Illegal immigrant labor: Antonio: a Border Memoir

One day I asked Ignacio if he knew anyone who could build a wall around my house and stucco both. He replied that his brother, Antonio, was a master mason and looking for work. I trusted Ignacio completely because he was a superbly skilled woodworker who was in my employ, and I knew from experience that he understood what he was talking about when he referred to someone in the building trades as a "master." Ignacio arranged for me to meet his brother after work to discuss the job and what I might pay him.

Antonio was a chubby Mexican with a copper skin, a straw cowboy hat, a white western style shirt and a bright, kind smile. He looked to be in his mid-fifties although it was hard to tell.....he might have been ten years older. He was a bit slow moving a fact which concerned me and I discussed later with Ignacio. Ignacio assured me that Antonio knew how to work and get the job done.

My wife and I had purchased a house in central Tucson that was made of red brick with a territorial design but didn't have quite the look we wanted because it was painted rather than stuccoed and did not have a wall around the lot that was characteristic of many adobe-style southwestern homes . Antonio surveyed the work. To stucco the house so that the stucco would adhere properly, he would have to do extra work to prepare the surface. The wall was more straightforward and could be made of cinder block and stuccoed so that it would have the look of an old adobe wall. We also wanted a walk from the front gate to the front door made of Saltillo tile, another trade that seemed to present no problem to Antonio. I agreed to provide all the materials and pay him the same hourly rate that I paid his brother which was top dollar for a skilled tradesman at the time. Antonio would provide his own tools which really only amounted to a wheelbarrow in which to mix the stucco, a shovel, trowels and a hammer with a pick instead of a claw.

As promised, Antonio was on the job as I went off to work the next morning. He started preparing the painted brick house by chipping little indentations in the surface that looked like a bullet had struck the wall. They were spaced about a foot apart. By the time I had finished my workday and returned home, Antonio had done most of his chipping all over the house and it looked like it had been shot up in a war except that the pattern was more orderly. We cheerfully shared a beer as he was cleaning up his tools and I introduced him to my wife and my little daughter who was about four years old. Antonio had lived most of his life in Nogales, Mexico but had worked in the United States doing construction work in the status of what some Americans like to call an "illegal alien," a term I find offensive because it makes it sound as if he were an inter-galactic criminal from another planet. My wife, a fine judge of character, immediately approved of Antonio, and my daughter who thought all adults were just overgrown playmates soon was trailing him about as he worked. No doubt he was slowed down a bit by her enthusiasm but he seemed to be glad of her company. She jabbered away at him in English even though he spoke only Spanish. He smiled and returned her compliments in Spanish as if he understood exactly what she was saying.

Antonio labored for two or three weeks building the wall, plastering with a beautiful, ivory stucco, and laying the tile from the gate to the front door. Like many such skilled tradesmen from Mexico, they don't look like they would be particularly productive, but the absolute contrary was true. Antonio never looked like he was in a hurry, but somehow the work always proceeded at a faster pace than I had hoped was possible. I would arrive home after working a long day myself to be greeted by the pleasant reassurance that Antonio had been busy. My daughter was completely infatuated with him, and my wife was also beaming. The cold beer would be at hand and Antonio and I would sit down and talk.

They were halcyon days. When Antonio was finished the house seemed to have a new integrity and the look that nothing but skilled hand plastering can achieve. I had become so fond of Antonio that I almost regretted when the job was done. There is, however, a regrettable ending to this story that is yet to be told.

Some time after Antonio had finished the work on our house, I asked his brother, Ignacio what Antonio was up to now. He told me that Antonio wasn't feeling well, something to do with his stomach. Ignacio didn't seem overly concerned but over the next few weeks it turned out that not only was Antonio ill, he was riddled with cancer and died quickly. We were very sad, and I asked Ignacio about what he thought was the cause of Antonio's illness. He told me that Antonio was fond of a border, folk-remedy for arthritis of rubbing the oil from broken power transformer canisters on his aching joints. Transformers contain PCB oils that are among the most carcinogenic compounds known to science.