Friends, Relatives in Mexico Know Risks of Border Crossing

By Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service

NAUCALPAN DE JUAREZ, Mexico, May 15 -- The phone rang in Emma Villaseñor Leon's tiny concrete house Monday afternoon. It was her brother, Jose
Antonio, calling to tell her that he and his little boy had made it, that they had sneaked safely into the United States.

"I've crossed. Don't worry. I'm waiting for a trailer to pick us up to go to Houston," he said. Then the phone went dead.

Two days later, the bodies of Jose Antonio Villaseñor Leon, 31, and his son, Marco Antonio Villaseñor, a 5-year-old kindergartener, were among the 18
recovered from a sweltering trailer truck on the roadside in Victoria, Tex.

Cristina Leon Soto, Jose Antonio's mother, said she was watching television and saw a report of a trailer truck filled with dead migrants in Texas. She said her
heart sank when the newscaster described how survivors told of a man desperately holding his 5-year-old son up to an air hole in the trailer to try to save him.

"The second I heard there was a man holding a 5-year-old boy, I knew it was my son, because he loved his son so much," Leon said today, sitting in her kitchen
amid a sad jumble of houses in this gray, working-class city.

Like countless Mexicans from every little corner of the country, Jose Antonio thought the United States would bring him a change of fortune. His sister said that his
wife had walked out about four months ago, leaving him with Marco in a small apartment in Neza, another rough and crowded city here in the state of Mexico just
northwest of Mexico City.

Then, last Tuesday night, he arrived at his sister's house, where their mother also lives, to say goodbye. His mother said he had sold his bed, his television and the
taxi he drove for a living -- all his possessions -- and announced that he and Marco were heading to "the other side."

"I want to give him a better education, and maybe I'll have better luck on the other side," Jose Antonio told his mother, who fixed Marco his favorite dessert of
sweet rice and milk and gave him a gold Virgin of Guadalupe chain to wear around his neck.

Wednesday morning father and son boarded a bus for the border city of Reynosa. Jose Antonio's mother said her son "wasn't going to carry much -- mainly water"
because he had been warned about dehydration. She said her grandson even left his favorite toy, Buzz Lightyear, behind.

Leon and her family were doubled over with tears as they tried to fathom what had happened. They said they did not know exactly how much Jose Antonio had
paid his smuggler. But his younger sister, Virginia, said everyone here knew that most cost $1,500 to $2,000 -- more than half a year's wages for an $80-a-week
taxi driver from Naucalpan de Juarez.

"They ask for so much because they say they can guarantee your security," Virginia said.

"Something's got to change: We need more work here in Mexico, or we need more legal work in the United States," Leon said.

Around Naucalpan de Juarez, people could not stop talking about the discovery of the bodies.

Ricardo Perez, 23, who was wearing a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt and selling flowers in a market near Leon's house, called the deaths "a horrible tragedy." But he
also said he was saving up the $2,000 he needed to pay a smuggler to get him to Texas. He said he worked morning to night for $12 a day and that wages in the
United States were too attractive to ignore, despite the risks.

"There's just no work here," he said.

Elizabeth Castillo, who works in a bakery a few doors down, agreed. "It's terrible to think that happened to someone from right here in our community," she said.
"But people here don't have work and they can never save enough to have their own house. If you're going to improve your life, you have to go to the United
States."

Five other illegal immigrants in the trailer were from Pozos, a community of 2,100 people in Guanajuato state, farther to the northwest. Two of them were brothers,
Roberto and Serafin Rivera Gamez.

Patricio Rico Rivera, a nephew of the dead brothers, said all five were close friends. Pozos, which means wells, is a tiny village known for its well-diggers, which is
what most of the five men did for a living.

"Nobody here has been able to sleep," Rico said. "It's so painful for everyone because everyone here is so close."

The five men left town together on May 5. Rico said they each paid a smuggler $1,800 for the trip. Roberto Rivera, 24, an athletic man who liked to play soccer,
told family members to take care of his pregnant wife and their 5-year-old son. Serafin, 34, also said goodbye to his wife and two young boys that day and they left
with polleros, or smugglers, they had contacted in a nearby community, Rico said.

Serafin Rivera was the most experienced of the men, Rico said. He had spent two years packing tomatoes in Florida before returning home to see his family at
Christmas. Rico said the money he sent home had fed his family and put a new floor in their house. But when he came back to Pozos, he could not find work and
decided to head back to Florida with his brother and their friends.

"I told Roberto that I didn't want him to go -- it's too dangerous," said another family member, who asked not to be identified. "But he didn't want to hear that.
They were going to find a job there so they could have a better life. They were going to Florida because they already had friends working there. And because they
didn't have any money, their friends sent them money so they could go."

The family member said the smugglers were known to be "very violent people." He said he worried that they or their friends might "take vengeance" on anyone who
identified them.

"I'm not angry at any one of the governments," the family member said, referring to Mexico and the United States. "It's just not right that these smugglers can take
these people into such a deadly trap. I'm not angry, I'm just very sad."

Sullivan reported from Mexico City. Researcher Gabriela Martinez contributed to this report.

                                              © 2003