By José Dominguez, June 11, 2020 — Well, I have a little essay about when I was related to a situation when I was in Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, but I have to speak about the concepts [first]. I am reading three words that we have to understand the name. Perhaps you know a word that is “coyote” — a coyote is the person that smuggles persons illegally to the states. A “pasador” is a person that smuggles American goods to Mexico, so a lot of merchants hired pasadors to bring American merchants to Mexico without paying taxes. Another word is bridge. A bridge between Mexico and the United States is that part of the territory that is in between the two countries. In those times, most of the bridge was no man territory. You could find in almost 70% of the bridge people trying to make a living, among them many children selling small goods or souvenirs. There are several legal entries in the vicinity of Ciudad Juarez. The one mentioned is in the middle of the downtown area and it consists of a huge arch. If you are at the beginning of it on the Mexican side you can’t see the opposite American side because of the curve of the arch.
In 1967, there was a prohibition of Chinese goods. I do not know why. You were allowed to bring in Taiwanese merchandise, but the government prohibited Chinese merchandise. If you tried to evade [the rule] and they discovered Chinese merchandise in the car [or if you tried] to smuggle it, you would have to pay thousands and thousands of dollars. So, my story.
I had written before, my wife and I used to have a little store in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and that store we sold a large variety of products: pants, shirts, underwear, etc. These stories are related to some dozens of men’s shirts. Living on the border of the United States, we consumed generally more American goods than Mexican goods. Any kind of American merchandise, we preferred it, so we bought it legally at American stores by crossing the border or illegally, by the popular markets or street stores. Thousands of businesses survived by selling the smuggled goods. When the amount of the merchandise introduced to Mexico was viewed as very important, we hired the services of a pasador, who was in charge of passing the goods through the border.
Well, one summer day, my wife received from the pasador, among other things, about ten dozens of men’s shirts that she asked by telephone of an American store owner, owned by a Chinese lady at El Paso, Texas. As soon as she inspected the shirts, she was disappointed. The color was wrong. So she told me, “Pepe, take these shirts back to the United States. I received the order but I was confident to solve any problem.”
So, I took the downtown bridge and drove my old Buick with the shirts stuck in a big box. When I arrived at the presence of the immigration sheriff, the officer in charge did not allow me to show my papers. He just told me, “You are going back around.” By that order, I tried to explain that my merchandise was bought in American stores and that I have the phone number in case they want to ship. He answered, “I’m not going to phone no one. You are going back to Mexico. Now turn and go back.” I was calculating the Mexican customs would charge me at least $10,000 because most of the shirts were Chinese. I had to make a quick decision because as soon as I descended the bridge, the Mexican would scour my car.
I started the car and saw around me a group of children trying to sell candies, newspapers, etc., and started to categorize the shirts by country of provenance. A dozen were Chinese and two dozen were Taiwanese. I called the boys around me and started to distribute the shirts. They were very happy and I was relieved from a certain catastrophic view. At that moment, I hear a guy laughing and mocking me — it was the pasador who was returning to Mexico and he told me, “Oh, I worked so hard to deliver the merchandise and you are giving away all that stuff!” I drove through Mexican customs and they asked me immediately, “Why do you return?”
“Because I tried to [bring] across some shirts,” I answered.
“Where are they from?”
“From Taiwan.”
After looking at my stuff, they told me, “Give us $50 and you can go.” So I did it, and that’s the end of this story.