Who'll Cut My Grass? - Trump, Have A Nice Day, And Jose Heads Back Across The Border

Jose Miranda had headed to El Norte in the Mariel-style exodus from Honduras where he had been caught in a roundup up of two hundred members of Santa Maria, a Tegucigalpa gang recruited and trained by Salvador's Mara Salvatrucha but caught in an extrajudicial sweep that had thrown thousands of them into prison.  Now, the Honduran government, seeing an opportunity to empty the prisons in the last gasps of Biden's open door welcoming policy, arranged for transport, tamales, and a change of underwear and sent them to America.

 

The Biden Administration had welcomed them with open arms, 'refugees from poverty and oppression, asylum seekers who wish to make a home in this great land of ours.' 

Jose was no gang banger, only a grill man in La Taqueria de la Capital a cheap eatery catering to them, flush with drug money from the Sinaloa and Obregon Mexican cartels which needed a safe transit point for their Colombian product and found it in a more than willing Honduras. 

When the Federales burst in to La Taqueria guns blazing, Jose hid behind the old Viking stove, fitful and sputtering in recent months but cast iron, and the bullets just ricocheted off into the sacks of corn meal and rice, ripping them apart and covering the floor in a slippery patina, saving Jose and Juanita, the cleaner, from certain death.

When the shooting was over, the Federales rounded up anyone who was still standing, Jose and Juanita included, packed them into paddy wagons, threw them into prison, and later sent them onward to California. Jose at first protested his arrest, but as soon as he heard of the plan to empty the cells of Carcel 382 and send all prisoners north, he stopped complaining.  After years of watching Bay Watch and wanting something other than a thatched roof over his head, his dream was coming true - not exactly as he had imagined it, jammed in an old Bluebird school bus with society's worst element, but still, a trip at last to El Norte. 

 

While his bus mates were welcomed with open arms by the northern American crews of the cartels and their Mara Salvatrucha operatives, Jose found himself - of all places - behind the grill of The Palm Garden Taqueria, San Diego's upscale ethnic restaurant serving downtown.  He was paid barely a subsistence wage, but he had no complaints.  Life would take an upturn if only by clicks, but if America was anything like what it was said to be, he would be in clover and honey by the end of the year. 

Life wasn't so bad, although not much different from what he had left.  Cramped living quarters, cheap beer joints, tough meat, and sex with the same Juanitas and Julias he had had in the barrio, no Pamela Andersons or Marilyn Monroes.  He cut grass and trimmed hedges in Rancho Palos Verde on the weekends, did some house painting on the side, and ended up no differently than the thousands of Latinos mowing lawns, cleaning gutters, blowing leaves, and working construction from California to Washington, DC. 

 

In fact whole cities depended on cheap illegal labor like his.  If he and his compatriots had to leave the country, neighborhoods would turn to seed, roofs would leak and children would be herded into institutions. 

One day he met a Santa Maria banger who had been his seatmate on the trip north. The man was a real sharper, silk suit, Italian shoes, and a gold stick pin.  The do-rag and wifebeater were gone, and Jose hardly recognized him.  After a warm greeting, the man asked how Jose was doing, 'Still cutting grass', he said, looking at Jose's grass-stained overalls and callused hands. 'Maybe I got something for you'; and there on the corner of Juarez and Figueroa, Jose's life took a turn for the better.  

Delivering an unmarked package to an unknown recipient at an address he was told to forget was only the first step, and before long he was given more responsibility, more weight, and more money - more than he thought he would ever see in a lifetime.  After a few months, thanks to his lawn service experience, he was charged with 'industrial relations', a job which entailed only meeting with the foremen and crew chiefs of San Diego's biggest developers, and letting them know who was responsible for the prompt, courteous workers on the site. 

It was a win-win-win situation.  Jose and his Santa Maria handlers got rich on kickbacks, the straw bosses on the construction site were unbothered by unrest, and the workers were finally well paid, well above the usual illegal immigrant salaries. 

Jose turned out to be a natural labor organizer, and succeeded in securing thousands of leaf-blowers, nannies, and housepainters within the unofficial cadre of Santa Maria.  He was doing things the American way. Santa Maria was no different than Al Capone's organization of the Thirties. 

When news of the incoming Trump Administration's deportation policy reached the barrio, few people were concerned; but when they saw the first ICE patrols, armed, and SWAT-ready, they knew that something was up.  Ah, America, never could figure out its politics.  How could the government go from that of a doddering old fool to that of a Nazi overnight? But there it was, the Warsaw ghetto and Kristallnacht again, said those with more than the usual rice-and-beans political desuetude. 

'Never happen', said a colleague. 'They need us', and need them America certainly did, so dependent on cheap, uncomplaining low-rung labor was it.  Black people would rather stay in the slums rather than do shit work like cleaning up after white folk, so the whole economy would collapse.  Work would stop on high-rises, women would be forced back to scullery work and have hissy fits over indifferent husbands.  Leaves would pile up, dumpsters would overflow, house paint would crack and peel, restaurants would close. 

But the black-suited, body-armored, assault weaponed deportation forces were no mirage. Trump meant business; so before they were rounded up and hauled forcibly across the border, illegals started to return on their own, knowing quite well that America wouldn't last long without them and would invite them back soon. 

Jose and his crew decided to stay and fight.  Another thing that they had learned was that America had no taste for street fighting.  The old, wearied ethos of diversity was still hanging around, especially in California, and asylum shelters run by well-wishers would house those defiantly staying. Gangs like his had so much firepower and finances, they would not give up turf easily. While not the powerful cartels of Tijuana, they still were feared, ensconced, and there to stay. 

The rest of Southern California emptied out, and within weeks lawns dried up, babies wailed, and the place looked like shit.  Only the sharkskin-suited Honduran mafia still lived high on the hog, keeping ICE at bay thanks to generous offers and nasty threats.  

There were times when Jose missed home and planned someday to return, but not until his coffers were overflowing, and that meant waiting out the hiatus.  That would not last, he and his mates knew.  It was only a matter of time before Americans got fed up with the high prices of lettuce and opened their doors once again.