Coyote's Bite

As a stonemason in the village of La Huacana, west of Mexico City, Eulogio Serrano, 32. was earning 15 pesos ($1.20) a day working on the town's new school when he made up his mind to go to the U.S. and put in a season picking lettuce in

California's Imperial Valley. At first his wife would not hear of it. "You're no peon, to work in the lettuce fields," she argued. But Serrano, a short, husky Tarascan Indian, overruled her. "Imagine!" he said. "They pay 80 American cents an hour, 130 pesos a day. We can get another cow or two. In time, a bull. Dresses for you and our daughters." His vision of himself as a bountiful provider grew, and he even talked of buying a farm.

Calluses & Quotas. Serrano had no thought of becoming a wetback, a border-jumper. Instead, he wanted to be a bracero, a legal farm worker entitled to full protection of U.S. laws under the U.S.Mexican Migrant Labor Agreement. Of the two required qualifications, one came naturally for Serrano: callused hands to prove that he was a genuine farm worker.

The second requirement was not so simple: good-conduct clearance from the local town hall. Other braceros, however, provided a tip. Serrano could pester officials and wait--or he could put up a few hundred pesos to bribe the "coyote," a man with unexplained but indisputable pull among town officials. Coyote Raul Diaz readily confirmed the advice. "You pay," he said, "and you go." Serrano was bewildered and angry. "We are needed," he argued. "We are asked to go. Why should we pay?"

Ancient & Entrenched. In both Mexico City and Washington last week, top officials anxiously agreed that Serrano* and thousands like him had a point. By beefing up its border patrol, the U.S. has cut wetback border crossings drastically; deportations, which averaged 80,000 a month in the 14 months before last September, are now running at less than 10,000 a month. The immigration machinery is running smoothly enough to handle an expected record number--350,000 to 400,000--of legal migrant workers this year. The coyote and his "bite" are left as the machinery's only serious defect.

U.S. Labor Department officials are deeply concerned, and Mexico's President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines has been trying hard to get guilty officials fired and jailed. But the bite is an ancient, entrenched custom in Mexico. Serrano, for one, could not wait. With 300 pesos, a big bite out of the savings that must provide for his wife and family while he is away, he paid the coyote. Last week he crossed the border and headed, literally and figuratively, for the lettuce.

* Whose name, to head off reprisals, has been changed in this report.

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