural area,
cursed with miserably hot temperatures that bake the farm fields
in the summer and where only, with apologies to Noel Coward,
mad dogs and nitwits venture forth in the mid-day heat.
My stepgrandfather, Jose Severo Castillo, founded a newspaper,
El Regional, and operated a printing plant in Mexicali,
but in the early 1940's, during World War II, we moved to Calexico.
The move was made because of security reasons. There were too
many threats made against our family because of El Regional's
crusade of exposing corruption.
Those threats, ranging from killing my grandparents to kidnapping
my brother and I, prompted my grandparents to arm themselves,
my grandmother packed a pearl handled .32 caliber revolver in
her purse, while my stepgrandfather carried a long barreled,
.38 caliber revolver holstered on his side, but always concealed
by a suit coat when he was in public.
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So, because of those threats, each day after school, ranging from kindergarten to about the fifth grade, we were always picked up and escorted across the border either by one of our grandparents or one of the printers who worked in the shop.
The border station was about four blocks from Hoffman Elementary School in Calexico. It consisted, on the U.S. side, of a small, yellow, two story stucco building with two arched portals through which each car entering the United States was checked by U.S. Customs agents.
On the Mexican side, the building was larger but dirty, and Mexican customs agents, wearing khaki uniforms, waved nearly everybody through, including the few tourists that would meander into Mexicali. At that time Mexicali was an agricultural center of 50,000 persons that did not attract tourists. Today, it is a polluted industrial megalopolis of nearly one million inhabitants. It still does not attract tourists.
Crossing the border was always an experience, mainly aromatic. Calexico had no smells. It was clean, the streets were swept and no trash littered them. Crossing into Mexicali meant being bowled over instantly by a swirl of smells so intense I never became used to them--plus the dust that swirled from the unswept streets. The aromas included the wafting of stale liquor and cigarette smoke from a large bar that adjoined the Mexican Customs house.
It was large because it was a leftover from the heyday of the 1920s and 1930s when Mexicali and Tijuana were gambling sites, housing large, plush and extravagant casinos. They were the playfields for the Hollywood crowd, including love idol Rudolph Valentino. (He was married in Mexicali with my stepgrandfather as a witness).
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The border bar was always dark inside and as many times as I glanced cautiously into it as I hurriedly passed it, I could never see that it had any patrons, just the odoriferous cool breeze that curled outside its doors.
Next to it was a shop which sold cigarettes, candy and iced fruit juices, It spewed forth a nauseous mixture of rotting orange, lemon and watermelon rinds and buzzing flies that all but overpowered the aroma of the fresh juices that it sold. The owner never had the sense to either cover the garbage cans containing the discarded peels or move them away from his shop.
No one in my family, nor anyone with any common sense in Mexicali, dared drink from the stall that was constantly swarming with the bulbous, black, kamikaze-like flies, who hung around the entrance, carrying who knows what horrendous plagues. The only persons I ever saw patronizing it were the tragic, poverty stricken newcomers from the interior of Mexico, seeking work in the United States.
You could always identify them. In the summer, they sweated profusely and looked exhausted, and in winter they huddled against the cold winds that swept through both towns. Their faces seemed to have a desperate worry about them, of what would happen if they could not enter the United States. They always gathered mournfully near the border.
One time, in the 1940s, my grandfather published a story decrying the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service habit of requiring those laborers, who sought visas to enter the United States, to stand in line for hours outside the U.S. Customs House in summer temperatures that soared past a searing 110 degrees almost daily. There was no shade, so they stood in full sun. There were so many that the U.S. Customs House could not provide shelter for them.
My stepgrandfather suggested that the INS build a long portico to shade the men, most of whom were unused to the torrid temperatures of the Imperial Valley and would frequently collapse from sunstroke.
Shortly after the story came out, my grandmother, stepgrandfather and my brother were crossing back into Calexico. I was home with my uncle. At the border, a U.S. Customs Agent, whom we knew, stopped the car and told my stepgrandfather the director wanted to see him. This was nothing new, since the customs directors from both countries occasionally chatted with my stepgrandfather.
However, this was a new director and my stepgrandfather thought it was simply a courtesy visit.
It was not.
Once inside his office, the director snarled at my stepgrandfather, "So you Goddamned Mexicans think you're going to tell me what to do?"
I'm sure there were other choice words directed at my stepgrandfather by that redneck lout. He said nothing in return. That's because he realized the new director's career in the INS had ended at the moment he had uttered that racial slur.
What the new director did not know was that the U.S. Consul in Mexicali was a close family friend and extremely supportive of the anti-corruption stance of El Regional. He frequently visited the newspaper for friendly chats with my stepgrandfather and grandmother.
He was called. There was a conference between him, my stepgrandfather and grandmother. A formal protest was lodged in Washington, D.C., with the U.S. Department of State, with strong support from the U.S. Consul. The portico was hurriedly built.
The new director? He was never seen again.
Life on the border was miserably hot, but never dull.
© 2000 by Elias Castillo. The block print drawing at the top of this column is from the IMSI Master/Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. East, San Rafael, CA 94901-5506, USA. The photos are from the Castillo collection and may not be reproduced in any form without the written consent of Mr. Castillo.
Elias Castillo is a veteran journalist who has reported for the Associated Press, the San Jose Mercury News and has written about Mexican politics and culture for a variety of publications. He now operates his own public relations business in Redwood City, Calif.
You can comment on this column or contact Elias Castillo with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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