There are so many obstacles and struggles, and it is difficult adjusting to a new language and culture. On top of all that, no one should have to worry about being the target of a crime as awful as this. (Lumicao, referring to the drowning of a Vietnamese fisherman who was pushed into Lake Michigan to his death on Sept. 1, 2007, Chicago Tribune, Sept. 9, 2007)

"The creation of the bracero program created a labor supply which, on one hand, is ready and willing to meet the short term work requirements and which, on the other hand, will not impose social and economic problems on them or on their community when the work is finished. The demand for migratory workers is essentially two-fold: to be ready to go to work when needed; to be gone when not needed."

Quoted in Kitty CALAVITA, Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration and the INS, New York: Routledge, 1992, p.21

Across The Borderline Lyrics - Ry Cooder
Ry Cooder - Across The Borderline Lyrics
(ry cooder/john hiatt/james dickinson)

There's a place where I've been told
Every street is paved with gold
And it's just across the borderline
And when it's time to take your turn
Here's one lesson that you must learn
You could lose more than you'll ever hope to find

When you reach the broken promised land
And every dream slips through your hands
Then you'll know that it's too late to change your mind
'cause you've paid the price to come so far
Just to wind up where you are
And you're still just across the borderline

Up and down the rio grande
A thousand footprints in the sand
Reveal a secret no one can define
The river flows on like a breath
In between our life and death
Tell me who's the next to cross the borderline

En la triste oscuridad (in the sad darkness)
Hoy tenemos que cruzar (today we have to cross)
Este río que nos llama más allá (this river which calls us further away)

But hope remains when pride is gone
And it keeps you moving on
Calling you across the borderline

When you reach the broken promised land
Every dream slips through your hands
And you'll know it's too late to change your mind
'cause you pay the price to come so far
Just to wind up where you are
And you're still just across the borderline
Now you're still just across the borderline
And you're still just across the borderline

Lyrics as reprinted in Pete Seeger (ed.), The Nearly Complete Collection of Woody Guthrie Folk Songs, London, 1973, pp. 24-25
© 1961 Ludlow Music, Inc.

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps2;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

CHORUS:
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?

Quotes from The Suitcase, edited by Julie Mertus, Jasmina Tesanovic, Habiba Metikos and Rada Boric.

"They blame me for having to flee, for having to abandon you all, as if I were a thief. As if I were a foreigner." "You are just imagining all that," his wife replies. "Then why," Emilio retorts, "don't they write me more often?"

Aub writes about the sense of guilt that exiles feel when having to leave their country, their famillies and loved ones.
His character, Emilio, expresses this feeling when thinking about the choice he had to make to leave his wife and children in Spain, believing that they resent his choice.

As he reflects on his decisions and its consequences, Emilio comes to doubt that fleeing his country, Spain, during the Civil War, for his political connvictions was worth the troubles he got into as well as the pain he caused.

Aub, M. 1968. Teatro completo. México, D.F.: Aguilar.

t