Pedro had come to the United States first, nearly ten years ago. A bad harvest season had made the owners of the farm where he lived and worked lay off nearly all of their workers, including Pedro. As a result he could not feed his wife and three children. Growing up in a little town just north of Jerez, Zacatecas, he would often see families whose relatives had moved to the United States, wearing fancier clothing. And at least some of their kids could afford to go to school. Pedro was illiterate. He had never had a pair of new shoes in his lifetime, much less been able to go to school. With no skills other than farming, he found there were no jobs available to him there. The threat of starvation made the risk of crossing the border, to try to work on a farm in California, a risk he had to take. A family friend in the States vouched for him by promising to pay a “coyote” the $5,000 he required to illegally transport Pedro across the border.

Pedro kissed his family goodbye, promising to send them money, and got into the back of a semi truck transporting huge rubber truck tires. Five of them crossed the border in that truck. Aside from a few stops to get out and relieve themselves in the middle of the desert somewhere, each one of them was made to lie as flat as they could against the inner lining of the tires. This way, if anyone opened the hatch of the trailer, all they would have seen was merchandise. Pedro’s tears that day were tainted by the unnatural smell of rubber. Like the men who had made the journey before him, he did not take the risk lightly, simply on the promise of opportunity. Instead, he was torn in half. On one side the heavy doom of the deaths of the family he was responsible for. On the other, the only chance he had at preventing that fate from occurring.

Pedro had taken jobs on several farms over the years before someone told him that he could make more money in a day than he made from farming in a week by standing outside Home Depot and taking the temporary jobs that people who came looking for cheap workers could offer him. Like everything in his life, he had thrown himself into it with no schooling. Having lied that he knew what he was doing so people would hire him in the first place, he had learned how to paint and lay concrete and put up drywall out of pure necessity.