Francisco Puebla, a migrant from the Nahua people originally from the state to which his last name honors, is now the hero of hundreds of people who live in New York. Francisco, manager of a hardware store in the area known as the East Village, in Manhattan, identified Frank James, allegedly responsible for the attacks on the Brooklyn Subway on April 12, leaving more than 23 people injured.
Originally from the town of Colonia Agrícola Ocotepec, located in the west of the municipality of Atlixco, in Puebla, he migrated more than 30 years ago after his cousins told him about the wonders of the United States. He decided to leave his milpa, his family and everything he knew to start a new life in this country. At just 14 years old, he crossed the dangerous border, where many people have lost their lives.
“I came very young, they didn’t want to give me a job,” Francisco recounts with some nostalgia. “That’s where I started running errands for people in a maquila. There was no other. I saw myself as such a child that in order to regularize my immigration status they wanted to adopt my patterns from that time.” However, when his parents found out about this, they were adamantly opposed: “How are they going to adopt you, you have a mother and a father here; you are not an orphan.” The family ties that Mexicans have so strong were present. Given these important reasons, Francisco rejected the offer.
He continued his life, settled in Brooklyn, worked in various trades, until finishing as an assistant in a hardware store in East Manhattan. “I have been working in this place for more than 20 years; I started from the bottom and little by little, thanks to my work, they offered me the position of manager. With this I have taken my family forward.” Francisco is the father of two children, one eight years old and the other 12. Both are proud of the courage that his father showed in identifying the most wanted person in New York for more than 24 hours. His youngest son expresses with pride: “Dad, you are my hero”, while the eldest gives him a shy smile and says: “Very well done”.
The discourse of the authorities is that a large search operation was deployed to find the location of Frank James; however, Francisco’s story is far from that. He mentions that he was at his business installing a new camera system, when a person matching James’s identity is seen passing by. That was when he decided to go out and try to recognize him. In that same place was Zack Tahhan, of Syrian origin, the technician who made the adjustments, who, upon hearing what was happening, left the premises together with Francisco. “A patrol had just passed the man, they did not identify him.” For his part, Francisco stopped the unit and pointed out that someone who fit the characteristics of the alleged perpetrator of the attacks on the Metro had just passed in front of his premises. The strange thing about this event is that the East Village neighborhood is a very busy area, where there are restaurants and shops on every side of the street. Francisco did not understand how no one else saw him: “He was walking like any other person without covering his face. I think this city has become dehumanized, we don’t see the people passing by around us.” Francisco comments on it with astonishment, but also compares what it was like in his town: “There we worry about each other. We know who lives in such a house, what family it belongs to, and if something happens, we go to look for it. Here the thing is not the same: people are walking and do not know what is happening around them. I worry about my children, who now have to grow up here, that they don’t keep my traditions. What made my father and my mother proud”.
The indigenous peoples of Mexico know the importance of creating community and how relevant it is for survival. What is really complicated is that in a culture like the United States, where everything is commodified, many of these values are being lost. In various areas of New York, as in the entire United States, we are fighting to maintain our identity as Latino peoples, and above all, as Mexicans. We seek to preserve our traditions, but in the face of media bombardment, discrimination and xenophobia, the legacy is difficult to maintain. Francisco says: “My children know Mexico and my people; It was many years ago. I don’t know if they remember. I want to return to my community and live there; That is my greatest dream”. He lives the great dilemma of hundreds of migrants in the United States: between being able to give his family a better life or being in his country with his family.
Francisco mentions that he is proud that a Mexican helped locate Frank James, the person who reminded us how vulnerable we are in this iron city. The city was paralyzed in the early hours of Tuesday, when social networks reported the attack with a firearm and smoke bombs in a Metro car on 36th Street, in the area known as Sunset Park. “I think the secret is not to live in fear, and to speak what we see. Many times as a people we don’t even want to raise our faces for fear of being deported. It is very difficult to live where at any moment you can be fired and that our value is determined by some papers.”
This is why his feat is doubly heroic: he teaches hundreds of migrants that we must put aside fear and fight for our rights. In a nation that constantly reminds us that it is not ours, raising your voice is a matter of honor. That is why today the Nahua people should be proud of his son, because he kept what his parents taught him: “Don’t be ashamed of who you are and keep your legacy.” With that message, Francisco has fought for more than 30 years, in a foreign country, where on repeated occasions he has been made to feel that he does not belong here and that, regardless of the difficulties he has faced, he has become the Mexican indigenous hero in New York. .
* Member of the Tlachinollan Mountain Human Rights Center
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