The Risk of the Road
	Most of the images in this initial exhibit are of migrants from the town of Cherán, Michoacán. I went to Cherán initially to meet the Chávez-Muñoz family, which first came to my attention when I read a story in the papers last year about a horrific accident near the town of Temecula (northeast of San Diego) in which three Chávez brothers were killed as they attempted to cross illegally into United States.
	The coyote that was driving the GMC truck carrying Benjamín, Jaime and Salvador Chávez-Muñoz, along with 22 others crammed inside the camper shell, took secondary roads north from Tijuana to avoid the major Border Patrol checkpoint on I-5 just south of San Clemente, but BP trucks also regularly comb the Temecula hills. A border patrol truck spotted the GMC about 45 minutes before dawn, clearly overloaded, its fenders practically scraping the tires. From this point on, there are differing versions as to what happened. The BP maintains that their officers did not conduct a high-speed pursuit, but rather followed the vehicle at a discreet distance and are thus not responsible for the tragic outcome. Lawyers representing the victims say that the BP wrecklessly and needlessly endangered the lives of the migrants by engaging in a high-speed pursuit.
	However the pursuit was conducted, it ended at Avenida del Oro and Calle Capistrano, streets baptized with Mexican names by gringo migrants who came from the Midwest to spend their final years in the California sun. The coyote's truck, travelling west and downhill along Avenida del Oro, a narrow two-lane with long but dangerous curves, at speeds almost certainly above 60 miles an hour, failed to negotiate the bend at Calle Capistrano, its right front tire striking the curb above a drainage ditch. The truck flipped over into the drainage ditch, most of the bodies of those inside the camper spilling out as the shell cracked open. Benjamin, Jaime and Salvador were crushed under the chasis of the truck.
	They had been making their way to Watsonville, California, to their usual stint of seasonal work picking strawberries in the fertile hills east of Santa Cruz. The accident made headlines in the U.S. as well as Mexico for the enormity of the tragedy (in addition to the Chavez brothers, six others were killed, and 19 were injured, many critically) and because just a few days before another incident involving Wetbacks had made headlines too­­a Rodney King-like videotape that aired on the evening news showed Riverside Sheriff's deputies beating undocumented immigrants who were unarmed and offering no visible resistance on a Southern California freeway at rush-hour.
	No one in Cherán doubts the Border Patrol killed­­perhaps even with intent­­the Chávez brothers. Their funeral was a majestic affair, every single resident there, from the Jehova's Witness doctor to the toothless alcoholic lady who claims to be 103 years old to the Chicano-style gangster kids who tag up the town with spraycans to the nouveau riche migrants who return from the U.S. with thick gold chains dangling from their necks, looking more like Dominican baseball players than Wetbacks who've worked 15 years picking fruit from California to Florida. For the Chávez brothers were martyrs in a cause: to have the freedom to move. To get the hell out of Cherán­­whose local timber-based economy is in tatters­­and find new horizons. Mexican Joads.
	To move, to make some money, to buy some gold chains, or a 1984 Plymouth with 145,000 miles on the odometer but a nice interior, or an Osterizer for mom, or some snazzy snakeskin boots, or hell, just come back home with a wad of greenbacks in your billfold, enough to peel off a few Jacksons and pin them on the statue of Saint Francis, the town's patron saint, during Cherán's fiesta and buy a dozen bottles of Bacardi Rum, enough to get your entire block drunk for at least one night. And then, after a winter's rest, return to California... to Arkansas... to Wisconsin... to North Carolina... to Pennsylvania... to again come back to Cherán­­they always come back­­a Wetback Hero.
	Noticing the tremendous amount of cars in Cherán, with their license plates from over half the states in the American Union, I thought that this was perhaps a story that would lead to me to discuss much more than than just the tragedy at Temecula.
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