Mexicans learn of perils from book-inspired novella, vividly real tales

By RICARDO SANDOVAL / The Dallas Morning News

MEXICO CITY – After listening to the first harrowing episodes of the radio soap opera Tortillas Duras, Maribel Trejo was so shaken by the experience of the
fictional migrants that she swore off following her family, neighbors and friends who have gone to the United States.

Leonardo Gómez, an artisan in the Indian village of Bondho, in rural Hidalgo state, also heard those shows. He felt compelled to offer his experiences so others who
make the journey north can be better prepared than he was.

Those were the reactions Enrique Romero was hoping for when he converted his professional diary into the book Tortillas Duras: Ni Pa' Frijoles Alcanza –
which roughly translates to "hard tortillas, not even good enough for beans."

Book caught fire

The title is a play on a Mexican phrase describing bad luck, and Mr. Romero saw many a Mexican migrant engulfed by hard times when he served as a Mexican
consular bureaucrat in California and Florida.

After he spent $10,000 to publish the book on his own, it sold out in six months, and his bosses in Mexico's Foreign Ministry took notice. They liked Mr. Romero's
message so much that they converted his cautionary tales about migrant life into a dramatic radio series that has won praise from migrants and would-be migrants in
test airings in Hidalgo state.

The show is midway through a trial run on some California stations affiliated with the Radio Bilingue network. Of the 11 Texas stations affiliated with Radio Bilingue,
one – KCTM-FM in Rio Grande City – is running the radio show. Others in Texas may follow this year, said Hugo Morales, Radio Bilingue's president.

Mexican Foreign Ministry officials said they also are negotiating with other Spanish language radio stations in the Southwest for a wider airing of Tortillas Duras.

"I saw worse and worse conditions for migrants on the avenues of Los Angeles and in Orlando [Fla.], so I just started typing out these histories, based on the people
I saw and their experiences," said Mr. Romero, 44, now an official in the Mexican consular office in Ciudad Guzmán, just across the southern Mexican border in
Guatemala.

"What struck me was the rhythm of the migration to the United States: One by one they come to a new life, after selling it all in Mexico, and that's where the
deception begins."

What's attractive about the radio show, said would-be migrants who have listened in, is the authoritative voices of characters who deal with real-life threats of people
smugglers, unfamiliar health risks such as tuberculosis and AIDS, treacherous desert crossings, and even fellow migrants who've turned to confidence schemes and
prey on naïve newcomers.

Mr. Romero not only saw all of this through the eyes of a consular bureaucrat, he actually walked the walk. Mr. Romero spent much of his early life in Pacoima, in
Southern California, as a legal immigrant, and studied in American public schools before returning to Mexico for a college degree in international studies.

'I'd been in their shoes'

It was that familiarity with migrant life – and a desire to help fellow migrants – that led Mr. Romero into Mexico's diplomatic corps.

"I'd been in their shoes, and I started out thinking I would be some kind of Superman or Spiderman, dedicated to righting all the wrongs committed on migrants," Mr.
Romero said in a telephone interview. "But over time, I got more and more doses of reality – that migrant life today is more difficult than it was when we moved to
Pacoima. I was frustrated that I could not do more for them."

Mr. Romero's desire to help migrants will not be wasted, said a confident Melba Pría, director of the Foreign Ministry's Institute for Mexicans Abroad, which
sponsored the book's conversion to a radio novella.

Tortillas Duras marks the first time the Mexican government has delved into the world of popular soap opera to reach millions of people who might be
contemplating the often dangerous and illegal journey north.

It's another in a recent string of pro-migrant decisions by the administration of President Vicente Fox, which Ms. Pría said has reversed a decades-old government
tradition of benign neglect of migrant issues.

"As a government, we must start talking about the reality of migration," Ms. Pría said. "It is a complex reality; that's what we want to relay to them, and through the
radio medium help them sort out even simple things, like where to go to have a baby."

The Foreign Ministry chose radio as the medium for Tortillas Duras because it is the cheapest and most effective communications tool in rural Mexico, where most
potential migrants live. The mountain villages of Hidalgo were selected as a test market for the radio novella because the indigenous villages have been yielding so
many new job-seeking migrants in recent years.

"There are whole families for whom this phenomenon of migration is new, and who are seeing their children end up working in cities whose names they can't even
pronounce," said Gustavo Flores, an anthropologist who doubles as program director for Radio Cardonal.

Hard, cruel lessons

Mr. Flores said listenership for Tortillas Duras has been so great that he and his volunteer staff are translating the work to the native Otomí language of the region.

After reading the book, Ms. Pría was convinced that it could help dissuade some people from going north, or at least offer them advice if they choose to ignore the
risks and go anyway.

Ms. Pría expects that because many will interpret Tortillas Duras as a public service announcement for people on the migrant trail, critics will charge the Mexican
government with fostering illegal migration to the United States.

"We want people to consider their options, but we also must recognize that people do migrate," Ms. Pría said. "So if they are going to go, we want them to consider
that they will have two legs – one in the place they are, and the other in the place they came from. We want to show them that each place has its own set of rules
people are obliged to live by."

It is those tough and cold lessons that Tortillas Duras delivers to listeners. An example is a vignette about "Tury," a migrant living in Los Angeles who almost loses
his job because he is left handling arrangements for his deceased mother, and must beg and borrow money from strangers to bury her in her native Mexico.

"There was still not enough money. Tury had only $600, and his friends didn't know where else to look for more. They figured that all that was left was to board
buses and sing for tips. But surely, they imagined, they'd end up in jail instead. They tried a radio spot, and got on the air once, but no one called to donate money.
Tury's tragedy seemed just one of the many that rose daily out of the great urban life. ... "

'I have no will to go'

For 26-year-old Maribel Trejo, those stories were too much reality.

"I don't want to have to go through that. After listening to the show, I have no will to go. I know of many who have gone, only to find no work, and now they suffer.
I know of others who went through the desert and have not been heard from since," said Ms. Trejo, who had considered following her brothers, uncles and cousins
now working in Florida and South Carolina. "I will make my future here, humble as it may be."

For Leonardo Gómez, 39, Tortillas Duras was a cold reminder of his stints as a migrant worker in California. Mr. Gómez said he's grateful that he learned a craft in
the United States – making floral bouquets for weddings and other special events.

But throughout his stay, he missed his family in the indigenous Otomí village of Bondho, in Hidalgo, and found it hard to learn enough Spanish, let alone English, to
get by in the United States. Three years ago, he returned to care for one of his children who had become seriously ill. He decided to stay, determined to make a
living through floral arrangements.

Despite his change of heart, Mr. Gómez said the radio novella has encouraged him to help others on the migrant trail – including his 17-year-old daughter, who left
for a promised job, somewhere in Texas, just before Christmas.

"It is good that the government intends to motivate people not to go to the United States, and we know we are exploited and sometimes abused there," Mr. Gómez
said. Since Tortillas Duras aired, he has volunteered his time to travel to the Texas-Mexico border to record true-life migrant stories for a radio documentary that
will accompany future episodes of the radio soap opera.

"But the reality is that it is almost impossible to get people here to listen because hunger is too strong, and because you can make more at even terrible jobs than you
can here at home, doing nothing," Mr. Gómez said.

"So how can I deny the others – including my own daughter – their urge to go? All I can do is help prepare them and pray that God looks after them."