The revolution of 1910-1920 is the religion of the Mexican state and forms its main claim to legitimacy. Even the toppling of the ruling party in the election of 2000 by a conservative pro-business party has hardly altered this homage. In the United States, the revolution is barely remembered and functions as a cartoon of violence, rape and mayhem. But it was the moment when the Mexican people asked questions of themselves and of their government, questions that have never been answered nor gone out of date. The most forceful questions were asked by Doroteo Arango, better known as Francisco Villa, or Pancho Villa. He has been made into both a monster and a buffoon in the United States and all but erased from the revolution in México. He is part and parcel of the Mexican migration because ultimately this flight from México stems from the failure of the revolution.
Villa terrifies people who hold power. On November 17, 1910, Villa murders Claro Reza, a federal cop, at a meat stall in Ciudad Chihuahua and then rides into the Sierra Azul with fifteen men. Soon he leads an army, then is arrested and jailed, then escapes and flees México for Texas. At ten o'clock at night on March 6, 1913, he recrosses the Rio Grande into México with eight men. They carry nine rifles, 500 rounds, two pounds of coffee, two pounds of sugar, one pound of salt and a couple of barbed-wire cutters. They are almost immediately fired upon but they slip south. Villa sends a telegram to the anti-revolutionary governor of Chihuahua who has taken over since the murder a few weeks earlier of President Francisco Madero in México City.
KNOWING THAT THE GOVERNMENT YOU REPRESENT WAS PREPARING TO EXTRADITE ME I DECIDED TO COME HERE AND SAVE YOU THE TROUBLE. HERE I AM IN MÉXICO RESOLVED TO MAKE WAR ON THE TYRANNY WHICH YOU DEFEND. FRANCISCO VILLA.
In a year or so, the General has 40,000 men.
He is still out there, embodied in this new strange revolution called illegal immigration, an act by which poor Mexicans go from doom to a future, a movement which has enhanced the lives of poor people more than any policy attempted by either the U.S. government or the Mexican government.
People ask, why do they come here? People say México has such low unemployment, so what is the problem? Consider this: you get up at 5 a.m. You live in a one-room shack and pay $59 a month in rent. Your address is on the outskirts of the world's second largest megalopolis, México City. You share this shack with your woman, a niece and your child. At 5:30 a.m. you're on the bus, a ninety-minute ride for $2.45 a day roundtrip. You work in a tortilla shop for $1.64 an hour, eleven hours a day, six days a week. A gallon of milk at the store, the electricity that lights your shack, the fuel running the bus, all these things cost more than in the United States. Basically, everything costs more than in the United States—except labor. And there are other expenses. The water in the tap, should you even have running water, is not safe, so you must buy other water or drink soda. You never save a cent, and when someone in your family becomes ill, you cannot afford medicine. You have essentially no education because after junior high you must pay for books and schooling and so, depending upon your circumstances, you quit school sometime between age twelve and fifteen. You will earn in a year less than six grand and almost everyone in your country lives the same way—or not as well. You will never take a vacation. Or see any future that is different from all the days you have known. But someone, a brother, a cousin, a friend will go to the United States and you will hear of life there.
Mexican civilization existed before the American people were even a thought. Americans have come to the game very recently, and like so many new arrivals believe they possess all the answers. At the moment, human beings are moving all over the planet to save their hides. Things have been upended, the moon rises at a strange hour, it is blood red, and dripping with hunger.
