-Artemio Guerra
Over the holidays I watched Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey, Jr., a fine way to blow off steam after a stressful period of finals. Between the awesome fight scenes and Victorian Era pyrotechnics, I could not avoid thinking about the themes covered in the past semester of Law and Literature. Sherlock Holmes: disabled by his addiction, working outside the law. Scotland Yard: the rigid and sterile British police, begrudgingly patronizing Holmes’s genius. For Holmes, who exists outside the law, stories unfold and mysteries are solved by his obsessive attention to detail. On the other hand, Scotland Yard’s adherence to procedure always misses fundamental clues and lags behind Holmes’s quick eye and mind.
I think Sherlock Holmes is Mexican. According to recent studies about 90 percent of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. that entered the country in the past ten years are undocumented. Most Mexicans in New York are forced to live outside the law. There are complex historical and economic realities behind the issue of undocumented migration from Mexico to the U.S. and the law has never been able to address those realities. Outside the law Mexicans in New York will solve the mystery of what globalization and neo-liberalism did to the land of Moctezuma while our legal system will continue to miss the point. Working in sweatshops Mexicans turn fear and suffering into poverty wages that are split between New York and Puebla. The journey north begins in a distant village, abandoned by the Mexican government, where most men have already gone north. A relative already in the United States saves about $7,000 to pay a coyote for the crossing. After a brush with death in the dessert you are transported in a filthy truck as far away from the border as possible. Then you take domestic flight from L.A. or San Diego to Newark, La Guardia, or Kennedy and a week after the journey began you find work in a construction site, a restaurant, or a garment shop. Once in New York City to be able to afford high rents Mexican immigrants live in communes of extended family and friends and take over entire buildings with more than 10 people leaving in each floor or apartment. Most undocumented immigrants I have worked with organize “tandas” or lending circles that help workers save money to bring other relatives to the U.S. or invest the money back home. Housing advocates call these “overcrowded apartments” and our housing laws will have these building condemned but these are really complex communities with social controls established by immigrants themselves, schedules for cooking and cleaning, and a rotating leadership for collecting and accounting rent payments on a weekly basis. Undocumented immigrants will continue to live outside the law and will continue to conduct their lives and grow profound rots in the U.S. regardless of our definitions.
