Search the Community

During the height of the U.S.-Mexico relations under the Porfiriato, a single deal between the American Government and local landowners in the borderlands of Mexico would lead to the formation of a ramshackle band of rogues and ruffians of all sorts. In 1887, a large haul of gold bars approximating to about two-million US Dollars in worth was being transported to the prosperous city of Monterrey by way of Monclova in Coahuila de Zaragoza. This information, however, reached an individual whose greed would change much. Ramiro Narváez, a military captain of the local Cavalry Regiment and son of a local land-owner, used this information to try and make it big on persuasion of his maternal cousin, Vasco Pedrosa. The two, alongside close friend Eleodoro Zúñiga, as well as some of Ramiro's sub-officers and soldiers attempted to stage an accident for this train as it was planned to come through. A small trading post along the rail lines, known as San Juan, was set ablaze by the avaricious Captain and used as a roadblock to stop the train. However, no sooner had they overtaken the train that the real plot was made clear to them. The train was meant to be robbed, but not by them. The Federal official who had slipped Ramiro the information in the first place in return for payment, instead alerted the military who rushed in force to protect the American gold and avoid an international incident from further escalation. In the conflict, several close comrades of the trio were slain or captured. Ramiro, Vasco and Eleodoro fled north across the border before the news reached American troops, pretending to be rail workers to gain entry. Once past, they continued on their roguish activities for some time.. In 1889, Eleodoro avoided detection as both Vasco and Ramiro were caught and arrested separately, though found themselves together again in Sisika Penitentiary, nestled on an island on the Lannahechee River. With countless charges against the two, freedom became a fantasy and although neither a hangman nor a firing squad would claim their souls, it seemed that they were meant to live out destitute lives behind the sordid and swampy cells of Sisika. That is until, a storm rushed over. On April 26th, 1900, a heavy rainstorm gave the perfect cover for the Sisika Eight to escape from the prison. Among them included the two cousins from Coahuila de Zaragoza. Whether due to desperation or due to destiny, two more prisoners, Ray Carter, an Alabama-born African-American, as well as New Mexico-born Apache known as 'Dark Eyes' or Ojos Oscuros tagged along in the chaos of the storm, fleeing through the swamps of Bayou Nwa and through Roanoke Ridge, until they reached some semblance of safety initially at Annesburg. From there, horses were stolen, so were clothes and on the way, even robberies were committed in order to secure themselves with weaponry and wealth. With arms to secure their freedom, the criminal quartet escaped deeper into the South-West, slipping through Blackwater and then further beyond, to the shelter and solace of safety from the hand of the law.. (made by @iaduj16)

Smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border is a professional, often violent, criminal activity. It is a major chapter in a history of illicit business dealings that stretches all the way back to 1848, when attempts by Mexico and the United States to tax commerce across the Rio Grande upset local trade and caused popular resentment since the United States’ and Mexico’s trade concerns focused primarily on tariff collection. Rather than acquiesce to what they regarded as arbitrary trade regulations, upcoming smugglers continued to cross goods and accepted many forms of the act as just. The Rio Grande border, long a central character in numerous historic accounts of smugglers and revolutionaries, remains a focus for contemporary concerns about security. Fronterizos (person who lives on a national border) negotiated the rules and regulations imposed on them by distant capitals and subsequent events, both worldwide and in the United States, which led to a new emphasis on smuggling guns, drugs, and alcohol. These smugglers, called Enganchadores (literally translated to “hooker”), were labor recruiters who convinced Mexican peasants to make the trip north into the United States on the newly completed Mexican-American railways, guaranteeing jobs once in the U.S. Despite the fact that the border was not well guarded, the enganchadores were still breaking U.S. law. An 1891 law “prohibited the importation of alien laborers by the use of advertisements circulated in foreign countries which promised employment.” In light of this comes the term Coyotaje, which is the Mexican cultural practice of hiring an intermediary, known as a coyote, to get around an inconvenient or burdensome government regulation. Same time, the term also refers to the brokerage of commodities. In both these senses, coyotaje has played a fundamental role in facilitating mass Mexican smuggling and migration to the U.S.A. since passage of the Chinese exclusion and contract labor laws of the 1880s. El diccionario breve de mexicanismos defines a coyote as un intermediario ilegítimo de trámites burocráticos [an illegitimate facilitator of bureaucratic procedures]. Whereas according to El diccionario breve de mexicanismos, the term coyotaje refers to the “ocupación y actividad del coyote” [the occupation and activity of the coyote]. With regard to border-crossing, coyotaje may be thought of as the set of strategies and practices engaged in by coyotes to facilitate migrants’ and unauthorized goods entry into the United States. Coyotajes act much like enganchadores in that they are middlemen between Mexico and the United States for hopeful immigrants and traders. Though while coyotaje weren't directly recruiters for specific American companies like the enganchadores were, their existence is undoubtedly a continuation of the enganchadores’s legacy throughout Mexico and America.