[LRL] NY Times - 2009 Article, Melquiades Estrada

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From: Foro de comunicacion para Latinos del suroeste de los EEUU [[email protected]] on behalf of Villanueva, Margaret A.[[email protected]]Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2013 1:34 PMTo: [email protected]: [LRL] NY Times - 2009 Article, Melquiades Estrada....

FYI, from Margaret Villanueva

New York Times ....

February 10, 2006Editorial ObserverOf Buried Truths, Undocumented Laborers and a Grandfather I Never Knew

By CAROLYN CURIEL

In a land of great divides, none are so graphic as the Rio Grande. Its watersdemarcate need and desire. Dreams are born or die at the river's edge. Mexicansrisk everything sacred to them, from proximity to families to their lives, forthe opportunity to cross north.

"The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada," a film by the actor and director TommyLee Jones, explores the short life and death of one undocumented Mexican inSouthwest Texas. In many ways, it is macabre and difficult to watch. It is drivenby the killing of the Mexican, a ranch hand. Tending goats one day, he fires hisrifle at a coyote. A hotheaded Border Patrol agent believes he is under attackand returns deadly fire.

The victim becomes not so much a life lost as a nuisance authorities must dealwith. The border agent hurriedly buries his error before other agents discover

the body. Melquiades is given a second, unceremonious burial in a pauper's grave.As a small-town Texas sheriff says, the dead man was "just another wetback."

That would be the end of the story except for a rancher, played by Mr. Jones, whohad hired and befriended the Mexican. He exacts a frontier kind of justice bykidnapping the border agent and forcing him to accompany him and the rottingcorpse of Melquiades for a proper burial in his home village in Mexico.

Mr. Jones's character is probably crazy, and he breaks more laws than I couldcount — at one point, lassoing the agent like an errant calf and dragging himacross the river into Mexico. But I found myself ignoring sensibilities andcheering him every loony step of the way. For the better part of seven decades,

my family has lived without answers in our own case of an immigrant's wrongfuldeath.

My mother's father, 49 years old and seemingly in good health, died aftersurgeons in Kansas botched an exploratory operation that had been prompted by apain in his abdomen.



There were no avengers for my family. There was just my grandmother, who spoke noEnglish, and 10 children. The hospital gave her a little money in lieu of anexplanation.

My grandfather, an orphan who had married another orphan, trekked north from asmall village in Michoacán and crossed the border at El Paso in a time before

infrared vision gear, helicopters and a veritable border army. Mexican laborerswere openly in demand then, and there were none of the hypocritical

pronouncements from Washington about protecting the border while doing little tocurb the demand for cheap labor.

He helped to build the railroad through Kansas, a job that required liftingcountless railroad ties without mechanical assistance. If I had to guess whatailed him the day he first went to a doctor, I would say it was a hernia, anulcer or both.

My grandfather was short and powerfully built. He had perfect teeth and a darkface so handsomely cast that in the only photograph he sat for, in a blue suitand white shirt, he seemed made of bronze.I would like to think the doctors regretted the death of my grandfather, much asthe border agent in the movie is haunted by the life he took. Still, they couldnot have appreciated the life that ended, and the long, hard journey that hadbrought him to them.

He had survived a painful separation from his family, finally earning enough tosend for them. Their home in Kansas was a boxcar. Basic medical care forimmigrants, then as now, was a luxury. My grandfather delivered my mother intheir boxcar home with his own hands. He was buried in Kansas alongside adaughter who had died earlier of a burst appendix.

Before long, my grieving grandmother moved the family to Indiana, where her sons

went to work in the steel mills outside Chicago. There she reburied her husbandand lost child.

Mr. Jones's movie is a dark, poetic plea to value people who have too often cometo be regarded as faceless and disposable. They wash our clothes, park our cars,clean our homes, build our roads, harvest crops and tend children and gardens.For them, America is rarely the promised land — it is more like purgatory, andthey will make the best of it until they can return home, or until their childrencan rightfully claim an American birthright.

My grandfather's name was Jesus Ortiz. And he was buried twice.

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[LRL] NY Times - 2009 Article, Melquiades Estrada