The GOP’s Official Cleaners

At daybreak Monday morning, before the doors to the Republican convention were thrown open, before most of the speechmakers and delegates and reporters had rolled from their beds, a short, stocky man dressed in denim shorts and a black T-shirt moved timidly toward a security checkpoint. He looked to be about 20 years old. He was clearly of Mexican descent. He also was clearly confused about where he was supposed to be.

“What are you doing here?” asked a San Diego police officer at the barricades.

The young man didn’t answer at first. He blinked his eyes and shrugged, an expression not uncommon to this border city. “No hablo.” Next he fumbled around in a pocket and produced a crumpled piece of paper. It looked somewhat official.

“Work,” was all the young man said. He offered the word hesitantly, as if unsure of his pronunciation.

The officer simply pointed, and the young fellow almost trotted down the path. It led to a garage where temporary workers had begun to assemble for their first day on the job. A half hour later, he would emerge with a work detail. He was wearing a new T-shirt with block letters printed across the chest.

“OFFICIAL CLEANER,” the shirt declared.

*

They can be seen at the convention edges, sweeping terraces in preparation for cocktail receptions, hustling through hotel hallways with pots of coffee or housekeeping carts, navigating the downtown maze in their taxis. They come and go by the back exit, speaking softly to one another in Spanish. Not everybody can nominate the presidential candidate, or debate party platforms, or hold forth for the press on the evils of illegal immigration. Somebody must change the sheets and swish the toilets. What makes this convention extraordinary, however, is that many of the people performing these tasks are people who, according to the official party line, ought to be drop-kicked back to Tijuana and beyond.

“It’s almost funny,” said Jef L. Eatchel, head of Local 30 of the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union. “Here are these Republicans saying: ‘Don’t let these Mexicans across the border. Mexicans are bad people. We ought to send them back, but first, hey you, can you get me a cup of coffee, can you make up my room, can you drive me to the airport? I’m in a hurry.’ ”

Nobody can say for certain, of course, what percentage of this work force actually is illegal. Eatchel assumes it’s a significant number, but adds that the union does not screen for immigration status. The hotels, in the tradition of California farmers, will insist straight-faced that they hire only the documented. The workers themselves, when asked, will giggle and hide behind their no hablos.

In a larger sense, such data would be irrelevant anyway. A lot of blood and history and paperwork has crossed that border, creating an intractable jumble of naturalized citizens, amnesty cases, undocumented aliens, guest workers, Tijuana commuters and so on. It’s not so simple as brown and white, legal or illegal. In fact, the only thing clear-cut about the border-crossing game is its essential goal: Work. This is a plain fact as old as the border itself. No political speech or exclusionary initiative, no fence even, can change it.

*

It was an old cab with an old driver. His name was Sidonio Brenes, and as he pulled away from the convention center he began to talk about Republicans. He had been running them around town all weekend. He enjoyed it. “Republicans are no problem,” he said. He knew Republicans. When he met his wife, she was working as a nanny in Beverly Hills for a Republican family. He was the gardener.

He told his story. He had traveled to Los Angeles from Mexico City on a tourist visa in 1963 and stayed--”I was a little illegal.” His wife, he said, came up “the other way,” across the river. The rules have changed many times in the three decades since. Both now are legal residents. Their oldest daughter graduated from UC Berkeley this spring, but Brenes has three more to put through school. So he drives every day.

The ride was over. He pulled the cab out of traffic and stopped. “There is only one thing I don’t understand about these Republicans,” he said. “I don’t know why they keep saying we all come here to cheat welfare and get in trouble. From the day we got here, my wife and I, all we know is work. All my friends, they work. I know there must be some bad ones, but we don’t know any. When they say those things, we get mad.”

Not that he would tell that to the high and mighty politicos. When they hop aboard, it’s just hit the gas and no hablo.