V. THE LONG WAIT FROM DAWN TO DUSK

The yards

Given the nature of their work, truck drivers tend to socialize in the yards. These are the places where they park their trucks when they need to do paperwork or repairs. The yards have certain peculiarities, depending on their location and the close proximity of communities. Some yards, those owned by companies or cooperatives, are generally located in towns and cities, and are places where repairs are done. Sometimes there is an office on the site.

Truckers spend a relatively short time in these places, showing up when they arrive after a journey or are preparing to leave. This means that social relations among them are brief and casual. The contact between the drivers and surrounding communities is generally nil.

Another type of yard is the kind found at border areas or nearby. These border yards are parking areas where customs and immigration procedures are carried out, which means checking paperwork and cargo to cross the border. In some places, such as Peñas Blancas, these formalities are completed quickly, but in others, such as Paso Canoas (on the Panamanian border) the process is slow and can take several days. Daily traffic through some borders may sometimes exceed 100 trailers a day.

Our visits to border posts allowed us to see the differences that exist between countries. In some, like Paso Canoas on Costa Rica’s southern border, there is a large trade in clothing, food, liquor and sex. The areas around trailer yards in border posts or loading and unloading areas near docks, have diners, snack bars, kiosks, sodas or restaurants selling food and drink at reasonable prices. In some of these places we noticed that the buildings were constructed in an improvised manner and that food and drink was sold in unhygienic conditions. In some, liquor was sold.

Part of this commercial activity revolves around truckers who pass through or stay, and whose presence is considered economically important. In other border areas, trade is targeted at tourists, such as the southern border of Guatemala, where the high cost of facilities means that truckers cannot afford to use them. Some borders are simply a place to pass through, such as Costa Rica’s northern border. Nevertheless, when there are no towns on the border itself, truckers head off in small groups, or sometimes alone, to nearby communities.

The parking lots near the docks at seaports are another type of trailer site. Traffic in these places is generally heavy and these areas are also where trucks load and unload their cargo. Truckers tend to stay for shorter periods in these places, if compared with the time spent at border crossings, but occasionally they may remain there for several days.

For the purposes of the study we made several visits to different truck yards in various Central American border crossings. Paso Canoas, the border town between Panama and Costa Rica is one of the busiest in terms of trade and the length of stay of the drivers.

Paso Canoas

Mile after mile, with not a curve to break the monotony, the highway to Paso Canoas seems interminable. The only things that stop travelers being hypnotized are the characteristic potholes that shake our bones and remind us that we are still in Costa Rica. The poor condition of the roads is indicative of the region’s economic decline in recent years. “Many women use these potholes to induce abortions,” says our driver, Jose Maria, a 30 year-old Costa Rican. “They say the Pope will ban them from driving over them”. Jose Maria does not take his eyes off the road. He will be our guide when we visit a trailer yard, the place where you stop to do the immigration formalities needed to leave one country and enter another. “Six small countries and six lots of paperwork that might become unnecessary if globalizations comes to Central America.” I say to break the monotony. “And what the hell would the bureaucrats do --they’re the region’s main product?” he answers with a rhetorical question. “Well, we would make them do a studies about the time when there were borders,” I reply, to put an end to the subject.

I cannot stop thinking about what a trucker must feel. After driving for hours and hours on roads full of potholes, populated by highway thieves, passing through towns, some uglier than others, there must be a great expectation of reaching a kind of limbo or purgatory in time and space. “Borders are the places where we pay for our sins,” says our driver.

According to Jose Maria, apart from the calamity of the paperwork, one of the truckers’ greatest fears are thefts and hijackings.

We work in very unstable countries. Here they hijack and steal trucks. I don’t know if you’ve heard about that, but the fact is that they steal trucks with all the cargo. I have friends who stopped to take a pee and when they returned the trailer was gone, like a little mouse that got swallowed up by the earth. Juan, a friend, had his truck stolen with his wife who was traveling with him. He never saw her again.

According to our guide, the women who show up on the streets, usually sex workers, also steal.

When you’re traveling on the road, women appear asking for a ride. Sometimes they’re look real good and you think about it ten times…Some people take them and others don’t because they’re afraid she might be a mugger or it might be an ambush. Imagine, three months ago a friend of mine found this blonde on a roadside wearing just panties. Well, the guy went crazy and stopped to pick her up. Before he knew it, a whole gang of robbers came out and he was the one who ended up in his underpants.

Generally, in countries where there is a greater risk of being hijacked, truckers do not drive at night, though this is not always the case. They feel safer in Costa Rica and Panama. “That’s the safest journey that we do”, says Jose Maria.

“Going from one country to another, even though they’re very similar, is a good experience,” he tells me. “The culture changes, the names of the politicians and the particular tragedy of each nation,” he adds. “Costa Rica is a country of peaceful people who express violence with words,” says the truckers’ anthropologist “whereas in Panama they’ll blow your brains out at the first provocation.” These observations of the national characteristics of each country seem so unscientific that I do not ask any more questions.

We reach our destination at last. A few kilometers away are the border town of Paso Canoas, though the straight line continues. I know that it must come to an end…another kilometer, but what do we find? Surprise! The line flows into an endless queue of trailers waiting their turn at the customs post. “Shit, what a load of trailers!” yells Jose Maria, who knows how to calculate the relation between the number of vehicles and the waiting time. “No goddamn way will I get out today,” he says dejectedly. “You’re so lucky you can go back home after you’ve done your study”, he says enviously. Our trip was coming to an end. The driver would continue with the formalities while I checked out the border post. “Researchers have it made,” he says, “sometimes I wish I had a job like yours”. “Don’t think this is easy for me,” I explain, “my ass is flat from sitting for eight hours since we left San Jose”, I say wearily. “Yeah, but tomorrow you’ll have your ass in an air-conditioned office while I’ll be in the hell of Panama City.”

It is quite a spectacle. Each truck seems to have a life of its own and together they give life/energy/vitality to the town, since most of the economic activity revolves around the customs post. Paso Canoas has two snack bars with tables decorated with a plastic that is so kitsch that Lady Di would turn in her grave if she saw them. I sit at a small table covered with a plastic tablecloth and plastic cutlery. A pretty waitress smiles at me and brings me the menu. “No love scenes. This is a family restaurant”, says the menu. “Miss”, I asked intrigued, “ if this is a family restaurant, why can’t you kiss and touch people?” “Because, sir, if they’re kissing they’ll be doing it with prostitutes. Here you won’t find a wife in a hundred miles”, she replies.

The kitchens look clean and are ready to receive the diners made hungry and thirsty by the intense heat in the area. Both restaurants display their dish of the day: ox-tongue in sauce and tripe. One of them offers a “combo”: tripe, fries and a Coke for a reasonable price. “You want a little tripe?” asks the flirty waitress, who appears to wait on tables by day and have another job at night. “No, honey,” I say, “I prefer a white cheese sandwich. I have a delicate stomach.” “Well, that’s why we have a pharmacy right next door”, she replies smiling. “You eat here with us, and then go there and buy something for diarrhea. It’s a good deal.” “You’d better just give me coffee,” I answer.

The pharmacy really is next door and truckers begin to head there is search of something to relieve their physical tiredness. “Will you get me a Mejoral for my headache?” says my guide Jose Maria, who does not realize I’m sitting in the restaurant next door. “I brought this idiot down from San Jose who just asked stupid questions all the way.” “I’d better give you Tylenol,” answers the pharmacist, “you should ask the guy to pay for these.” “He was so tired from the journey he didn’t even thank me,” says Jose Maria. “What a bastard!” I think to myself, “I’ve just gotten off the truck and he’s already badmouthing me”.

A mass of taxis can be seen nearby. Young women wearing their fanciest apparel step out of these and walk haughtily through the areas with the largest numbers of truckers. They wear tight-fitting clothes that show a lot of flesh – flesh that reveals a high flour intake because little rolls of fat poke out from everywhere like timid mice. “Ana, do you think I’m too fat?” one woman asks another. “No way!” says her friend. “Those tires you have are just water retention because of the heat.” “But yesterday I was in San Jose and it was cold and the tires didn’t go down,” says her friend dejectedly. “Yeah, but they cut the water off all day at the hotel. Your body probably noticed and kept its reserves.”

There is a festive atmosphere in the town, which contrasts with the tiredness and desperation of the truckers who wait their turn at the customs post. A long wait that can last from one to seven days while they obtain a permit to continue their journey. The waitress from my restaurant chats to a colleague:

The truckers do not notice what is going on around them. At that point, their main concern is the paperwork, not the offers made by the women who wander near the trailers or the comments of the waitresses. One woman passes by a line of truckers and tried to be funny. “I’m not signing autographs today. Go line up someplace else!” The men do not laugh and ignore her as if she were made of stone.

“Hey, Juan! How long have you been in this goddamn place?”, one trucker asks another. “I got here at 6 a.m. I was among the first to get here and look where I am. I thought I’d reach the counter before 6 p.m. to deliver all this shit, but no way, it think I’ll be out by tomorrow, he says disconsolately. “Don’t bullshit me! That’s nothing; I’ve been here three days. I feel like Lot’s wife. I’m waiting for some papers to arrive from Guatemala and the company hasn’t sent them. I can’t get a permit without them.”

When they finally reach the counter, they hand in a large quantity of papers that describe the characteristics and weight of the cargo, its destination, the insurance, the vehicle permit and ten dollars in taxes. “There’s a stamp missing here, my love,” a woman immigration office tells a driver. “Go buy it at counter number four.” The man turns around and sees a line of twenty people. He looks at the officer with an expression of desperation. “I’m sorry, my love, but I can’t do anything without the stamp”, she says, deriving satisfaction from her power and from having found a mistake more serious than the millennium bug. The main behind him in the line is told that he did not write down the weight of the cargo in the correct box. “You’ll have to fill it in again, honey”, says the officer pointing to the form. The bureaucrat feels fulfilled at finding mistakes in the paperwork and sending the poor driver to join another line. “I don’t know why, but today I feel all psyched up to work”, the officer tells her colleague. The driver gives her a look that would have incinerated her if telekinesis existed. “That bitch of an office worker is known as a sadist round here,” says the driver. “They say she has an orgasm when she finds a mistake in a document.”

There is a generalized anger that alternates with bursts of laughter from different groups, who describe accidents seen on the road, problems with machinery, complaints about the heat and truckers’ anecdotes. A variety of accents intermingle, though the noise seems like a single voice, different nationalities with the same behavior…they are all truckers at the mercy of officialdom. I look at Jose Maria who is last in the long line. “Tomorrow you’ll have air-conditioning”, he says with an expression of resignation.

Outside the customs area, without interrupting the lines, many truckers are gathered around the phone booths. When they enter, their personality undergoes transformation. Their attitude is meek/submissive and the trucker becomes something else. Their voices become sweet and paused. “Hi my love, I’m at the border” a man says to someone we sense is his wife. “I’m calling you first. You know I love you very much and my wife is ill, that’s why it took me so long to get here,” he adds, and now we suspect it is not his wife. In each phone booth details are being given about itineraries, cargoes, journey times and about children’s activities.

No honey, I don’t think I’ll make it to the kid’s party, I think I’ll be back in San Jose the day after tomorrow…yeah…okay, I’ll see if I can…maybe for a moment to see how things are going…I’ve only got a couple of days to get to the Nicaraguan border.

The change in voice and attitude is clearly visible when they leave that seemingly magic space.

The heat intensifies. Groups of men, grouped together by nationality, constantly cross the wide road to sit in the snack bars and order a cold drink or a coffee. Their moods are as unpredictable as the situations they encounter on the road. One minute it is all smiles, joviality and jokes, and then suddenly a stunned silence descends. Gazes get lost in space, and even the waitresses fail to rouse them…their only concern is being served their favorite drink quickly. “Juanita,” says a waitress to another, “they don’t even look at us now, but wait „til you see them in the bar tonight.”

“They behave like gentlemen, gallant and generous, with a great experience of life that makes them real men,” says Genaro, an ice-cream vendor. “They make a very good match for the girls in this town.” Genaro has made a lot of money selling tropical fruit ice creams. “When it’s this hot I make almost ten thousand colones a day,” he tells me proudly. “The ice-creams are made from the juices left over in the snack bars. We don’t waste anything here.”

It is precisely their indifference and arrogant attitude that makes the young girls dream of being chose by one of these men, who are apparently generous when it comes to offering money and gifts. “Lucrecia, look at that handsome truck driver”, says a woman pointing to Jose Maria. Her friend nods while she sucks on one of Genaro’s ice creams. “Ah, how I love to suck!” she says in a loud voice so that the trucker can hear her. Jose Maria has moved forward five places in the queue and smiles. “I’ll give you something else to suck later, honey.”

According to many local people, the drivers “give status to the town”. “Truckers bring in money and business,” says the snack-bar owner. “No way! They’re a disgrace, they corrupt our young girls,” says Doða Josefa, who observes the comings and goings of the truckers from her comfortable rocking chair. This woman is the mother of a female clerk and shows no interest in dealing with them. “Why do talk about them that way?” we ask, surprised. “Spend the night here and you’ll see”, retorts the woman.

It is six o’clock in the evening. The temperature drops appreciably: a fresh, pleasant breeze creates an atmosphere of well being. The customs offices close and little by little the noise of conversations is replaced by the interminable roars of trailers that are being moved away from the area. Some – those who have obtained permits – return to the road to make up time, while the others head for the parking lot to continue with the customs formalities the next day. I see Jose Maria and ask him how things went.

The businesses also close. An hour later, those 200 meters of intense activity are empty/desolate and shrouded in an almost deathly silence. This allows us to observe other details in the area that were almost imperceptible earlier. There is a small square to the south of the customs building with taxis arriving, two women sitting waiting for something and clothing stores that we had not noticed before.

The parking lot is impressive. Effortlessly, the drivers park their huge trailers, one next to the other. Their number appears to have trebled during the day. It is clear that tiredness is about to overcome them: only murmurs can be heard as some of them wander about shirtless, with a towel hanging limply from their shoulder, and others rest in their cabs smoking, lost in their thoughts.

It seems that our task is over. The town is dead. Beyond the parking lot, only the two women and some taxi drivers can be seen. I keep thinking about what Doña Josefa said. This cannot be the end of it all, so I look to the left: the town stretches on, with many houses and narrow unpaved streets that indicate that the night starts somewhere, because there is more to the town than the areas around the customs.

Among the inhabitants, there is a general conspiracy, an open secret: a few kilometers from the town center there is a low-grade brothel that is often confused with modest houses nearby because of the darkness. On an old sign that is about to fall off we can just about read the words “El Ticopan”. We found it because Jose Maria pointed it out; “Go to the Ticopan if you want to have fun”.

The Ticopan is more than a bar. It is a different mental state in the life of a truck driver. It represents a community of men and women brought together by sexual pleasure and an enjoyment of the senses. It is the other side of the coin in Paso Canoas.

The music that plays behind the wooden door invites you to enter and you find darkness similar to that outside. People are gathered around many old wooden tables, a strong smell of liquor and cigarettes fills the air and a woman is dancing alone in the middle of the room, totally drunk. The light by the bar shines, and three women are sitting with drinks in their hands, gazing out towards the room. We listen to their conversation:

The chubby young man who this afternoon was talking on the phone so meekly with his wife comes up. One of the women says to him:

Fede’s eager hand moves up the woman’s leg and amid laughter they have an erotic dialogue:

They walk toward the back of the room, where a bamboo curtain divides the main area from the smaller rooms…

The men, who were sweaty and angry in the afternoon, now have a different attitude. They are funny, happy and without a trace of the worries that filled them during the afternoon, with glass in hand, this time filled with liquor, not coffee.

The bar begins to fill up. It is hard to explain how so many truckers arrived at this place. Perhaps they walked from the parking lot, following the same route we took, but went unnoticed.

But, the reality is that they are here, and their presence can be strongly felt: they are the kings of the night, the ones with the economic power, the ones who decide what will happen there. “This is the life!” says a trucker as he approaches the woman dancing alone in the middle of the room. “I’m going to teach you what a real macho is.” Meanwhile, all the rest yell encouragement. “Right on, pal”, “give her a good one!” “That woman needs a cock!” For a moment, a group of six men who are at the pool table watching and laughing join in with the shouts from the room, and then concentrate on their game again.

“Your turn, Martin. See what you can do, because you’re real bad today,” one player says to another. With a single shot, as strong as Martin’s appearance, the ball hits the corner of the table, strikes another ball and goes directly into the hole. “Good, kid, that shows real balls.” He reaches out towards his friend’s testicles, waiting for a reaction. Martin grabs his hand and places it in his crotch.

Guffaws of laughter resound at the table. “Good game, guys! Now let’s go have a good fuck! Come on, the whores are waiting.” The pool players are transformed into Don Juans. “Tired of putting your balls in with other men?” says a dyed blonde to one of the players. “Yes, my princess. Now you’re going to be my pool table”, says the man as he kisses her. “Sure, honey, but this little game’s more expensive. Each ball costs twenty five dollars.”

It is two in the morning: most of the men begin to leave silently, elated. They file out in small groups or alone, but with a similar expression, a mixture of satisfaction and tiredness, and a stagger that suggests the high intake of alcohol. I find my guide who is one of the last to leave the place.

The drivers go back to their trucks, their refuge, their home, where nobody s waiting for them, except for a deep sleep until dawn comes.

The path to the parking lot is solitary. A deep silence reigns at dawn and the customs building looks ghostly. One or two taxis can be seen in the small square along with groups of women getting in to them. They are crossing the border into Panama, just 45 minutes from their homes.

In the distance, a very thin person can be seen walking away from the parking lot. It is not possible to say whether it is man, woman or beast, but as the individual approaches all becomes clear: it is the local transvestite, whom the townspeople have already mentioned to us, but whom we have not seen until now. She is called Dalila, because she has natural long hair down to her waist. Jose Maria who walks with me warns: “That gay has cleaned out more than one Samson. That queen steals. Keep away from her.” “Have you been with her?” I ask. “Never! I’ve never been with a faggot”, he answers.

A man yells: “Here comes Dalila! More than one queer will have screwed her”. The transvestite answers: “Bye, Daddy, I came late to enjoy you. But I’ve had so many men today that I can’t fit you in. Here’s my cell number so you can call me anytime,” Dalila replies sarcastically. “The only cell that a whore like you has is in your tongue,” the man yells back. Dalila continues on her way without glancing back at him. She seems to have made enough money and need not pay attention to “those clowns”, with whom she is probably already acquainted. “You hear them sounding so macho, but I had two of them in my arms”, she says with satisfaction. Jose Maria looks at her in silence. “Hi, Jose!” says Dalila, “why haven’t you called me again?” “I’ve never slept with a gay that I can recall”, says the driver, ashamed at his lie.

The day begins again at six o’clock in the morning. The heat returns, but the truckers are looking forward to a delicious breakfast to restore their strength and continue with their paperwork. Groups of men are seated at different tables, seemingly unrelated to the ones who spent the previous evening together. Not a word is said about the events in the Ticopan, as if they had never been there, except some brief ref