La Equis

The X is the really big hug we should always give one another,
Juarez’s pop king, Juan Gabriel, would say, fifty years after Noa Noa,
fifty years after the Treaty of Chamizal, the club broken down to
a parking lot now, life at a standstill, the people eager for the dance
to fully fledge once again. La Equis marks a spot on my rearview,
its single eye glaring from the other side of the Rio Bravo

where the bodies of Oscar and his daughter washed up
on the concrete, two of many immigrants drowned by a dream
swallowed by the desert. Parents pull their children against
the drag of the current, a prayer tucked under their breath.

Every day along the border, blood flows like the river.
To think they only wanted sweet water, the buoyancy to
make it onto American soil. Tonight families are picked up,
lucky enough to have made it across. Crowds of migrants
and immigrants offer their wrists to Border Patrol who shine
their lights and illuminate the darkness. Arrest us. In custody
they are relieved for the moment, grateful to be alive.

But how do we continue to survive?  The X’s crimson comes
into sight with every drive along the Border Highway, a part
of us on each side of a divide. On the radio, Los Tigres del Norte
say it best: this 18-foot barrier is La Tumba del Mojado.
The tall rusty fence blurs my view of The X. La migra rolls
through in Ford Raptors, determined to keep our nation safe.
Sun up to sun down, Ghetto Birds hover above also
looking for prey. Let’s not forget any of their stories:

so determined, so patriotic, Border Patrol have gunned down
“probable crime suspects” like an innocent Mexican boy who was
only taking out the trash. Juan Patricio and all my other brothers
and sisters who have been taken by The Man, your names
still register, encrypted forever into our hard disks.
How many more dreams have to soak into the ground?
Bodies keep dropping by the power of men’s fingertips.

Don’t give me “enforcement first.” There’s always been
spill over, and not even the tallest walls, the tightest
borders, or the most beautiful artwork will get in the way.
We all have to eat, and they’re sweeping away the crumbs.
Something always manages to squeeze through both sides
of the border, blood splashing, constellations and shooting stars

baked into the asphalt, our children laid out to set the next sun
in motion, to honor the new sky. The artist Sebastian says
La Equis symbolizes Mexicanidad and Mestizaje of the people
for the people. Like the substitution of the letter J in Mejico,
the past is being immortalized by a letter that reclaims the names
of unmarked tombs in the desert, a reminder that our mixed culture
is a result of colonialism’s hunger. People rise up and protest
the millions used to build these monuments of corrupt
and powerful leaders, and all Sebastian has to say is

controversy is always good because if there
wasn’t any, the piece wouldn’t have any sense.
It would have been mediocre.

Mr. Sebastian, you’re a really smart guy—controversy is good
at the expense of the people? How does your meal taste
when you turn on Televisa to see the bodies littered?

Look at you, good sir, with your big shiny award
from el presidente. I can’t blame you and your friends,
Sir Sebastian; there is a whole lot of grimy money to burn.

I respect the real artists who erect their graffiti
on El Puente Negro, on the Rio Bravo river banks,
on the streets, near La Equis, delivering our message:

THE CORPORATE ART DOES NOT REPRESENT THE PEOPLE

The murals of children running away from Border Patrol also talk:

NINGUN SER HUMANO ES ILEGAL BORDER PATROL.

ASESINOS!

Across the panorama more words were sprayed on:

YA BASTA! POR CADA ILEGAL QUE NOS MALTRATEN
EN LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS DE N.A. VAMOS A MALTRATAR
UN VISITANTE GABACHO. BIENVENIDOS LOS PAISANOS.

A Che Guevara mural says:

RESISSTE. NO A LA LEY DEL ISSSTE

HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE —EL CHE

VIVA KEKO!

libertad a los cinco patriotas cubanos
antiterroristas injustamente presos en usa

Please remember rocks are not the same as bullets. So I do believe you, good Sir,
when you say this is for the people. Sebastian, it’s for your compadres who use La Gente
to buy white houses, airplanes, and the best health insurance. On a regular basis, canines
sniff anxiously for the kilos y los libros, uncovering cuernos de chivo, y por una mordida
del marranito, they let it all through. After a good seize, leaders hold big celebrations
for the accumulation of machine guns, pacas y pacas, and blood-stained dollars
instead of baking bread for the people. So eat the bronze, eat the steel, eat the lead,

eat the stone instead, people. On a horse, Juan de Oñate greets me
at the entrance of the El Paso airport. Might as well have cemented
him on the middle of the runway. I get it. This is yours, all yours.

Sometimes I get pieces of you flowing right through me, good Sirs,
and it numbs. In Juarez, inside a Soriana, I buy all of a girl’s
Banderitas candy with my dollars, wringing out their value, taking
two Chiclets to complete the purchase. I ain’t got it that bad after all.

There I was, balling on student loans and public housing, for a moment
realizing I had become the scum of the earth, the ecstatic sugar-loving
tourist I feared becoming all along, another cacique writer, pedazo de
crepa, romanticizing violence. We do what we have to do to survive.

We’ve shut our mouths long enough like tightly-taped packages moving
through in automobile frames. Do you know how many people will eat with
one brick of shit? La mierda que se la coman los viciosos en Los Estados Unidos.

Sirs, give us back the freedom to walk the bridge, carrying our bulging
grocery bags. This is how we are identified when they check IDs
by how we feed our babies. Like the great Sebastian, the super modern
EP Chihuahuas stadium, and all our good friends at main office, we
love to see the works of the big dogs who build and destroy like Gods.