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 News from Around the Americas | December 2006 
Smugglers Trade in Dreams
 Liz Mineo - GateHouse Media
Governador Valadares, Brazil - Eighteen years after his mother made the pilgrimage to the United States in search of work, Carlos Leite followed in her steps across the U.S.-Mexico border.
Like his mother, Leite, 27, contacted a smuggler in this city famous across Brazil for exporting Brazilians abroad. Unlike his mother, who at age 43 swam across the Rio Grande to make it to the land of her dreams, Leite crossed the border two years ago, hidden in a truck with 11 other Brazilians.
And unlike his mother, who worked for 13 years in the States, Leite was deported after two years of toiling as a painter and carpenter in Milford, Everett and Malden.
For both mother and son, who were interviewed this summer in the house she built with money she saved cleaning houses in Florida and Baltimore, the journey to the land of opportunity started in the backroom of a travel agency in this tropical city in southeastern Brazil.
Like many in this city, considered by local authorities a hotspot of illegal immigration, the Leites spoke to a man who knows a man who knows a man. These days, that man, the human smuggler, is known as "consul," an ironic reference to the role they play in sending people abroad - albeit illegally.
"They do the job of U.S. consuls," said a man who identified himself as Josh Santos and said he is close to local smugglers. "The difference is that the U.S. Consulate will likely deny you the visa, but the other ones will send you to the United States."
Border "Tour" Packages
According to several accounts in Valadares, smugglers here operate almost like a travel agency offering "packages," and door-to-door "delivery." Local authorities said 40 smuggling organizations have set up shop in Valadares.
The package, which costs $10,000 to $12,000, includes a bus trip from Valadares to Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro, a flight to Mexico City, guides to cross the Mexican border and rides in vans across several Southwestern states that end at the doorsteps of apartments in Massachusetts and elsewhere. With the new visa requirement for Brazilians entering into Mexico, now the illegal journey includes a stop in Guatemala, from which they sneak into Mexican territory.
"They deliver you to Framingham or anywhere in the United States, almost like UPS or Federal Express," said Santos at his home in a well-to-do neighborhood in the outskirts of Valadares. "It's almost like a personal delivery."
Most of the time, people sell houses or cars to get the money or offer them as collateral. Leite sold a motorcycle, his mother's car and borrowed money from two uncles to pay $10,000 to the smuggler who took him across the border.
These days, smugglers don't ask for money in advance. Consuls finance the trip, and once the immigrants-to-be arrive in the United States, they have to pay the full amount with 3 to 5 percent interest per month. It takes one to two years to pay off the debt.
The payment is done in Brazil by the families once they hear back from their loved ones they have made it safely across the border.
Most consuls work with "agenciadores," or fixers, who recruit people wanting to work in the United States. They receive $500 for each recruit.
Sometimes, smugglers work with travel agencies as fronts. In Valadares, a city that boasts 40 travel agencies even though it doesn't attract as many tourists as Rio or Sao Paulo, its involvement in the smuggling operation is conspicuous. In 2000, an official from the U.S. Consulate in Rio de Janeiro met with several owners of those travel agencies and warned them to keep out of the smuggling business.
"She said she had nothing against Valadares," said Francisco Luiz Texeira, who owns the city's oldest travel agency. "She spoke in general terms of the dangers of getting involved in the smuggling business."
According to local authorities and experts, Valadares has more than 10 percent of its population living abroad, and its natives are known in Brazil as the pioneers of migration to the United States. Valadares natives came in large numbers to New England in the 1980s and the 1990s, and have built an enclave in Framingham and MetroWest.
Big money
A Brazilian congressional report said the human smuggling industry in Brazil makes $100 million per year, and though it started in Valadares, it has expanded across Brazil.
Smuggling has thrived in Brazil as the country continues to suffer from growing unemployment and poverty. For many in Valadares, coming to the United States remains the only way to move up the economic ladder.
"Look, as long as people see the results of immigration in their own city, the big houses, the businesses, the cars, they're going to want to come," Santos said. "They're going to come one way or the other, and someone has to be the consul. Someone has to do that job."
And a profitable job it is.
Smugglers pick up half of the tab as profit, said Santos. The other half is spent in hotels and on transportation, processing fraudulent documents, safe houses, bribes and the Mexican smugglers known as "coyotes."
According to the report, at its busiest times, smugglers were sending about 50 people a day to the United States via Mexico. In fiscal year 2005, more than 30,000 Brazilians were arrested by U.S. Border Patrol agents.
Sometimes, the journey goes wrong. Dozens of people in Valadares have died in the perilous trek across the desert but that doesn't deter people here. One such story is that of Gilmar Alves dos Santos, who left Valadares to cross the border in July 2002 and was found dead more than a year later in the Arizona desert. Dos Santos was a well-known salesman for a store that sells construction materials in downtown Valadares.
"Every person in Valadares has the dream of going abroad," said dos Santos' brother Judex, 37, who works at the same store where Gilmar used to work.
Dos Santos sold a house and a motorcycle to pay the smuggler, who returned them both to his family after the deal went wrong.
Most people here view smugglers as people who are helping Brazilians achieve a better life. Many blame the Brazilian government and its politicians for forcing them to go overseas in search of jobs and good salaries they cannot find in their homeland.
Shadowy business
Most smugglers are not willing to talk about their deals publicly, but it's no secret in Valadares who they are and how they can be contacted.
Santos, 40, who spoke about smuggling based on his friendships with several people who have been dispatching Brazilians overseas, agreed to be photographed without showing his face for fear of retribution.
At his home office, Santos sat behind his desk, flanked by the American and the Brazilian flags. A brown plaque with the name "Josh-Connecticut" rested on his desk sharing space with a Sony laptop equipped with a Web cam and headphones. In one corner of the room there was a big blue safe with a combination lock, looking like just another piece of furniture.
A well-groomed man with manicured nails, Santos said he used a smuggler 20 years ago, when he emigrated to the United States. He lived mostly in Danbury, Connecticut for 18 years until he returned to Valadares nearly two years ago. During the two-hour conversation with him, he spoke mostly English.
Santos plans to come back to the United States, but not to Danbury, because "there are too many Brazilians there." He plans to cross the border with five other people, without using a smuggler, sometime in the spring. He said he knows the way.
As for Leite, the man who was deported this summer, he doesn't plan to come to the United States for a while. These days, he tends his mother's small grocery store she has set up in the first floor of the modest house in a poor neighborhood in Valadares.
His mother, Hilda Leite, 63, is thrilled to have her son back. As someone who crossed the border and worked in the United States as an illegal immigrant, she knows firsthand the risks of dying in the desert or living in the shadows.
"I never wanted him to do the same thing I did," she said. "I didn't want to lose a son, but there was no way to make him change his mind. It's good to have him here with me."
His unexpected return has left Leite depressed, frustrated and sort of lost. He wants to forget his life in the United States, where he made money but felt lonely, but it isn't easy.
"The other day, I dreamed I was in my bed at the house where I lived in the United States," he said, his eyes filled with tears, his lips pressed together. "I woke up, and for a moment, I didn't know where I was."
Daily News staff writer Liz Mineo, who conducted many of the interviews for this series in Portuguese, traveled to Brazil this summer on a World Affairs Journalism Fellowship from the International Center for Journalists. Liz Mineo can be reached at 508-626-3825 or lmineo@cnc.com |
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