A PATRIOT DIRGE: Burn Baby Burn

A Convergence of Circumstance
The Making of a Terrorist

If there is such a thing as fate, it is the product of a convergence of circumstance. A leader or a philanthropist is not born or educated to that end and a man does not become a terrorist overnight.

Miguel Estrada was a promising youth. He was inquisitive, curious, energetic, loyal to his friends and devoted to his family. His childhood was marked by tragedy when his parents were caught in an immigration sting and deported to Mexico. His aunt Mirabel, who had lost her husband to an industrial accident, raised him as if he was her own. She had two sons and a daughter but did not hesitate to take Miguel into her home, feed him, clothe him, and teach him the values she personified.

From the ages of six to nine, he knew his parents, his little brother Juan and his older sister Esmeralda only by the weekly letters his mother wrote. She often included photographs that chronicled the passing of time. Juanito the toddler became Juan the schoolboy while Esmeralda grew from a schoolgirl to a budding young woman.

Miguel collected his mother’s letters and stored them in a wooden box. He would spend hours reading them and gazing at the pictures, counting the days when he would be reunited with the family. His mother always promised the day would come and hoped it would come soon. His aunt was willing to deliver him back to Guadalajara but his mother was determined that at least one of her children would grow up to become an American citizen. It was her dream that her children could find a better life in the north and that one day United States of America would welcome them all.

Shortly after his ninth birthday, the letters stopped coming. Aunt Mirabel explained that hard times had come to Jalisco and it was impossible for his mother to keep writing. It would be several years before she told him the truth.

The family had paid a coyote to provide papers and take them across the border through the Arizona desert. It was impossible to trace their route but they were never seen or heard from again. Some said it was a devious coyote who dumped them in the desert where there was no water or food. Others said it was the border patrol or vigilantes taking "justice" into their own hands.

In the end, it did not matter. His family was gone. All that remained were memories, a box of letters and fading photographs.

Miguel became embittered and angry. For the first time, he began to have trouble at school and he brought that trouble home. He fought with the other children and when Aunt Mirabel disciplined him, he complained that she treated him differently than her natural children.

It broke Mirabel’s heart but she understood his anguish. From the loss she had suffered in her own life, she knew that only time could heal wounds of the soul.

Miguel held on to his anger. His anger was his connection to the family he lost. His anger was his love and as long as he held on to it, they would live within him. He swore an oath to his god, his life and all that he cherished that he would not lose them again.

He wore his anger like a brand on his forehead, always visible, always glaring through his dark soulful eyes. It attracted others to him who felt as he did. There was Victor with his norteno markings, Corazon with his scars, and the angry girls Annabel and Dulce who understood what boys wanted before they should have.

By the time he was a teenager, they were hanging with the real outlaws, the ones that dealt in drugs, workers, tobacco, alcohol, anything that could be sold or transported at a profit. They were employed as lookouts and messengers but more than that they were being watched and groomed for the roles they would soon play.

Ironically, it was the old man who ran the house where Miguel and his buddies hung out who turned him around. El Viejo Marcos was the rare individual who survived in a game that did not allow survivors. Unlike most of his fallen compadres, Marcos knew when to turn away and how to back down without losing face. He understood that respect, more than guns and money, was the one commodity that was indispensable.

In the summer of his sixteenth birthday, Miguel was not surprised that the old man called him over to his shaded porch for a conversation over ice tea. The house was on the outskirts of Denver where an old man could sit on his porch, gazing out at the expanse of land, and wonder why there was not enough for everyone.

Marcos and Miguel had many conversations on this porch about everything under the sun. They talked about poverty and immigration and industrial waste and war and the role of government in easing the sorrows of its citizens. They talked about the failings of human beings in caring for the planet and why the corporate elites no longer took an interest.

"The people are sleeping," the old man explained. "They give us drugs and guns and playthings and mesmerize us with their magic so that the people no longer believe it has anything to do with us."

He would speak aloud the words that fell from his mind, then grow silent and study to see if Miguel understood. He did. The old man understood about anger as well and never advised the boy to give it up or grow beyond it. He told him to hang on to it and to embrace it whenever the gringos tried to put him in his place.

The first thing the old man noticed about Miguel was that he always carried a book in the back pocket of his oversized jeans. He never asked about it until today.

Miguel grimaced and said it was nothing but the old man insisted so he pulled it out and placed on the table. Marcos gazed at it and held it to his nose as if he could inhale its contents.

"This is a good book," he said. "It was held by many hands before it found its way to yours. Read it to me."

The muscles in his face tightened and he glanced around as if to see if anyone was watching. It was a book of poetry by Pablo Neruda, love poems, not the kind of literature that outlaws would read if they read at all. If it was anyone else, he would have refused and walked away. Anyone else and he would have known it was a joke, meant to put him in his place, but the old man was like a grandfather to him. If he could not trust Marcos, he could never trust anyone.

Hands trembling, he opened the book, cleared his throat and began to read.

"Cuerpo de mujer, blancas Colinas, muslos blancos,
Te pareces al mundo en tu actitud de entrega…"

He paused to study the old man, as the old man had so often regarded him, eyes closed, head rolled back, listening with his heart. He read on deep into the night, when the old man allowed him to stop with the promise that he would return the next day to finish the reading. He did so and as he finished the last page, closing the book and placing it on the table, he discovered the old man was crying silent tears, tears of memory, regret, sorrow and pain.

"You have a gift," he said, not bothering to wipe the tears from his face. "You have the gift of understanding what you cannot understand." He held the book in his great hands and pressed it to his face. "Now my understanding joins with yours," he said to Neruda through the mirror of his book.

"I have spoken to your Aunt Mirabel." Again, the muscles of his body tightened. His aunt knew who Marcos was. Miguel would be greeted at home with a lecture on the company he kept. "I asked her if you were a good student. She replied that you were when you chose to be."

"Perhaps, I replied, he needs incentive."

Miguel relaxed, letting the tension flow from the center of his being through his body and out his limbs. In this world of hard cold realities, where parents were deported and died in the desert, it was the last thing he expected: human kindness.

Marcos was illiterate and he chosen Miguel to receive the opportunity he most cherished but was denied. He offered a college education on the condition that Miguel earned it. He did. He completed high school with sterling grades and attended the University of Colorado on a full scholarship from the outlaws, earning degrees in literature and political science.

The anger never left him but he used it as the old man advised. He channeled it into his studies. It was the anger that would lead almost inevitably to trouble. He joined several political activist student organizations. Some of them were considered radical even in the ultra left environment of Boulder, Colorado.

One group that railed against foreign policy, global trade policy and environmental destruction, decided to go beyond the normal methods of protest. They were determined to burn down the summer home of the CEO of Halliburton, a company that specialized in the spoils of war.

They were caught before they could do any harm. The other students, sons and daughters of the elite, were given a hand slap, six months probation and released but Miguel was held on handful of felony charges. In addition, there were questions regarding his immigration status and the validity of the documents he used to enroll at the university.

With a promise to make things uncomfortable for several high ranking officers in the Denver Police Department, El Viejo Marcos negotiated Miguel’s release on the condition that he enlist in the military.

"If he signs on the dotted line we’ll wipe the slate clean."

Miguel took the deal, volunteering for service in the United States Army. At the time, it did not seem unreasonable. Not only would it cleanse his record, he was assured it would clear his citizenship status.

It was August 2001. In a month, he would be preparing for war in Afghanistan. In less than two years, he would be deployed to Iraq.