Hard Landing
By Frank Clancy
Photo by Jonathan Barkat
(page 5 of 6)
Guanajuato, Mexico, July 8, 2006 We are climbing, again. Laura and I have picked Mariana up at the hotel where she works, earning about 700 pesos (roughly $64) for a six-day week. Since Juan Antonio’s death, she has left the Rangels and returned to live at her family’s land on the outskirts of Guanajuato. As we crest a hill, she points to a distant turquoise house.It’s a harrowing ride. Mostly, the road is dirt, deeply rutted by rain. The road twists and turns. We are a mile from smooth terrain, with nary a house or streetlight in sight.
There are two buildings on the family’s land, plus the skeleton of a third. The turquoise house, which is made of adobe, has two rooms, a kitchen and bedroom. Across the yard is a larger brick building, with a metal door and cinder-block roof. It’s unfinished—the floors are dirt—but Mariana’s mother, Merceda, has already moved into one of the two rooms. The uninhabited skeleton belongs to Leticia, the oldest of Mariana’s five sisters, and her husband, Victor; it has walls, but no roof. You see buildings like this all over Guanajuato—additions to homes and freestanding rooms awaiting completion. They strike me as the very opposite of an American ghost town: habitations in the process of forming, ruins hoping to become houses.
Merceda Barrón serves a bountiful dinner of chicken mole and rice, with mountains of corn tortillas and Coke to drink. We will eat outside, at a small table. The view is a breathtaking vista, stretching for miles.
Four of Mariana’s sisters live at home. Their father is in el norte, near Tampa. He hasn’t been home for five or six years. An older brother is in the United States, too; he’s been in trouble, and his legal costs are draining resources that might otherwise have been sent to Mexico. The young women are worried about a second brother, who, at 17, is waiting to cross the river. He left Guanajuato with two cousins five days earlier. “There’s a lot of surveillance on the border,” explains Leticia, who has promised to loan him $2,100 for the coyote, if he makes it safely. Waiting to cross, the brother is running low on money. He might have to return home.
The daughters also worry about their father, who works as a construction laborer. At 47, he has diabetes, and little access to doctors. His only source of medicine is the black market. “Since our father left, we all are lonely,” Leticia says. “You don’t have a father, who you will look up to, who will guide you and protect you.”
The youngest, Rosario, swears she remembers him, but surely more as an idea than a reality. “I miss him a lot,” she says. So it is with Marianita, who points to her parents’ wedding photo and says, “Papá.”
Leticia and Victor have come to visit from the city. Both have high school degrees and good jobs; she hopes to go to college. Poised and articulate, she does much of the talking: in her father’s absence, with a deaf mother, she has taken a leadership role in the family. She is five months pregnant. They plan to move here, too, most likely after the baby is born and their small house is completed.
Poverty is relative, but in Mexico it’s measured on a different scale than in the United States. Water is one yardstick. At the Rangels’ home, it’s delivered three times a week. They worry about Marianita, living “in the middle of nowhere.”
Eight months after Juan Antonio’s death, Mariana had heard nothing from either Carolina Installers or its insurer, Massachusetts-based Liberty Mutual. A cousin in the United States is said to be arranging things, but Mariana is skeptical. She does not have a lawyer.
In fact, Mariana is entitled by law to file a workers’ compensation claim in either Minnesota or North Carolina. Both states stipulate the amount of money to be awarded to dependents when someone dies on the job, based on how much the person was earning. Under North Carolina law, the insurance company would owe something like $270,000, payable in installments until Marianita turns 18. In Minnesota, that figure would be around $500,000—more if Marianita continues her education beyond high school.
In the United States, that’s a lot of money. In Mexico, it’s a fortune.
Money is a source of tension between Mariana and the Rangels. Nestor told me he wanted nothing from his son’s death, but hoped Marianita would be taken care of. Seeing the television and stereo Mariana has already bought, which the Rangels consider extravagances, they worry that a settlement will not help their granddaughter. For her part, Mariana says, “If we received any money, I would give it to my mother. We are very poor.” Her in-laws, she adds, “don’t want to fight for anything because it would be the equivalent of buying their son’s life.”
But money is only one source of tension. Though Mariana’s sadness is palpable, she is 19, and beautiful. She has started dating. For Maria Chagaka, moving on is more difficult. She criticizes Mariana.
Juan Antonio was the Rangels’ son for 20 years, Mariana’s husband for eight months. Yet by law, the parents are entitled to nothing. And they miss their granddaughter.
