Cesar CantuJavier Salazar has been deported twice in his life. The first time it happened, he was 11-years old.
The memory is depicted in one of his paintings: a child squats in the middle of the desert, carrying a blue backpack almost as big as his whole body. The sun sets in the horizon, scorching the sky with an orange glow. Not too far from the child, a white van and a helicopter keep a close watch. It’s the US border patrol. La Migra, as it has come to be known by most Mexican migrants on both sides of the border.
Javier is in his mid-40s now, and has been back in Tijuana for almost 10 years. Lately, he goes by a different name: The Deported Artist. Under that identity he depicts scenes of life as a migrant and a deportee, portraying the struggles of people who live –physically, socially and culturally– on the Mexico-US border, as well as criticizing the policies that have kept people like him away from his family and home, trapped in a place that feels both familiar and foreign at the same time.
But before becoming a painter, Javier found his way into a line of work that is almost customary for deportees living in northern Mexico: call centers.
“Deportees who lived most of their lives in the US speak native-level English,” Javier explained. “When we’re sent back to Mexico, it’s easy for us to find jobs in call centers; precisely because of our English level.”
Nearshore call centers have become a staple of the services industry in Mexican border cities, which are filled with native English-speaking deportees. Javier is but a single –though peculiar– example of a group of workers who have been feeding the pipeline for decades in northern Mexico.
Javier worked for call centers operators such as Confíe and TaskUs, among others, providing service to brands like Freeway Insurance, Hotel Tonight and Beachbody Gym. According to him, the call center operators where he was employed hired deportees “almost exclusively.”
“In all of the call centers I worked on, more than 90% of the workers were deportees [for English language accounts],” he said. “I did see some native Mexicans who learned English in school, not in the US. But they were very few. I saw like two or three in those five years I spent working in call centers.”
A bittersweet deal
Financially, Javier had it better as a call center agent than most people living and working in Tijuana. His salary and benefits were above average, and he out-earned all his peers who serviced Spanish-language accounts.
But call centers are infamous in most countries for being jobs for the desperate. The work is very demanding, hours are long, the office environment can be very stressful and money isn’t entirely guaranteed.
“I worked six days a week. More than half of my pay depended on bonuses. If I was late to work two days in a month, those bonuses vanished,” Javier explained. “And I had so little time. I had to do my groceries and other house stuff on Sundays. My family would visit sometimes, but I spent most of their visit working. I worked 10 hours a day. I only had time for dinner with my family and for some sleep.”
“You get a lot of abuse from clients. They yell at you, tell you they want to speak with a real American; that sort of thing. It was a very stressful job,” he added. “Even though the pay was good, it wasn’t that great. Rent is very expensive in Tijuana. I barely had enough money to pay for groceries. I couldn’t save a dime.”
In spite of their linguistic credentials, it’s hard for English-speaking deportees to land a job outside of call centers. Because many of them were raised in the US and spent most of their lives there, they are effectively outsiders among those who are, technically, their country folk. Besides, being a deportee can in itself be a disgraceful label in the eyes of many Mexican employers.
Javier tried to land a job at a gas station, a retail chain and a casino, but was rejected because he had spent time in prison, because he was a deportee and even because he has visible tattoos. When he took a shot at working in a call center, they didn’t mind that he only had a high-school education or that he didn’t even know how to send a text. His native English was what made him valuable.
“I didn’t know how to send an email or a text. I spent 10 years in prison,” he said. “ But they [the call center] told me they would hire me because it was easier for them to train me on technical skills than to teach a new language to someone who was technically proficient.”
It’s been five years since Javier took a customer call. He’s now dedicated full time to painting. He learned the fundamentals of his craft back in Oakland, when imprisoned, and decided to give painting a shot after watching Bob Ross on TV and letting his wife convince him to try. Javier would paint and she would sell his works in the US.
But Javier knows he’s one of the lucky few who have managed to make it out of the call center vortex. Most deportees in Tijuana and other border cities have very little alternatives. It’s either that or trying luck at the border once more, a venture which can be highly risky.
In Javier’s eyes, call center operators can be both helpful and exploitative. They provide job opportunities for a vulnerable community, but they also do relatively little to improve their lives. After all, there are always more deportees available for hire.
“Call centers are in a position to help the deportee community. They do, in a way; I’ll admit it. But so much is left on the table still. They could do so much more to make the relationship more just, less exploitative,” Javier said. “They stick to trivial stuff, like sponsoring races and other things to whitewash their public image. How is that helping the community?”
“We’re disposable, at the end of the day,” he continued. “There are so many other deportees out there who can take your place [in the call center], because more and more are being sent back.”
Ni de aquí ni de allá
In the middle of our interview, Javier shows off one of his many paintings: a realistically-depicted heart, bright red, shining on a blue background. The heart is flanked by butterfly wings and some of its portions are covered in the colors of the US and Mexican flags. On the top and bottom of the painting can be read the phrase: “Ni de aquí ni de allá” (Neither from here, nor from there).
The phrase summarizes the experience of Javier as a deportee. Although born in Tijuana, he spent most of his life in California. And now that he has been deported permanently, he can’t make the journey back home. Or at least not through official channels. Javier is condemned to stay in a country in which he’s technically a national but where he’s regarded effectively as a foreigner.
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That treatment seeped into his experiences working at a call center too. He and other deportee agents were rarely welcomed by their peers.
“Other call center workers who weren’t deportees barely spoke to us. And when they did, it wasn’t pleasant,” Javier said. “I had the impression that they resented us because they had college degrees and we out-earned them from day one, even though many of us came from prison, were deported or had but a high-school diploma. Their treatment was different.”
“The police would patrol the grounds near the call center,” he continued. “They would target us when we were having lunch or a smoke outside. They would extort us because they knew we earned better money than the rest.”
As an undocumented migrant in the US, Javier had to keep his head low, be willingly invisible, to feel safe. As a deported man in Tijuana, he had to do pretty much the same thing. But that’s over. As an artist, he believes it is time to speak up and let himself and others like him be seen plainly by a society that has ignored them for too long.
“I see politicians on TV speaking of immigration reform, but they address only the situation of people in transit to the US or who were already there, “ he said. “Deportees are never mentioned. We are effectively forgotten, invisible.”
“I told myself: if we [deportees] don’t speak up, our situation will never change,” Javier continued. “We tend to stay quiet because we don’t want to be discriminated against or extorted. We hide the fact we were deported. But we’ll remain invisible as long as we don’t say anything. That’s why I sign my work as Deported Artist. My art will bring visibility to the deportee community.”
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