The year 2006 was another big year full of family and friends, with many milestones, miles, travels and travails. Jacobo turned six, finished kindergarten and began first grade. After a five month hiatus from work and school, Ale entered the UI College of Education in May and began coursework towards a teaching certificate in secondary Spanish. I finished my second year of law school and started my final year. We celebrated Jacobo’s sixth birthday on January 15 at home with a big pot of my homemade chili and a jug of apple cider. Tom, Sue, Zac, Ryan, Liz, Mara and my friend Peter came.
Over spring break in March, we drove out to Bridgeport. On the first night, we had excellent grilled burgers at Larry and Bonnie’s, accompanied by Dan, Hillary and their boys, Nate and Noah—two of the best behaved children I have ever seen. We visited Ale’s host family in Salem—Tom and Linda, and their kids, Patrick and Rachel (Jennifer had just left town before we arrived). We had dinner at Matt and Stephanie’s with their two girls, and then we had them over for dinner at Jerry and Jacque’s house. Rocco safely piloted Ale, Jacobo and I on a moonlit Cessna flight up to Morgantown and back.
Finally, Jacobo, Jerry and I went camping for two days in a grassy field next to the airfield in St. Petersburg by a fork of the Potomac River. Jerry had a training mission for the CAP cadets, but we found time to explore Dolly Sods Wilderness Area.
Camping was chilly, but we stayed warm. After two nights, Jacobo and I left Commander Wedemeyer at the campsite with the squadron and we headed back for Bridgeport. It was a bright, sunny March day in those beautiful West Virginia mountains and bare forests. Jacobo and I stopped at Seneca Rocks and decided to hike to the top. Halfway up, along a switchback, Jacobo wanted to quit and go back down. “No,” I said, “this is important. We need to make it to the top.” We usually don’t force Jacobo to do things, and up until then, we always let him quit activities at his leisure. But I knew there was no reason we should stop. I knew he had the endurance and I wanted to teach him about perseverance. We sat on some stone CCC steps and ate a granola bar with some water. We continued onward. It became a game—we tried to catch up to the hikers on the switchback above without getting caught by the hikers on the switchback below. Soon he was even running short distances. We made it to the observation deck at the top of the trail. We gave each other high fives and hugs. We did it! Beyond the trail jutted the narrow vertical rock faces of Seneca Rocks. The sign read, “Beware: Here the hiker’s domain ends. Only skilled climbers should proceed.” So, Jacobo carefully scrambled upward over the fallen rock boulders until he reached the base of the high vertical rock slabs (he couldn’t read warning signs then). “Be careful,” I called out as I cautiously negotiated the boulders. For the descent, we took the other face of the mountain, a steep, loose gravel trail marked by blue diamonds on the trees. We slipped, jumped and slid all the way down. My legs became so tired that my knees wobbled with fatigue.
In April and May, we became active in the immigrant rights marches that swept the country. As board members of the local group, Amigos del Inmigrante , Ale and I helped organize a march in Iowa City in early April that drew 500 attendees.
A week later, we helped arrange a bus to go from Iowa City to Des Moines for the rally on April 9 that drew 6,000 people from across the state. Then on May 1, we helped organize the “Day without Immigrants” rally on the Pedestrian Mall in downtown Iowa City that drew 1,000 people. The local TV news interviewed us a couple times as a family, once at 6:00 a.m. Jacobo’s teachers and principal saw him on TV! Jacobo didn’t like the rallies very much—too boring and sunny, but he did enjoy the chants—“Si, Se Puede!” and “El Pueblo Unido, Jamas Sera Vencido!” It was an incredibly busy and inspiring couple of weeks. Later, many people called the rallies a mistake because they caused a backlash, but I saw it differently. Immigrants emerged from the shadows, took to the streets and found a voice. There was so much pent up anger at being abused, exploited and scapegoated. The people heard the bell, and the bell could not be unrung.
We spent the second summer in a row in Piedras Negras, Mexico while I interned at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid in Eagle Pass, Texas.
We made a “quick” drive back to Iowa at the end of June for Ale’s citizenship ceremony in Des Moines.
For three weeks in July, Ale, Jacobo and Cesar visited Silvestre in Elat, Israel, where he has been working for his old Mexican mining company since November 2005. 
They toured Israel—unaffected by Israel’s war with Hezbollah in the north.
Then Ale, Jacobo and Cesar spent a week in Italy.
In early August, tragedy befell Ale’s relatives in San Antonio when her cousin, Paul, was stabbed to death early one morning outside his home in a case of mistaken identity. He was survived by his young wife, who was pregnant, and their young daughter. We attended the funeral in San Antonio. Just that June, we had spent a great time with Ale’s family in San Antonio, watching the Mexico-Argentina World Cup Soccer game at Mariachi Bar where Gilberto manages. We watched the game with Paul’s parents, Hope and Daniel, with whom we are close. Our hearts went out to Hope and Daniel.
Over Labor Day weekend, we drove to Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia for a Wedemeyer family reunion to celebrate Jerry’s 60th birthday. Micah and I showed the PowerPoint photo montage, “Capturing the Cameraman,” over cake at the lodge.
While Jacobo and I explored a trail behind the cabins and made rhododendron leaf boats on a small, pebble-bottom stream with the clear-brown, tannic acid-stained “blackwater,” Ale went whitewater rafting on the Cheat River with Micah, Sarah, Jerry, Sue, Mark, Susan, Michelle, Loretta and Rebecca. Ale did not even fall into the water, though Micah and Mark took turns diving intrepidly off high rocks. On the way home, we made a quick stop at the Italian Heritage Festival in Clarksburg and had lunch with Mark, Susan and Jacque at Menards Spaghetti Inn. On the way out and back, we stopped over in West Lafayette, Indiana to visit our cousins Chris and Crissy. They took us out for a nice afternoon of “Geocaching” at the nearby Celery Bog.
In mid September, we enjoyed lunch in Solon after the Iowa vs. Iowa State football game with Sue, Tom, Mark, Susan, Lana, Greg and their two kids, Joel and Marisa. We didn’t attend the game, but nevertheless, we enjoyed the tenderloin sandwiches at Jonesy’s afterwards and then playing in the Solon park.
For Halloween, Jacobo dressed up in a last-minute costume—“Scream”—that we found at Goodwill. He terrorized North Liberty that night and then terrorized his classmates and teacher for the rest of the week. The excitement and sugar was too much for him, and we received the first bad report of the year from his teacher regarding his behavior. We really built up the suspense, and my night howling as we went door-to-door did not have a calming effect. A week before Halloween, Tammy hosted a big bonfire at her farm. Ale and Jacobo went, but I was in Austin, Texas at a convention. Jacobo rode the pony, as did Mara—bareback, no reins and no hands!
We spent the Thanksgiving break at home relaxing. We had a Turkey dinner at the Latino-Native American House on campus with about ten other students and friends on the previous weekend. On Thanksgiving Day, we enjoyed a dinner at home with our friends Mishelle and Lorraine. Blue came one day and we played Scrabble.
In December, we drove 29 hours straight to Monterrey to attend Cesar’s graduation from the Tec de Monterrey. The drive down was long and hard.
Crossing the border at Laredo was a nightmare unlike any experience we’ve ever had in Piedras Negras, though it could have been much worse. We had been to Laredo, Texas several times to visit Chris and Crissy when they lived there for a couple years after graduating from Iowa. Great visits, very pleasant. We had only been to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico once, as passengers in Silvestre’s car, just driving through in daylight bound for Piedras.
We crossed the border at midnight on International Bridge No. 1 and entered Nuevo Laredo, one of the most dangerous cities in the world with a brand new police force from out of town. The site of an ongoing cartel turf war with periods of military martial law, shoot-outs in the streets involving rocket launchers, murders, kidnappings and underground prisons run by drug lords. In 2005, the police chief resigned and the new chief was murdered hours after accepting the post and declaring he wasn’t afraid of anyone. Our original plan was to cross the border at Colombia, a small town outside of Laredo/Nuevo Laredo that is connected straight to highway to Monterrey. But we arrived too late—we needed a prepaid card to cross at Colombia after 10:00 p.m!
As we crossed the bridge over the Rio Grande and entered Nuevo Laredo, I got the green light from the Mexican customs and entered the unfamiliar city. I missed the turn-off for the boulevard to avoid the downtown. I was distracted by raggedy men waving in the street and approaching the car while I was trying to read the confusing road signs overhead. We ended up going straight through Nuevo Laredo on a tight, one-way, one-and-a-half lane street with cars parked on either side. At first there were overhead signs directing us to go straight for Monterrey. But the signs disappeared and block after block, we went deeper into Nuevo Laredo. The streets were almost deserted. I locked the doors at the first red light. We resisted the urge to make any turns, and we finally emerged from the city. We came to a dark highway overpass. Dust and fog blurred the visibility of the headlights. There was unfinished construction underneath the overpass and no clear lanes. The light was red and a group of raggedy men descended on our car. One began cleaning the driver-side windshield, the other the passenger side. The light turned green. I nervously reached for my wallet and luckily I had a couple one dollar bills. I rolled the window a couple inches and quickly thrust a dollar to each man. A third kid rushed up to the car shaking his hand for money, but I drove onward. I seemed to be heading into ongoing traffic, but by sheer intuition, I went under the overpass, dodged the construction and made a left turn for the far side of the overpass, which had to be the “on-ramp” for the highway. It was, and we reached the open road for Monterrey.
We entered a dense fog and slowed down to 25 mph with our hazard lights on. After about fifteen miles, and an hour, we arrived at the Mexican immigration checkpoint. I didn’t have a visa! We had overlooked that detail because we had a valid permit for the car from the previous summer. I found a visa from two years ago and showed it to the agent, but it was expired. I knew I had gotten a visa last summer. I searched everywhere for the visa but didn’t find it (even though I later saw it was in my wallet). Then I found the Mexican visa stamp on my U.S. passport. The agent wouldn’t even look at the stamp—I needed the paper visa—but then he did look at the stamp and it had expired too. It was a business visa that was only good for 30 days—I had gotten it for a trip in July during my internship at TRLA. The tourist visas are good for six months. The agent insisted we turn around and go back to customs at the bridge in Nuevo Laredo and get the visa. “Isn’t that how U.S. immigration works?” he asked rhetorically. He was right.
We survived the return trip through the fog and city, although we did get lost in a desolate part of the city when I tried to take a “shortcut” at what I thought was the tail end of the boulevard we first missed at Bridge No. 1. Despite my shortcut, we made it to the large and crowded Mexican customs station in the night shadow of the large International Bridge No. 2—the much larger and more traveled of the two bridges in Laredo. Many paisanos were returning to Mexico for the holidays in their overloaded cars, trucks, minivans and SUVs. A high chain fence surrounded the vast parking lot. A group of police cars were parked at the entrance, including pick-up trucks full of armed police lounging in the truck beds. The parking lot was bathed in orange flood light and industrial smog hung over the dark horizon pierced by distant lights; like a surreal night scene straight out of Apocalypse Now.
It was easier than I expected to get the visa. It took a short wait in line, a couple steps, a $0.50 Bic pen, $20 USD and a sick sense of dread and worry. When I paid the bank teller for the visa, I asked him about the nearest ATM—“Downtown,” he said with a chuckle. We were short on cash and I asked a security guard the cost of the toll road to Monterrey. He told me to ask the state police outside, who he also said were forming caravans of travelers to “escort” them out of the city! I loved the idea of a police escort, but what a nightmare. I asked a police officer in the parking lot and he said they would form another caravan soon. He said things were “ugly” in the city now and there were many assaults on travelers, especially on the road we needed to take out of the city. Run the gauntlet. The police officer said he was from a distant town and was part of the force that replaced the old police. He said to wait and he would check with the other officers about forming a caravan and if not, he would personally escort us out of the city. He took a long time and we saw other travelers leaving the parking lot in groups of two and three. He didn’t return for about 20 minutes and it was 2:00 a.m. in the morning. We finally decided to leave and follow a group of other travelers. And boy did we speed out of there. The three SUVs took off into the dense fog going about 65 mph to run the gauntlet on the tight, four-lane road flanked by wooden shacks with metal roofs. Despite the danger of the high speed and dense fog, I decided we were safer in the group, following the vehicles’ red tail lights as a guide through the fog.
We made it out of the city and onto the open road—for the second time that night. We had no problems at the checkpoint and continued on to Monterrey. The toll road cost $18 USD for about a 70 mile stretch. Nice road. There were intermittent patches of dense fog and crystal clear desert night all the way to Monterrey. About 40 miles north of the city, I could not stay awake any longer. I kept dreaming about the hotel bed awaiting us in Monterrey. We stopped at a small rest area along the road and I got 45 minutes of restless sleep, interrupted by the earth-rumbling of passing semi-trucks. At 5:00 a.m., we continued on and entered the outskirts of Monterrey, a large industrial city of several million people. By sheer good fortunate, and with scant directions, we made all the correct turns. We arrived at the hotel at 6:00 a.m. Cesar’s graduation would begin at 10:00 a.m. that morning. He received a degree in engineering.
The next night we attended his formal graduation party at one of the fanciest “salons” in Monterrey, located outside of town. The party lasted from 9:00 p.m. . . . until 6:00 a.m. as we would discover around 1:00 a.m. that night. Good food, music (three live bands—pop, mariachi and grupero), dancing, and the joyful ambience of graduation. It had been a hard semester capped by a demanding finish, and we really enjoyed the party to the fullest.
Despite some initial whining and pouting, Jacobo behaved like a perfect gentleman after I gave it to him straight—“the party is going to last a long time and we are here for your uncle.” He cut his stuffed chicken with a fork and knife, and engaged in conversation with Jerry and me. Afterwards he danced hard and well on the dance floor to the delight of Cesar’s classmates, and his parents.
He fell asleep around 2:00 a.m. We spent a couple more days with Jerry in Monterrey exploring the amazing El Parque Fundidora and getting lost while driving in the city.
A week later, Ale and I celebrated seven years of marriage on December 23, with a dinner at the Lucky Eagle Kickapoo Casino in Eagle Pass. The next day we celebrated Christmas Eve or “Noche Buena” with Silvestre, Cesar, Ale, Jacobo and Dario with a big turkey dinner courtesy of Ale and Cesar.
We spent New Year’s Eve and Day with Alejandra’s family in Monclova, Coahuila, Mexico. We stayed with Ale’s cousin, Danielin, his wife Flory and two sons, Danielito and Saul in San Buenaventura, a town outside of Monclova. On New Year’s Eve, we ate a very late dinner at the home of Daniel and Lucila, Ale’s aunt and uncle, in Monclova—in fact it was already New Year’s Day when we started dinner. They have hosted this dinner for eighteen years. The home was packed with Daniel, Lucila and the families of their six children: Danielin, Flory, Danielito and Saul; Edna and her daughter Lucilita; Julio, his wife Chela and their kids, Julito and Griseldita; Marco, his wife Mireya and their two sons, Marcito and Dario; Paula; and Arnoldo. Silvestre and Cesar were also there. With so many family members, there is usually someone ill and this year was no exception as Edna’s husband, Joaquin had just undergone corrective back surgery in Saltillo a couple days previously and was still there recovering.
While everyone was busy readying the New Year’s Eve dinner, Flory took Jacobo, Danielito, Saul and I for an afternoon drive to Cuatrocienegas less than an hour away to the west of San Buenaventura. Cuatrocienegas is an amazing place, rich in history, natural beauty and phenomena. Cuatrocienegas is a small town in a desert valley encircled by mountains. The town was home to Venustiano Carranza, hero of the Mexican Revolution, author of the first draft of the modern Mexican Constitution and president of the republic before his assassination. His home is now a museum. The desert valley is rich in biodiversity and is a nationally protected area. With over 70 endemic species, it has the highest biodiversity of any ecosystem in North America and has been compared to the Galapagos Islands and the Rift Valley. Cuatrocienegas means “four marshes” and there were once four large pre-historic marshes in the valley. Over 200 natural springs or “pozas” now dot the valley where the four lakes once were. The springs harbor unique and ancient species of fish, invertebrates and bacteria, some of which may date to the Cambrian Era. Some scientists believe the springs are a rare biological window to the beginning of life on Earth. The National Geographic Society filmed a documentary about the springs. The valley was also the subject of an NPR Radio Expedition. We visited one spring, Poza Becerra. Crystal clear, magical water with schools of fish—the size of large bluegills. There seemed to be three species: a black one, a blueish gray one with three black spots and a small minnow or guppy. Flory told me to dip my feet in the water and the fish would give me a pedicure. I didn’t do it, but I should have been more daring in retrospect. There was also a small duck-like bird that would dive every so often.
In conclusion, it was another big year. Thank you all for enjoying it with us.
