David Covey

Hilario Ortiz: “We each have to pay two dollars a month to the union and five dollars a month to the government for our permits.”

Sunday night. Dusk. The San Ysidro border crossing car lines moving like slow, methodical worms whose rubber feet advance one at a time, undulating. From where I'm standing, behind the arched emigration office — Mexico’s answer to America’s behemoth port of entry — the lines look eternal; no start, no finish. Brake lights blink in the flow forward, and looking northwest through the red tail lights and rising heat waves and into the last flash of sunset, the sea of cars becomes a cooling river of lava, glowing, eddying around the edges, spurting harmful gasses, throwing off heat, oozing ahead.

Nestor Moran: "I’ve got five men working for me, painting. Next door is die paint shop.”

David Covey

Between the rows of cars troops a small army of vendors whose caches of merchandise I'm standing amidst. They amble along cradling the latest Mexican handicrafts — plaster Buddhas, elephants. Last Suppers, pots, helmeted skulls, baby banks, burro banks, piggy banks, doggy banks — items most San Diegans have seen many times and either scoffed at, ignored, or. yes. bought.

Manuel Hernandez: "We worked out a deal with the government limiting the number of permits to fifty at the border."

David Covey

And there's more: purses, framed Last Suppers, velvet paintings, and hats. The men come back to their stockpiles empty-handed, the wad in their pockets a little fatter, and pick up two or three items out of the neat rows of statues or pictures or pots. They may stop to talk for a minute before getting back to work, or maybe eat a hamburguesa from the little stand that’s just been wheeled up, and then they’re back into the cars, giving their silent sales pitch, holding up a day-glow-colored Madonna, arching the eyebrows, shuffling toward your side of the car in search of a sign of interest.

Zepedas: "It’s fun, but sometimes we have to work too late.”

David Covey

Moving among the little piles of goods, I hunt for someone who speaks English. Each new encounter begins with the Mexican’s urging, and my declining, the purchase of some objet.

"The Buddhitas? Those are for a customer in Texas. He wants 500 in this new color."

David Covey

After the purpose of my mission is understood, the salesman drops his role, shrugs at our inability to communicate, and calls over a friend who speaks poquito English. The cycle repeats itself; another friend is called over. I shake hands with Hilario Ortiz, an impeccably dressed man of about forty. The graying sideburns stand out in relief against his brown face, the color of a well-oiled catcher’s mitt.

David Covey

He looks at me in benign suspicion as I talk, a suspicion that fades slowly from his features, the features of a face that surely is the father of many smaller faces, copper and shining.

“We are all members of the union,” he says in halting English, and the four other men who have gathered around nod their heads in agreement. He explains that the union, CTM, Confederation Trabajadores Mexicanos, is the parent organization of the smaller Vendadores Ambulares de Frontera International, the Mobile Vendors of the International Border.

“There are ninety men in the union,” he says, gesturing out over the sea of cars. Wandering heads can be seen moving among the vinyl tops. “We each have to pay two dollars a month to the union and five dollars a month to the government for our permits.” Hilario reaches into his hip pocket and produces his wallet. The other four men and I crowd in to see what he’s showing. He points to a plastic card with his picture on it identifying him as a union member. We all nod, they looking at me, me looking at the card. He puts it away.

“We all make everything we sell. Everything. In molds. Then we paint them and sell them.” He points up the hill behind us. “From factories like that one.”

In the descending darkness I can see formations of urns and elephants on the roofs of several small buildings squatting on an eroded, garbage-ridden hill.

“I have three men working for me in the factory,” he says, projecting the cool confidence of the businessman. “There are about 500 people working in small factories all over Tijuana. ” In the lull caused by my surprise at the story unfolding here and subsequent contemplation of the level of enterprise in Tijuana, Hilario excuses himself to return to work. He grabs a statue of Mary by the head, places an orange elephant under his arm, and melts into the cars. The small crowd disperses.

I’m reminded of the time I pulled into a parking place in downtown Ensenada and a boy appeared from nowhere as I stared at the parking meter, wondering what to put in it. He quickly produced a peso, pointing urgently at his chest and the coin, and dropped it into the proper slot. He proceeded to turn the crank, place a well-aimed smack into the glass face of the meter, turn the crank again, smack it again, turn the crank, until I had a full two hours of parking time. This was his industry, his little bit of service, and his fee was negotiable. I contributed fifty cents.

Economics is on my mind, then, as I sit on the curb, taking notes. I notice a vendador come out of the lines, walking briskly. One eyebrow rises and he starts whistling distractedly as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a roll of bills and counts them, licking his thumb every five bills. In a few minutes he is heading back out with two armfuls of purses, which sprout like leather wings from his flanks. I intercept his course. He is well dressed, with slicked-back hair, finely trimmed, and a mustache clipped precisely into a crescent moon over his mouth. As I approach him a band of kids who have been playing among the goods rushes up behind me.

“Senor, are you going to sell all of those tonight?” He must be carrying thirty purses. He looks at me in surprise.

“Si,” he says as if I’d asked a dumb question. The boys around us giggle and frolic. We both ignore them.

“For how much?”

He shrugs. “Ten, eleven, six dollars each. I make them myself,” he says. The kids distract me so I finally turn around to see what they’re doing. One has a forefinger and thumb encircling his eye, cranking an imaginary camera and laughing. Another holds a rolled-up piece of newspaper, a microphone. He shoves it into my face saying, “Hable. hable” (Speak, speak). Their mimicry puts my role in perspective.

“How much do they cost you to make?” I ask the man with the purses. We’re both forcing ourselves not to laugh.

"Four-fifty apiece for one hundred.”

“And how many do you sell in a week?” “Three hundred maybe, sometimes more. Please excuse me.”

He walks into the captive audience of prospective buyers. I swing my notebook at the cameraman and the film crew scatters, laughing like hyenas.

Sitting back down on the curb, the ambiance of the place begins to settle on me. Commerce is in the air, all wrapped up with the carbon monoxide. An hour before, I naively assumed these vendors were desperately poor, turning to the sale of souvenirs and trinkets as a last resort. Now it’s clear that they are relatively prosperous. As long as the gringo keeps coming they’ve got a permit to make money.

“Sometimes you sell, make money; sometimes you don’t sell, make no money,” says Manuel Hernandez, sixty, who is standing near the hamburguesa stand. He isn’t selling tonight because earlier in the day he sold all his merchandise wholesale to a man from San Jose. Hernandez speaks excellent English, but one man in the crowd around us insists on translating all my questions and comments into Spanish for him. The man earlier claimed he couldn't speak English.

“I’ve been a vendador for twenty-five years,” says Manuel, who obviously holds a position of eminence among his colleagues. He looks about forty-five, with graying hair and gentle black eyes. He sports a red flannel shirt, blue plaid pants, and alligator shoes.

“About fifteen years ago we worked out a deal with the government about limiting the number of permits to fifty at the border." There are forty-three more permits issued to the men who must stay behind the overpass about a half mile from the border crossing, Manuel says, and fifty more issued for the downtown area.

"What happens when a permit holder dies?”

“It goes to his son or his brother. The permits have been held in the families for years.”

“How much money do you make doing this?” My question is translated into Spanish and I realize now more for the benefit of the six or eight men gathered around us than for Manuel.

“Oh, on a good weekend a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars. That’s during the summer. Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas time. Winter time is bad. The rains have hurt us.”

“What about the molds? Where do they come from?”

The crowd huddles as the question is translated. Heads nod, eyes turn to Manuel. He lights a cigarette and takes a long draw.

“We make molds from designs we buy from Mexico City and the United States. Mostly the United States. We change them, add new ones about every two months.”

I ask him if he likes his work and the question surprises him. He blushes and smiles, as if it never occurred to him to think about it.

“I like it,” he finally says, looking at one alIigator zapato. "Some people try to get over to the United States two or three times, find no work and get brought back.” He eyes me for signs of disapproval. “They finally give up. End up working in one of the factories.” The answer is ambiguous but I can’t pursue it because another man has walked up to the group and evidently he’s important.

“This is our president,” says Manuel. We shake hands. He stares suspiciously at the inquiring gringo. His name is Manuel also.

“What are the duties of the president?” I ask Hernandez, holding my gaze on the union leader.

“He makes sure the area is clean, that the men are well groomed, their shoes shined, their clothes not dirty.” The president is still looking at me as if he’s not sure I should be writing down these things. “He also goes to court once a month to pay our fees and renew our permits.” The president moves on and the group closes around us again.

“Manuel, what does the union do for you? Are there medical benefits or anything?”

“No, but if we have to go to court they will give us a lawyer.”

“That’s all?”

"Si. They will defend us in court.”

The specter of a malevolent government looms over us. Access to a lawyer. I’m assured, is a valuable privilege.

Manuel smokes, staring out into the steady stream of cars inching by. I mention my desire to tour the factory up on the hill and he agrees to meet me there tomorrow at three o’clock. We both watch the red tail lights blinking, flashing. The ragged ends of the lines are now in front of us. Vendadores are starting to return.

“Manana, amigo?” I offer my hand.

The route up to the factory is along the first road on the Mexican side of the border, behind the new electronic billboard. The street is lined with pastel buildings, clumped like scoops of sherbet next to shattered sidewalks. Some of the buildings are occupied by small businesses, others lie vacant. A shell of a foundation acts as a garbage dump on the right; next to it sits a house and then a grocery. An alley alongside the store, segmented by the slanting afternoon sunlight, leads back toward the factory. From the street I can see a sturdy wooden workshop, a dark, cool doorway with two men inside, and a ladder, weathered but strong, leading up to the roof where dazzling white plaster statues bake in the warm sun. Two men leaning against an old green pickup near the mouth of the alley stop talking and watch me turn in and walk to the open doorway. I am standing in a narrow walkway running perpendicular to the alley. Small workshops, seven or eight of them, line both sides. All are within forty paces of the one in front of me. Two men are busy ladling black paint over statues of cobras; they scoop at the liquid with de-bottomed Clorox bottles. On a second-story veranda, serviced by another ladder, a woman sits amid plaster plaques, painting leisurely.

“Hello, senor,” a man calls from inside the workshop before me.

“Is Manuel Hernandez around?” I ask.

“No, he was here earlier but he left.”

I explain my business while stepping down into the shop. Heavy beams brace the ceiling, forcing me to stoop four times before reaching the man. He tells me his name is Nestor Moran, and that I should feel free to walk around. He is twenty-eight, with an unshaven face and astute eyes. A shop coat that must have been white at one time wraps his ample belly, disproportionately large for the leanness of his face and neck. We warm to each other quickly and he insists on demonstration.

“Watch,” he says, setting to work on a four-foot high, fiber glass-encased mold which is standing on his workbench. He loosens four inner tube bands that are holding the four sections of the fiber glass shell together, then pries off each, revealing an indistinct shape. "It takes a lot of finishing, eh?” I ask.

He laughs. “No, no. This is the latex mold. The statue is inside.” He begins to open up the two halves of the rubber mold, grinning to himself. Inside waits a nearly perfect conquistador. As the rubber is removed he turns the statue toward me. Little clouds of steam rise from it, shafting the light which enters the window beside the workbench. Nestor beams as I marvel at the statue, which now needs only minor finishing touches.

“This is the first one with this new mold,” he says, admiring his work, satisfied. “Now it will go up on the roof to dry in the sun. It takes two days. Let me show you how I do this from the beginning.”

Nestor steps over to the other wall ..which is lined with fiberglass-shelled molds, stacked to the ceiling. They, like everything else in the small room, are covered with a layer of plaster dust. He roots through his molds and we talk. “Do you own the shop?”

“Si. I’ve got five men working for me, painting. Next door is die paint shop.”

“How much do they make?”

“Seven dollars a day."

Along the windowsill I notice newspaper photos of most of the San Diego Padres, interspersed with shots of nude women. “How many shops are in this factory?” “Oh, six or eight. Families work them. A lot of people live here.”

“Do you live here?”

Nestor finds the small mold he's been looking for and walks back over to the workbench. “No,” he says, searching my face for my thoughts. "Ten people live over there (pointing to the building to the west), twelve live across over there, ten next door, many more.” His eyes are steady on mine, checking reaction.

“You mean thirty or forty people live here?” “Oh, more. Maybe sixty. Now watch.” Nestor scoops some powdered plaster into a dilapidated green bucket then adds some water from a fifty-five-gallon drum beside the bench. He mixes the plaster with a stick, quickly, with sure movements, then pours it into a hole in the bottom of the mold.

“Now you have to shake it,” he says, lifting the mold and rolling it around in his hands, coating the inside walls with the plaster. “I’ve got my two-year-old son doing the shaking already,” he boasts.

“The business will go to him?”

“Si, maybe. I got it from my brother. The permit stays in the family.”

He sets the mold down and mixes more plaster.

“I do it twice,” he says, “to make the statue strong.” He pours the mixture into the mold and shakes it again.

“How much do you sell these for?” “Different prices. That one (the conquistador) is five dollars. This one is eighty cents.” He sets the mold down on the bench. “It takes five minutes to dry.”

“It looks like fun. How many do you make in a day?”

Nestor shrugs. “About fifty.”

"Do you sell them on the streets yourself?’ ’ “Si. But mostly to vendors.”

“Where do you get your molds?”

“I make them,” he says proudly. “We buy the fiber glass and latex in the United States. Also the designs. If I see a design I like, I buy it, make a mold from it.” He pokes a finger into the hole. “It’s getting warm now, almost ready.”

Nestor begins to remove the fiber glass shell. He lays it aside and starts peeling off the one-piece mold, ending up with it inside out. A droopy-faced basset hound sits before us, steam wafting up from it. We both admire it, Nestor proud of his craftsmanship. An idea occurs to him.

"You want bank? I give you bank.” He grabs the dog and a rusted knife and scores a line long enough for a fifty-cent piece. He pokes through the soft plaster, gingerly handling the statue like a hollow egg.

"We make a lot of banks,” he says, putting the dog back down. "You want to talk to someone else?”

"Si,” I say, eager to get back out into the light.

"Go next door, talk to Naty."

Outside, the two men are still painting the cobras. Somewhere a radio is crackling with Rod Stewart. "I love you honeyyyy!” screeches one of the men. We all laugh.

The narrow alleyway is more alive now, with cavorting kids and scolding mothers passing amid the silent, waiting statues. Open black doorways frame workshops, paint shops, or bedrooms. Naty Zepeda's little workshop is on the second floor of the building next to Nestor's. A ladder leads up to a breezy veranda buried in plaster statues as colorful as Easter pinwheels. Naty is a short, brown, handsome woman, 28, with a front tooth framed in silver. Her father, Felipe, is the only man in town who will make a plaster statue of anything a client wants. She says he’ll even do it from a picture of the object. He’ll also make a cast of your face.

“We sell mostly wholesale,” she says, leading me into her small paint shop, which is illuminated by a single bulb dangling over her head. “We have customers from Washington, Texas, San Jose, Sacramento, all over.”

I notice she has been working on small Buddhas painted in phosphorescent colors. “I haven’t seen those colors before.”

"The Buddhitas? Those are for a customer in Texas. He wants 500 in this new color. Each place here has different customers, different prices, different things.”

“How much do you make here?”

“In money?”

"Si.”

"In a good month, oh . . ,” she purses her lips, squints her dark eyes, "... two thousand dollars, and . . . ,” my gasps intemipt her, “. . . and a bad month, seven or eight hundred dollars.”

Naty goes on to say that some days, three, maybe four times a year, the shop turns $350 to $400 a day, selling wholesale.

“Where do you live?” I ask, envisioning a modest little mansion above the Tijuana Country Club.

“Right here,” she says, gesturing to the floor. “My sisters, cousin, brother, father, and mother all live on the bottom floor. My father built this section up here ten years ago.”

I ask her if she likes her work.

“Si. It’s fun, but sometimes we have to work too late.”

The conversation meanders — language, politics, families — and soon I’m descending the ladder, getting a peek at a multicolored, flapping clothesline to the left of Naty’s house/workshop. A phone rings back inside a room and Nestor comes running from his shop, bounding for it. He smiles broadly as he whirls by.

Out toward the street, near the first workshop on the alley, two men are swaying, swigging from a tequila bottle, and laughing. Inside the shop, three other men are busy molding huge frogs and elephants, bantering with the drinkers. As I approach, the bottle is offered to me; the gesture is the only link left between strangers from different countries who can’t speak each other’s language. I take a slug, feeling the liquid warm and sharp, spreading softly around my stomach. The talk is primitive. The bottle comes around again. Another pull, another glow, like a squeeze from a blacksmith’s bellows. The elephants and frogs, the cobras and crosses and Last Suppers begin to fit more snugly into place. I feel the presence of little munchkins, who must surely slip in at night and do the bulk of the work. Declining another share of the bottle, I turn to go.

Back at the border crossing, the lines of cars are stringing out and the vendadores are starting to work them. The pace of the traffic is slowing to a crawl. A late-model blue van pulls up under the archway. Out of it climbs a beautiful young Mexican woman. Middle-aged men unload their wares from the back of the van, joking, laughing. My body stoked and fervid with tequila embers, the sight assumes profound proportions, as if there is something hugely ironic and significant in poor people unloading the cheap and colorful fruits of their labor from a new and expensive symbol of American prosperity, to turn around and sell them to Americans in similar vehicles. 1 start to laugh along with the vendadores as I walk toward the border. Slowly, their voices fade behind me into the lengthening shadows.