As a staff writer for Phoenix New Times, award winning journalist Terry Greene Sterling reported for years on the political brawls and human tragedies that have made Arizona the epicenter for the national immigration debate. Sterling is now a contributor for The Daily Beast, and Writer-in-Residence at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Her stories have appeared in The Washington Post, Newsweek.com, salon.com, and The Nieman Narrative Digest, among other publications. Her first book, ILLEGAL, Life and Death in Arizona's Immigration War Zone, from which this chapter is excerpted, tells the stories of unauthorized immigrants stubbornly hunkering down in the Phoenix area, and their friends and foes. Sterling is your tour guide into the shadows, where people hope, live, pray, work, sin and die in the city that begat the harshest immigration laws in the nation.
The book is for sale here, at all major bookstores and amazon.com.
Sterling tweets @tgsterling and blogs about immigration in Arizona at terrygreenesterling.com
CHAPTER SIX: A DAY LATE, A DOLLAR SHORT
Mexican immigrants patronized the dollar store. So did crack addicts and a child molester. Why didn't the owners call the police?It didn't take me long to learn Inocencio was a prankster. One day in the spring of 2010, when I visited his dollar store in central Phoenix, he dared and cajoled me to eat a fried grasshopper.
He had brought a Tupperware tub full of the crisp, salted brown insects, called chapulines, into the store for his lunch, along with tortillas he'd made earlier in the morning. Inocencio was forty-three years old, and had resided in the United States for more than two decades. He knew Anglos didn't eat grasshoppers.
Which was exactly why he wanted me to eat one.
“They are delicious,” he said.
He set the Tupperware on the counter. The large fat grasshoppers, he said, were females, and tasted better than the smaller males. He warned me to pull the legs off before popping the bugs in my mouth because the legs sometimes got caught in the throat, like splinters.
I was going to do this thing.
So, I selected a male grasshopper—less to eat—and put fifty cents on the counter for a cold can of Coke to wash the grasshopper down. With a grin on his face, Inocencio gave me to the count of three in Spanish: Uno! Dos! Tres! I must have had a funny expression on my face when I placed the weightless bug on my tongue and forced myself to chew.
Inocencio exploded into giggles. His wife, Araceli, who rarely smiled, laughed so hard she could barely take my picture with my iPhone camera.
Actually, the grasshopper wasn’t bad. It tasted clean and slightly salty.
Inocencio told me his parents had brought the grasshoppers from southern Mexico during one of their visits to Arizona. The bugs were high in protein and low in fat, ideal for Inocencio, who’d been dieting and had just lost about forty pounds. His once-tight golf shirt and khakis now hung loose on his short frame, and that made him happy.
On this particular morning, Inocencio sat on a stool near the cash register. Araceli puttered in the stock room. I stood on the other side of a glass counter that contained highly-desirable merchandise that might be stolen: Tall cans of spray paint (the kind used on freeway overpasses and freight trains) Hannah Montana toys, men’s cologne, manicure kits, women’s perfumes, CDs by the popular norteño group, Los Tigres del Norte. Other items that might be shoplifted – phone cards, batteries, Tylenol, Alka-Seltzer Plus, prophylactics, pregnancy test kits, CD players, more Hannah Montana toys, makeup, lighters, cigarettes – were displayed behind the glass counter or on the walls above the cash register, where Inocencio could keep an eye on them.
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What does the statement that "Latinos lived in America before many Territories became States" have to do with anything??? SO what is the point? IF that statement is to imply that Latinos have a right to those States or we should allow Latinos to enter our country Illegally then that same logic means our Laws mean nothing. Then why have Laws? Using that same insane logic then maybe Italy has a right to govern all countries in Europe, England parts of Africa and many countries in the Middle East since the Romans i.e. the Italians once governed those Geographic areas. Maybe the USSR and most of Europe should decide that they should become part of China since Genghis Kahn conquered those geographic areas. The people that bring up issues like "Latinos once lived in many areas of America" OR "We are a Nation of Immigrants" must assume that their audience is uneducated and incapable of basic reasoning. Using an antiquated and irrelevant historic fact to justify Illegal Immigration only indicates a possible lack of some basic reasoning ability or worse ... a Very Biased, Non-Objective and purposely designed effort to mislead people. Hence that effort qualifies as illogical and borders on dishonest journalism something most authors should be at the very least embarrassed by. Unfortunately Life is full of Sob Stories and most of us do sincerely feel for people involved in family and race problems but that does not mean we have to ignore that had there not been illegal immigration committed then there would be no sob story and those cases do not justify breaking the law. "Life is about what decisions we make" and if we make a decision that then later causes us some problems then we are responsible for that decision not the rest of society. The nation was partially built on "Legal" Immigrants so people need to incorporate "Legal" in their shallow analysis that the Nation was built by Immigrants. The bigger problem is that our Elected Officials are again not doing their job but rather playing politics for political power and votes rather than protecting the country. It is a sad scenario for the Citizens and the country when one Political Party’ Power is more important to some Politicians than what is best for the country. Allowing Illegal Immigration is about Political Power and Votes and to Hell with what happens to the country in the long term
What does the statement that "Latinos lived in America before many Territories became States" have to do with anything??? SO what is the point? IF that statement is to imply that Latinos have a right to those States or we should allow Latinos to enter our country Illegally then that same logic means our Laws mean nothing. Then why have Laws? Using that same insane logic then maybe Italy has a right to govern all countries in Europe, England parts of Africa and many countries in the Middle East since the Romans i.e. the Italians once governed those Geographic areas. Maybe the USSR and most of Europe should decide that they should become part of China since Genghis Kahn conquered those geographic areas. The people that bring up issues like "Latinos once lived in many areas of America" OR "We are a Nation of Immigrants" must assume that their audience is uneducated and incapable of basic reasoning. Using an antiquated and irrelevant historic fact to justify Illegal Immigration only indicates a possible lack of some basic reasoning ability or worse ... a Very Biased, Non-Objective and purposely designed effort to mislead people. Hence that effort qualifies as illogical and borders on dishonest journalism something most authors should be at the very least embarrassed by. Unfortunately Life is full of Sob Stories and most of us do sincerely feel for people involved in family and race problems but that does not mean we have to ignore that had there not been illegal immigration committed then there would be no sob story and those cases do not justify breaking the law. "Life is about what decisions we make" and if we make a decision that then later causes us some problems then we are responsible for that decision not the rest of society. The nation was partially built on "Legal" Immigrants so people need to incorporate "Legal" in their shallow analysis that the Nation was built by Immigrants. The bigger problem is that our Elected Officials are again not doing their job but rather playing politics for political power and votes rather than protecting the country. It is a sad scenario for the Citizens and the country when one Political Party’ Power is more important to some Politicians than what is best for the country. Allowing Illegal Immigration is about Political Power and Votes and to Hell with what happens to the country in the long term
@Mike: Strictly speaking, of course, you're close to correct on the markup on the paper flowers/glass tubes (it's actually 300%). What the author meant is actually "a 75 percent gross profit margin.") The terms are even interchangeably used in wholesale/retail trade, although incorrectly. The easy way to arrive at one's gross-profit margin "markup" is to divide by the remainder of 100, i.e., if you want a 75 % gross profit margin, divide the item's cost by .25; if you want a 60% gross profit margin, divide by .40, and so on. http://www.profitsplus.org/MarginVersusMarkup.html explains this very well.
I enjoyed this article very much. I visited Mexico frequently during the past years and I love the Mexican people. I wish the illegals would sign up for citizenship classes and maybe that would take off the heat and allow them more respect from the American people. I do not like open borders however and think it is a mistake we should not make with illegals. I do not feel sorry for the illegals as the people who come here to be citizens have paid a lot of money, worked hard, learned to speak English and still maintain the customs of their native country. I think the Mexican government got lazy and corrupted by the drug dealers and ruin everything for both peoples. How sad. You are a good and very interesting writer and I hope to read more of your writings.
I enjoyed this article very much. I visited Mexico frequently during the past years and I love the Mexican people. I wish the illegals would sign up for citizenship classes and maybe that would take off the heat and allow them more respect from the American people. I do not like open borders however and think it is a mistake we should not make with illegals. I do not feel sorry for the illegals as the people who come here to be citizens have paid a lot of money, worked hard, learned to speak English and still maintain the customs of their native country. I think the Mexican government got lazy and corrupted by the drug dealers and ruin everything for both peoples. How sad. You are a good and very interesting writer and I hope to read more of your writings.
I been following these storie through the media I think eveyone in the us should be treated egual. I also think poeple should dig real deep into history before making commets that they cannot back up. every race all over the would has seen race discrimanation of some type in their life time of every color of are skin and nationalties, relgion,poor,rich,ulgy,etc....
dude it is a 400% markup a 300% profit on the glass crack tube
a 75% markup would be calculated by 1.75 X .25 sales price would be .44
I am guessing you use obamas style math
I been following these storie through the media I think eveyone in the us should be treated egual. I also think poeple should dig real deep into history before making commets that they cannot back up. every race all over the would has seen race discrimanation of some type in their life time of every color of are skin and nationalties, relgion,poor,rich,ulgy,etc....
dude it is a 400% markup a 300% profit on the glass crack tube a 75% markup would be calculated by 1.75 X .25 sales price would be .44 I am guessing you use obamas style math
You know who should be most annoyed with the stance that no person is illegal and people shouldn't be punished for violating immigration laws: Black people.
Your average black person had relatives who were captured and sold into slavery to white merchants. They were brought across the middle passage and sold in a market like cattle. The ones who survived long enough to reproduce saw their children separated from them and also sold into slavery. Some escaped through a network of friendly abolitionists, pursued by dogs and slave-catchers, literally with a price on their heads. Others fought for the North, some for the South. When slavery ended they were never given their back wages and found themselves working as sharecroppers, glorified slaves, for the white plantation owners that had previously enslaved them. They were left out of the organized labor movement, drafted into wars and sent to die on the front lines in continental europe (twice), korea and vietnam with no connection to their people. They marched for their civil rights as CITIZENS of the US who were OWED their rights.
I can't think of people who should be insulted more than Black people by this outrageous line of logic.
You know who should be most annoyed with the stance that no person is illegal and people shouldn't be punished for violating immigration laws: Black people. Your average black person had relatives who were captured and sold into slavery to white merchants. They were brought across the middle passage and sold in a market like cattle. The ones who survived long enough to reproduce saw their children separated from them and also sold into slavery. Some escaped through a network of friendly abolitionists, pursued by dogs and slave-catchers, literally with a price on their heads. Others fought for the North, some for the South. When slavery ended they were never given their back wages and found themselves working as sharecroppers, glorified slaves, for the white plantation owners that had previously enslaved them. They were left out of the organized labor movement, drafted into wars and sent to die on the front lines in continental europe (twice), korea and vietnam with no connection to their people. They marched for their civil rights as CITIZENS of the US who were OWED their rights. I can't think of people who should be insulted more than Black people by this outrageous line of logic.
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