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 Editorials | Issues | January 2008 
Newspaper Finds Bleak Conditions in Village
 The Cincinnati Enquirer
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Family members of four Mexican laborers who were stabbed to death in their suburban Cincinnati apartment last month say they came to Ohio illegally to find jobs and to send money home to Mexico.
Life in the village of Villa de Ramos is meager. Villagers estimate that 70 percent of the able-bodied men slip across the border to work in the U.S.
Brothers Manuel Davila Duenas, 31, and Jose de Jesus Davila Duenas, 21; Lino Guardado Davila, 45; and Conrado Lopez Guardado, 21, worked as bricklayers and stonemasons in the Cincinnati area.
They were found stabbed to death Dec. 13 in their sparsely furnished apartment in Sharonville. They had been dead more than a week, and had no identification, officials said.
The Cincinnati Enquirer sent a reporter and a photographer to Mexico to find out more about the village they had left, and what drove them to huddle in their apartment, seldom leaving except for work.
"There are no opportunities to get jobs. That is why they leave," Martina Lopez Davila, whose husband, Lino, was slain, told the Enquirer for a story published Sunday.
Conrado Lopez Guardado had hoped to build his grandmother a four-room, cement-block house. His uncle, Lino, was saving to put indoor plumbing in the home of his wife and two little boys.
Jose de Jesus Davila Duenas planned to surprise his family with a truck and a visit at Christmas.
Men who leave the village do so much as men have for decades. They make their way to the Rio Grande, sometimes paying someone who facilitates a ride, and cross the river to meet someone on the other side who will lead them north, to jobs.
Amador de la Rosa Nunez, 68, who made the trek many years ago, said the cost then was $50 to get across the Rio Grande and another $350 to get through checkpoints. Now the fee can be $1,600 to $2,500, he said.
Jose de Jesus left home at 15 and hadn't been back in the six years since. But he called daily, chatting about life in America. He constantly feared being discovered and deported, and said the men rarely ventured from their apartment.
Many of the men who cross the border from the northern Mexico state of San Luis Potosi for jobs send money home to build houses, and that creates jobs for a few those who stay behind. The men who stack the concrete blocks and slather the cement can earn 100 pesos - about $9.25 a day.
Villagers with relatives doing well in the U.S. will spend money for extras such a hard floor, plumbing and indoor kitchens. About one-third of villagers do not have working toilets.
Villagers say most of the men who leave would rather stay home with family.
"If there were work here, people wouldn't go," said Maria Socorro Garcia de la Cruz. Six of her seven children are living in the United States.
"It's very hard here," she said. "You could sell beans and corn, but now there is nothing because it doesn't rain."
Delores Davila Muenoz, 46, shares her two-room concrete house with 10 people, mostly her daughters and the wives and children of her three sons who are in Tennessee and Texas.
Before her husband left for the United States, there was just one concrete room. The second was added with money her family sent home.
Since the Sharonville killings, Delores worries more.
"Now, I cry day and night to have them back," she said.
Police in Sharonville say their investigation is progressing, but they decline to say if they have any solid leads. There have been no arrests.
Information from: The Cincinnati Enquirer, http://www.enquirer.com |
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