Carlos Fuentes - The Crystal Frontier

“Do you two know each other?” asked Dinorah.

“Only by sight,” said Marina.

“This is Rosa Lupe. You can’t recognize her when she’s in a saintly mood. But believe me, she’s normally very different. Why’d you get involved with this vow business?”

“Because of my famullo.”

She told them she’d been working in the plants for four years but her husband — her famullo —still hadn’t found work. The children were the reason: who would take care of them? Rosa Lupe looked at Dinorah, although not with obvious malice. The famullo stayed home with the kids, at least until they were grown.

“You support him?” asked Dinorah, to get back at Rosa Lupe for her remark.

“Just ask around at the factory. Half the women working there are the breadwinners in their families. We’re what they call heads of households. But I have a famullo. At least I’m not a single mother.”

To avoid a fight, Marina commented that they were coming into the nice area, and without saying another word the three of them looked at the rows of cypresses lining both sides of the road. They were waiting for the incredibly beautiful vision that never failed to dazzle them though they’d seen it countless times. The television assembly plant, a mirage of glass and shining steel, like a bubble of crystalline air. It was almost like a fantasy to work there, surrounded by purity, by brilliance, in a factory so clean and modern, what the managers called an industrial park.

It was one of the plants that allowed the gringos to assemble toys, textiles, motors, furniture, computers, and television sets from parts made in the United States, put together in Mexico at a tenth the labor cost, and sent back across the border to the U.S. market with a value-added tax. About such things the women knew little. Ciudad Juárez was simply the place where the jobs called them, jobs that did not exist in the desert and mountain villages, jobs that were impossible to find in Oaxaca or Chiapas or in the capital itself. Those jobs were here, and even if the salary was a tenth what it was in the United States, it was ten times more than the nothing paid everywhere else in Mexico.

At least that was what Candelaria wore herself out telling them. A woman of thirty, Candelaria was more square than fat, the same size on all four sides. She always wore traditional peasant clothing, though it was difficult to tell from which region of Mexico, as the totally sincere, serious, but smiling Candelaria mixed a little bit of everything: pigtails tied with Huichol wool, Yucatan-style smocks, Texan skirts, Tzotzil belts, huaraches with Goodrich tire soles available at any market. And since she was the lover of an antigovernment union leader, she knew what she was talking about. It was a miracle she hadn’t been blackballed from all the assembly plants. But Candelaria always managed to save her skin: she was a wizard at changing jobs. Every six months she went to another factory, and each time, her boss breathed a sigh of relief because the agitator was leaving, and as far as the owners were concerned, frequent job changes meant little or no change in political consciousness: there wasn’t enough time to stir anyone up. Candelaria would just shake her comical pigtails and go on raising consciousness in one place after another, every six months.

She had been working in the plants for fifteen of her thirty years and didn’t want to ruin her health. She’d already worked in a paint factory and the solvents had made her sick — imagine, she said at the time, spending nine months filling paint cans just to end up painted inside. That’s when she met Beltrán Herrera, a mature man — which is why Candelaria liked him — mature but with tender eyes and vigorous hands; dark-skinned, he had graying hair and wore a moustache and glasses.

Candelaria, Bernal said to her, they wouldn’t give you water around here if you were dying of thirst. Whatever you need you’ve got to earn with the sweat of your brow. They talk about costs and profits, sure, but there’s no insurance for work-related accidents, no medical treatment, no pension, no compensation for marriage, maternity, or death. They’re doing us a big favor giving us work, thank you very much, so keep your mouth shut. Say so much as three little words, my dear Candelaria, “three little words,” as the old song goes, strike by coalition, strike by coalition, strike by coalition — say it three times like a litany, Candy sweetest, and you’ll see how they turn pale, promise you raises and bonuses, respect your opinions, urge you to switch factories. Do it, darling. I’d rather you switched than died.

“This place is so beautiful,” sighed Marina, taking care not to let her stiletto heels puncture the green lawn marked with the double warning NO PISE EL PASTO/KEEP OFF THE GRASS.

“It looks like Disneyland,” said Dinorah, half joking, half serious.

“Sure, but it’s full of ogres who eat innocent princesses like you,” said Candelaria with a sarcastic smile, fully aware that her irony was lost on these three. She loved them anyway.

Everyone but Rosa Lupe put on a regulation blue smock, and they all took their places opposite the skeletons of television sets, each ready to do her job in order — Candelaria the chassis, Dinorah the soldering, Marina the newcomer learning to repair weldings — and Rosa Lupe checked for defects like loose wires, cracked washers and, as she worked, Rosa Lupe spoke to Candelaria. Listen, don’t you think it’s about time to stop treating us like jerks? And don’t go into your Saint Candelaria act, okay? You’re always preaching to us, always treating us like shit. Candelaria opened her eyes wide. Me? Dinorah, listen, you tell me if there’s anyone more screwed than I am: I came here alone from the village, I brought my kids, then my brothers and sisters, then my dad. How’s that for a load to carry? Think I make enough?

“Your union boss doesn’t chip in, Candelaria?”

The square woman gave Dinorah an electric shock, a trick she knew how to do. Dinorah squealed and called the fat woman a bastard, but Candelaria just laughed and said that every one of them had a whole soap opera to tell, so maybe they should just try to get along with each other, okay? To spend their time together and not die of boredom, okay?

“Why’d you bring your dad?”

“For the memories,” said Candelaria.

“Old people get in the way,” said Dinorah softly.

All these women came from other places. That’s why they entertained one another with stories about their backgrounds, about their families, the things that made them all different. And yet at times they were astonished at how alike they were in many things — families, villages, relatives. All of them felt torn inside. Was it better to leave all that behind and set about making a new life here on the border? Or should they feed their souls with memories, hum along with José Alfredo Jiménez, feel the sadness of the past, agree that indifference is the death of the soul?

Sometimes they looked at one another without saying a word, all four friends, comrades — Candelaria, the one who’d worked the longest in the plants, Rosa Lupe and Dinorah, who’d come at the same time, Marina, greenest of the lot— understanding that they didn’t have to use words to say these things, that they all needed love, not memories, but that even so it was impossible to separate memory from tenderness. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

The one best at keeping track of the stories was Candelaria, and her conclusion was that all the women came from somewhere else, that none of them was from the border. She liked to ask them where they were from, but it was hard for them to talk except with Candelaria, whom they trusted and with whom they dared to link love and memory. Candelaria wanted to keep them both alive, feeling it was important they not condemn themselves to oblivion or indifference, the death of the soul. She hummed the tunes of the unforgettable José Alfredo, as the radio announcers never failed to call him.