Pedaling to Mexico on Trash Bicycles

At nearly every stop, Ugg pulls boxes of goodies from the dumpsters behind gas stations and grocery stores. His latest haul produces a cardboard box full of Oreos, vanilla wafers, fudge-coated marshmallow cookies of some artery-clogging variety and individually wrapped bite-size Snickers bars. Five days into the trip and eight days into the New Year and he seems to have stuck with his “freegan” plans, surviving without money and living off the discards of others. Not only is there stuff up for grabs on the side of the road and in dumpsters, but simply asking gets us leftover pizzas, hamburgers or whatever else a restaurant might otherwise throw away.

January 11, 2009 — Day Eight, 321.6 miles — Sebastian, Texas

The wind is thankfully at our backs today as we cross the 70-mile stretch of nearly nothing that is Kenedy County, a part of South Texas with more square miles than people. Border Patrol trucks have become a more common sight the past few days. Camouflage Army trucks pass us today on Highway 77, and it starts to feel as if we’re nearing a war zone. Spanish has become the norm at gas station counters, and today we pass the U.S. Border Patrol interior checkpoint.

For several members of the group, this will be their first excursion into Mexico, although Mexicans make up a large part of their hometown. Austinites sometimes call San Antonio “North Mexico” — a joke somewhat supported by history — and if that’s true, then we’re in Mexico already.

In Austin, the Hispanic population, according to the 2000 Census, hovers around 30 percent, just below the Texas average of 32 percent. San Antonio, on the other hand, comes in at 58 percent and Kingsville at 67 percent. Brownsville is 91 percent Hispanic or Latino.

We were on our way to one of the United States’ oldest battlegrounds: the Mexican border.

Old men in pickups and passers-by have warned us repeatedly of the horrors of the border towns, and more than one has advised us to hire a cabbie for $20 or $30 to stay with us no matter what. While some of our group, including myself, were anxious about what we would find at the border and beyond, we know we need to remain open-minded if we’re going to connect with the people we’ll meet in Mexico.

January 12, 2009 — Day Nine, 365.4 miles — Brownsville, Texas

It’s the night before we cross the border and we’re staying at Galeria 409, an art gallery barely 100 yards from the Rio Grande and the International Bridge, the main border crossing from Brownsville into the Mexican city of Matamoros. It is a serendipitous connection, where someone knew someone who knew someone else and suddenly the doors of one of Brownsville’s historic buildings is opened to us.

Gallery owner Mark Clark tells us that, according to legend, one of the building’s many previous owners sold thousands of pairs of boots to Pancho Villa’s army during the Mexican Revolution. People had sat on the roof, he said, watching the battle on the other side of the river. Nearly a century later we sit on the second-floor balcony, watching people stream across the bridge in both directions. The unending lights blare down from above. Border guards, on foot and in SUVs, are everywhere.

Crackers, a half-eaten cake, party streamers and balloons still decorate the main room of the gallery, left over from a recent party celebrating news that Michael Chertof, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security and a backer of the border wall, is stepping down. A piñata bearing his resemblance still hangs from the exposed rafters. Kites and protest signs, with phrases like “Don’t Fence Me In,” “No Wall, No Al Muro,” “Arriba Unidad, Abajo Divisiones” (Up with Unity, Down with Divisions). “Honk If You Hate the Wall” and “No Border Wall,” dangle from the walls and ceiling. We are obviously in the thick of the battle over immigration, free trade and everything else that comes with a border.

On the other side of the river, Matamoros awaits. According to a 2006 Mexican report, more than 1.1 million people work in nearly 3,000 maquiladoras. Nearly 200,000 people in Matamoros work in maquiladoras, and those are the people we’re looking for.