Why zerO tOlerance Fails

Many years ago, while hitchiking back from Guatemala through Mexico, I learned how rogue police tell the difference between ordinary people and those who were fleeing the terrors of Central America. The rogues – and other human predators – probably use the same technique today. Let me explain. (Subscribe to the blog)

Most of those fleeing then and now are indigenous people born into the economic margins of society in countries with depressed economies. They live at the bottom where poverty alone is reason to leave. In the 70s, 80s and 90s, they began running from the terrors of revolutionary wars. Since then, drug wars and gang violence have taken over.  It’s hopeless to stay, so they flee – exposing themselves to all those grabbing hands.

The trick is how to figure out who’s on the run and, thus, is vulnerable.  People of Mexico and Central America share marvlously strong and distinctive physical characteristics. Even those who prey on these people have a hard time telling who is from where.

Just north of Mazatlan – where I was waiting for a bus to the border – a swirl of people gathered to get on the same bus as I. Two uniformed federales (federal police) stood off to the side assessing them. One of them caught my eye and sauntered over with a crooked smile.

My blood ran cold when he addressed me in a familiar way.

“Hey, heepee, you got drogas?”

‘Heepee’ – hippy – is how they addressed white guys with long hair back then – back when drinkin’, sexin’, druggin’ Americans wandered through Mexico like sloven dogs. I was often sloven and sometimes drunk, but…

“No drugs.”

He asked for a cigarette. I gave him one and lighted it.

“Look at them,” he said, nodding his head at the throng. 

They were a mix of people dressed in plain, worn, patched clothing. A dozen or so were men, some with machetes….A few older women had dresses that came halfway down between their knees and feet..There were some family groups of small children, mother and father. They carried various meager belongings and to me looked like people I had seen in every village plaza, in fields, along roads, and in humble homes everywhere I visited.

“See anything suspicious?”

“No.”

“Conejos are easy to see.”

‘Conejos’ are rabbits – on the run to the U.S. border.

I looked again.

“No.”

“Ha!” he said and explained how to tell a rabbit from the rest.

“Look at their eyes, heepee,” he said, making a circle with each thumb and forefinger and putting those circles up against his eyes like glasses.

“O’s, heepe, look at how their eyes look like O’s.”

Again I looked and suddenly saw O-shaped eyes sprinkled among the ordinary-looking eyes of others waiting to board the bus. The O-shape of fear. 

“Do you see, now, heepee how easy it is?”

The federale wandered back to the line and, with his compadre, began talking to the O people softly. Hands went into bags and pockets and purses and blouses, pulling out coins and bills. The federales pocketed the loot as everyone got on the bus. I was last to board.

“Hey, heepee, why your eyes so wide?”

He laughed as I boarded.

I went to the front of the bus and was mostly alone for the next few stops as native people got on. All the O’s went to the rear of the bus, where they were easy pickings for rogues who got on to work the crowd.  The trip took over 12 hours.

At the border, I got out and walked to a processing station. I had my passport. My white skin. No drogas. Welcome back to the United States, the agent told me.

I never saw where the O’s went, nor how they were greeted when they tried their border crossing. But all these years later, I think about them when I snap on the TV and see the latest images of people just like them being met at the border by people with guns and badges. Of families being shredded apart because of a presidential policy. Of how these people were fleeing hometown horrors so great that they were willing to expose their lives and those of their family to stealing, raping and killing all along the way. 

I know what they were fleeing because I lived among them and saw how they lived. Far from being bad parents as some of our leaders describe them, I think of them as the best of parents – willing to do anything to give their precious children a chance. Willing, even, to risk having those children ripped away because of a zero-tolerance policy that was designed to scare them to stay home. 

Scare the O people? Scare people who had everything to lose if they stayed home? Scare people who had the spine, the heart, the courage to run the gauntlet? 

We should emrace, not further terrorize these pioneers who have braved the wilderness – like our ancestors – to find the better life. We inherited ours, they have earned theirs.