Yes, I Went On a Bus to Southwestern Tamaulipas

Why did I ride a bus in Tamaulipas, especially between Matamoros and Victoria?

The intellectually correct answer is: I “feel” for Mexico, and in my small way wanted to let Mexicans know that I share their daily lives – when it comes to a bus trip – buses the subject of kidnapping, killing, hijacking articles. I wanted to bond, connect, be, with regular Mexicans.”

Hey, that sounds impressive, but there is another me.

I wanted to see reactions among friends on this side, wanted to see their surprise. Just being unique – what an illusion.

And still another me.

I dramatically wrote a “final letter” to my wife, partner, companion, and told a friend to mail it if I did not return.

More.

I did call that wife, partner, companion from Victoria, Tamaulipas, and told her what I had done, Victoria, the two-thirds point in my trip. I was afraid she would call home, not find me and start to worry. I loved hearing the fear, relief and concern in her voice.

Complex beings we are, mixtures.

I dramatically drop the letter to wife, partner, companion with my friend. I leave, backpack on, cane in hand, into the dawn …. I was going to ask him to take a “final” picture, and he thought about doing that. I didn’t ask. He didn’t take.
A lone bird flies down the street into the dawn, out of the dawn. An omen, death for me, the bird overlooking ….
The day before I’d found a ceramic object, a man pushing a lawnmower; the head had been snapped or broken off ….
“Come on,” I told myself. “You’ve read too much. Get into what you started.” And I did.
Down the street, down to the bridge, and I start to hitch, me a 72 plus old man, trying to capture decades past ….

A nurse stops in an air-conditioned pickup. He works in the stroke section of the hospital. I check my speech and mind, so far OK, I think. He drops me at the Gateway Bridge.

I cross the bridge, see the river, and in seconds am in Mexico. I am excited.
More road, I can still do it ….

I wait for a mini-bus to the central bus station.

A cartonero comes by, his container an empty AC box. I point that out to a waiting passenger.. He says, “That’s Mexico, very inventive.”

A couple on the mini-bus is going to Victoria. I think. They do not want to talk.

I get to the station, buy a ticket for the 9:15 a.m. to Victoria, the 7:30 a.m., full, and I offer to stand. “No, no standing,” says the ticket agent, so into the street, for fresh-squeezed juice – oranges from Victoria – , and then to a breakfast cafe, which was once my treasured Cafe Central, now renovated. A former migrant wishes me good fortune when he learns I am going south.

The bus station. I project: the passengers, lambs to slaughter, or, off to box cars to concentration camps. Ridiculous. They are tired, warm and carrying suitcases. Just people getting ready for a trip.
See, if a visitor had not read the newspapers, seen the TV, knew of the 40,000 and more dead Mexicans in cartel and other violence, the person would simply think it summer, vacations, buses, kids, the old, the students. Projection. Projection.

To Victoria, and my seatmates, one an engineer for the state government, later an elementary principal. The bus is packed, people traveling.

And the military, up and down the highway. I’m glad they’re very visible. I feel better. I wonder if anyone on the bus is paying much attention to more than the overhead movies, let alone the soldiers …. Resignation? Acceptance? Necessity?

The engineer says the bus is safer than a car – alluding to violence.

The teacher hushes me when I ask about violence.

On and on the bus, bypassing San Fernando where nearly a hundred Central American migrants were killed.

I relax. Everyone else is. They expect to get to Victoria, and they do. I do.

Former soldier friends think me wack. Going off, into a land of violence, on roads of violence. They had to risk their lives. I didn’t, but did I really risk my life?
I once wrote a story about a man who got shot in Mexico. A student asked if that was me. If I wanted that to occur.
Who knows.

As I said, life’s explanations, a mixture, often messy, often heroic, often just life ….
No need to elaborate about my destination: Miquihuana, Tamaulipas, where all treated me embarrassingly well: conversations, patience with my Spanish, food, maps, time …and there I was an old American, a man of fortune of birth, a passport, some money, choosing to be there, options of privilege.
Miquihauna, where there is no future for the teens; they must leave for work, a life, and there I was, able to enjoy burros, mountains and edible fresh air.
Coming back to the border, but several upsetting moments.
“No, no direct bus to Matamoros,” the ticket agent in Victoria says. “Only a semi-direct, and it does stop in San Fernando.” I worry, but buy my ticket.
Two dark young men get on, Central Americans? My major fright, as I know what has happened – death, torture, cartel recruitment – to hundreds of Central American migrants on Mexican roads. But they tell me they live in San Fernando, and I relax. Later, a realistic cynic said that all young men in San Fernando are cartel connected. Maybe.
The bus leaves. CDG is scrawled on a wall (Cartel de Golfo) …copy-cats in action?
Passengers settle into an afternoon sleep. I look for soldiers, try to figure who might be cartel, who might be federal undercover, what San Fernando will be like ….
Uneventful, very uneventful.
A moon comes out of the white clouds in the east, with a sunset in the west,
Sorghum harvested.
Little traffic, buses, trailers, some farm trucks, almost no private cars between Matamoros and Victoria, coming or going …and we’re back in Matamoros. I hop off, grab a mini bus to the bridge, and in five minutes am back in Brownsville, walking home, and another lift, a neighbor stops when I yell …and back to my neighbors’ to get the letter that did not have to be sent.
Did I want it to be?
The quasi heroics of privilege ….

Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky, Brownsville, mid-summer 2011