ERIC
thought he had gotten lucky. She was gorgeous and she acted single. It wasn’t until 5 am, when the big guys with guns broke into his Mexico City hotel room, that he found out she was the girlfriend of a drug lord. They were going to kill him slowly but decided to Google him first and then decided to wait on the torture + death plan. The dumb gringo was a land surveyor specializing in wilderness areas and he had an ex-wife and a kid. Obviously he was an ideal choice to guide cocaine smugglers across the border. And if he caused any trouble, the ex and the kid could die slowly.
ORNELA
couldn’t find work in Mexico. Friends told her that in the US a nanny makes more than a doctor does in the south, so she decided to risk everything. She was only a hundred yards from the river when the coyote she had hired to take her to the US turned around and said, “There’s going to be an additional charge, gorgeous…” And he had a gun in his hand.
EL RIO GRANDE
A thin green band through the desert, one hundred yards of muddy water separating the third world from Gringo Land. Deserted and peaceful during daytime, at night a lawless highway for drug smugglers, people smugglers, poor people without documents, the thieves and rapists who prey on the poor people and the Patrullas Fronterizas, the US Border Patrol.