Free The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez by Jimmy Breslin Page A

being held on the side of the road. The dog and his handler walk around the van and get nowhere.
    But there are Mexicans out on the roadside. The big trucks with white drivers go right on through.
    “Good afternoon, folks,” the Border Patrol guy says as the next car pulls up.
    He starts to put his head in.
    “You got a warrant?” he is asked.
    “We’re within twenty-five miles of the border and we have the right to search,” he says.
    Now his head comes in, he sees the three whites in the car, and his head comes out.
    “Have a good day.”
    Mexicans come into Nogales like blowing sand. And every step is dedicated to silence. This is a town where the most prominent sound in the still air is made by the warning bells of the railroad crossing gates on the freight tracks that run through the center of the town. When the striped gate arms go down, the cars and a small crowd of mostly women with paper shopping bags wait on the street. Three diesel locomotives hooked to each other—two Southern Pacific and a Union Pacific, with all engines throbbing—run through the crossing. Their red and green sides glare in the sun even through the coating of grime. The engineers sit high over the street with chins resting on arms. In a town of adventurers, they pose as the most exciting. The engines go through the crossing and run down the tracks behind buildings and stop. The bells commence and the crossing gates go up. The drivers cross the tracks, the women shoppers rush to the other side. A whistle sounds from one of the engines. The bells chime and the gates come down, halting traffic. The engines back up through the crossing and run on up the tracks a couple of hundred yards to freight cars with several workmen waiting. The crossing gates remain down as the freight cars are coupled to the locomotives. With a whistle, the locomotivescome back to the crossing, pulling their freight cars. Suddenly they stop at the crossing. The engineers stare down. The gates are down and the locals sit frustrated in their cars. Finally the locomotives pull the freight cars out of the way and disappear down the tracks. Citizens of Nogales complain that the engines block the crossing out of insolence, to show the majesty of the rails. This controversy spills over to the local newspaper, whose stories are picked up by Tucson television. This was the major local news in a town that everywhere else, from movies to nightly news, was the stage for the cops and robbers of the international drug trade. It also was the place where the wave of immigrants drew itself up and then cascaded across the sand and into America.
    Despite the large numbers of immigrants who came in without danger, for many the crossing turned into torture. So many Mexicans, afraid of the Border Patrol at Nogales, circle into the desert to find their way across the border. Others risk arrest and simply jump a border fence or crawl through sewers.
    The business street in Nogales ends at a new coffee shop that is owned by a young woman whose husband is with the Nogales police department. She says that she gets a good trade of police as they come off duty.
    A few yards down from the coffee shop, there is the high sheet-metal fence and a border crossing point, a tiny customs station with two passageways. On the left as you walk up, a customs agent sits on a straight-back chair and makes sure that the Mexicans who came through have their border identification passes. The people taking the other short passageway, to Nuevo Nogales, need to show nothing. They take a few steps through the passageway and come out into the riot of the first street of Nuevo Nogales. On one corner is a crowd of men, cab drivers, hangers-on, who gave the appearances of being open to any proposition. On the opposite corner is an old building with a big Times Square sign: Girls! Girls! Girls! Underneath it is the less flamboyant and more comforting Liquor.
    From the border crossing station, the fence runs up a hill