Once A Mexican Tourist Town, Now No Man’s Land
You can listen at the link. Sofia’s voice is too cute for words.
The poor working-class Mexican neighborhood where I was born isn’t far from the 12-foot-high fence that separates Nogales, Ariz., from Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. Those dusty streets of Colonia Ingenieros seem narrow now, with dozens of homes still perched miraculously on a rocky hillside.
Ilegales — men and women from all parts of Mexico — would come through here when I was a child.
They’d knock on our door to ask for food and water on their trek before vanishing into the nearby hills and gullies that people now call “Cocaine Alley.”
Today, no one dares open their doors, let alone help these people. Fear trumps charity.
Fifty years or so ago, though, my friends and I would venture unafraid into the desert hills with wads of flour tortillas in our pockets that we could trade for a story or two about where these ilegales were headed: Phoenix, Los Angeles, Chicago, Kansas City — places I knew nothing about, though I imagined them to be beautiful, fluorescent cities.
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Maria Del Rayo Hernandez and her daughter, Sofia, were among the deportados being registered and debriefed by the government after returning to Mexico. Claudio Sanchez/NPR