For Mexican Workers, a Long Walk Home
AFTER a long night of busing tables at a Manhattan restaurant and a train ride across much of two boroughs, the compact, baby-faced Mexican immigrant climbed the steps of the Kingsbridge Road subway station in the West Bronx and began walking the last few blocks home. It was around 1 a.m.
When he turned onto East 196th Street from the Grand Concourse, he realized that two teenage boys were 30 feet behind him. They spoke in Spanish, his mother tongue, but in an accent that echoed the Caribbean, not his homeland.
Suddenly they began to run toward him. “Stop or we’ll kill you!” one of them yelled in English.
The Mexican, who is 38, ran, too; he had heard enough about a recent rash of muggings of his Mexican neighbors in the Fordham and Bedford Park areas, including an account of one man beaten so badly he was hospitalized.
When he turned around for an instant, he saw the gun. But he didn’t stop; screaming for help, he kept going. His cry for help scared off his aggressors.
The man’s story was one of many told last Sunday at Our Lady of Refuge Church on Briggs Avenue. About 30 Mexicans had gathered to talk about the robberies and the widespread feeling that because most of them are undocumented workers who are known to carry cash rather than paychecks, they have become favorite prey — virtual walking A.T.M.’s.
“They’re picked out as targets,” said Msgr. John Jenik of Our Lady of Refuge, who ran the meeting. No fewer than 11 members of his congregation took turns describing how they were robbed, some more than once. The muggings took place in the past year, but the rate of attacks has quickened, with half a dozen or so in the last few weeks.
Most of the victims were held up at gunpoint by teenagers on East 196th Street, between the Grand Concourse and Marion Avenue, which has become a kind of gantlet. Only a few victims called the police.
“It’s because they feel they have no rights,” said Reinaldo Morales, a local resident who was mugged a few years ago and said he attended the meeting to show solidarity with the victims.
The police acknowledge that there has been an uptick in crime but see the situation differently.
“Although there’s been a recent increase in robberies,” said Inspector Edward Mullen, a spokesman for the New York Police Department, “there is no specific trend or pattern.” Still, the commanding officer of the department’s central robbery unit, Inspector James Shea, met with Father Jenik on Friday to discuss the situation.
Meanwhile, the Mexicans are trying to protect themselves as best they can. One man is taking a taxi home at night from his subway station. A 19-year-old from Oaxaca has asked his employer at a Bronx fast-food restaurant to pay him incrementally, so his wages can’t all be stolen at once. The man who escaped the muggers has arranged for his wife and two children to meet him at the subway station, so they can walk home together.
Another resident chose a more permanent solution. According to Monsignor Jenik, that man, who was mugged and badly beaten last November, was admitted to a hospital, where he was further threatened by his attackers. When he was discharged, the man moved out of the neighborhood.