Luxury Trees

A tall and gangly hair-lipped Nahuat from southern Mexico saunters from the drivers seat of a 20 year old Chevy work van. His shirt and slacks are stained a bile-yellow from la goma del tabaco, pure nicotine which gives him nightmares. On his face his upper lip is more of a beak than a lip, and a jagged scar runs from behind his left nostril to the point of the beak. He speaks a muffled, nasal Spanish which makes him seem younger and more helpless than he is. He is Jaime.
I engage him in conversation and ask if I can speak with him and the rest of the workers. He disappears into an ancient white farm house nestled at the base of a massive silo to speak with the crew boss. He emerges from the house and asks if I have permiso del patron. I haven't spoken with the farmer and haven't gotten permission from him.

Gone are the days of bearded, disease ridden, gleaming demon-gods who gawk at the smoking of rolled chocolate leaves. Downpressing a class of people expendable as fossil fuel and creating an insatiable appetite for imaginary riches and and exotic crops of luxury like sugar and cinnamon and tobacco. And the residue of demon-gods with their war dogs and four legged monster-men? The same residue that stains Jaime's clothes each day. Though it won't come off in the wash. The residue is diluted with alcohol and machismo. It begins to eat away at the fabric of the mind and of the culture so much so that it is eventually ingrained into the two. For some, the thin vitriolic sheen of the old demon-gods is shed, if only for several months, once they return to their homes. For others it is both the construct in which they support their families, and a prison which keeps them separated
Jaime has a jovial nonchalance about him and his own situation. I ask questions about his contact information, telephone number of his house. No tenemos telefono de casa. His cell phone number, si, de hecho el patron me lo desconecto. He goes on to explain that the patron doesn't want him communicating with outsiders, which is why he had his cell phone disconnected. Jaime shakes his head: "son reglas que, no se..."
He looks over my right shoulder at the crops which blanket the rolling piedmont. A look perhaps as disconnected from this world as the phone line in his one hundred year old farm house. "They're rules that, I don't know, I don't agree with them. Pero no quiero meterme en problemas con el patron."
He doesn't want to get in trouble with the boss. Jaime could find no other work. The complexity of the situation is paralyzing and infuriating. I could spin myself into a cyclone of self-righteousness and desire for justice and remind the boss that Jaime is just as free as I am or he is. But is the boss protecting himself or Jaime? If Jaime looses his job how many people will feel the effects?

Jaime's eyes enter back to the world of tobacco and gringos and distance from family, from a place perhaps imaginary and probably from the past. I notice and start asking him more questions.
Y ustedes trabajan en puro tabaco, o algo mas?
No, pues, cortamos estos arboles....he flattens his left hand and pans it across the trees growing in straight lines on the opposite side of the dirt road. They don't just work in tobacco, they work mostly for a tree farm. I ask Jaime what kind of trees they are:
Son arboles de lujo, no se, para la casa.
No dan nada de fruto?
They're trees of luxury he says. And they don't bear fruit.

Gone are the days of bearded, disease ridden, gleaming demon-gods who gawk at the smoking of rolled chocolate leaves; downpressing a class of people expendable as fossil fuel and creating an insatiable appetite for imaginary riches and exotic crops of luxury like sugar and cinnamon and tobacco?
Trees which bear no fruit.
Gone are these days?
Trees which bear no fruit.