Think I have another shot just like this posted somewhere else in the blog, but not sure just when it would have been or which trip would have been featured. So here it is again...
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While I was in Mexico that summer of 1980, I got some college coursework done through the University of California at Sacramento. At the appointed date I left the dusty town of Allende (Coahuila), driving to Mexico City to meet my classmates from the West Coast. We spent a few days staying there at the Hotel Metropol downtown, then traveled by bus to Guanajuato where classes would be held.
It was an enchanting time and place, making new friends and attending classes there at the university. Guanajuato is famously a beautiful city, where the structures are all required to be built in the old colonial style. If you've never been there, it's worth the trouble to visit...and from what we hear it's a fairly safe place by Mexican standards today.
A few days after classes got started word got around that that they were looking for English teachers at the local high school. It was a paid position to teach a three-week summer mini-course. Would anybody from the university be interested? At first I didn't entertain the thought at all, but then considered the possibilities - a very unique opportunity to put a feather in the ole professional cap, and I sure could use the money. So I took the long walk uphill to the high school, talked to the headmaster, and was hired on the spot. He told me that the class I was to teach began at one o'clock in the afternoon. I said thanks, then headed back down toward the university to get ready for our afternoon class at college.
About halfway down I stopped in my tracks. Did he mean one o-clock today? Heading back up the hill to ask, my new boss verified that yes, I would begin in about a half hour. Wow - OK, please show me my classroom. In just a few minutes I began my first paid teaching job, facing a room full of 50 kids waiting to get their first lesson. Just a little daunting.
Made it through the three weeks in acceptable style, though I've never been great at the discipline thing and had to consult the headmaster a time or two about behavior issues. But it was overall a very positive experience. Somewhere I have a picture of me with the class, and when found I'll append it to the end of this post.
When the three weeks was up I got a check for my services, equivalent to a few hundred American dollars. Pleased to be paid, I headed to the bank. But there I had to stop in my tracks again. Wait a minute, I didn't have a work visa, and in no way was authorized to work in Mexico. I'm a wetback now, in reverse! Knowing that the school administration didn't pay attention to such things, I had put myself in a vulnerable position. And there was a policeman at the door of the bank! I began to sweat, imagining my survival on a diet of beans in jail for the next ten years. Well, I needed the money and was sure going to cash the check, so very nervously but nonchalantly walked past the cop to the teller window inside. Very relieved, I exited the bank with cash in my pocket instead of a check that could've led to trouble.
For the first time I got an inkling as to how it must have felt for an undocumented worker in the US. There was nervousness, fear, even paranoia. For me this lasted just a few minutes while I heading up those steps to pass a police officer going into the bank. But back in 1980, when our federal government was serious about enforcing immigration laws, the fear that undocumented workers lived with was a continuous part of their lifestyle.
So that is how I became an undocumented worker in my adopted home country of Mexico. At one time I considered going back down there to legally work as a teacher, but ultimately decided to stick to the States once I returned, albeit with fodder for yet another story...
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