This is Rodrigo. We met him a couple days ago in the midst of a drug overdose. He had an interesting, and mostly intelligible, story. He is 20 years old. He is from the south of Mexico, but like many, came here to work in the grape fields. They pay about 50 cents an hour. That’s not a lot of money. Certainly not for one of the more expensive cities in the country.
He told us the working conditions were horrible. That he had constant diarrhea and dehydration and was not allowed to use the bathroom. He said his employers fed the employees, but that the food was very bad and made him sick. He also claims that workers are threatened by force not to leave the job. So he claims he escaped. That was shortly before we met him.
After he left the fields, he and his friend were picked up by a girl that invited them to a place to have fun. He describes the fun as taking a drug with which he was unfamiliar. He thinks the name of the drug was called ice. He said he drinks and has done drugs before, but not regularly. By the time we met him, he was not doing so well. So we called an ambulance.
Interestingly, the paramedic that arrived was someone I had met before when I went shooting at a police camp. I recognized him right away. He ended up taking Rodrigo to the hospital.
We have no way of knowing if any of his story was true. It seemed credible and we’ve met others in the same situation here in the past. Whatever the situation, the kid is a mess with very little hope of a less messy future.
Rodrigo’s father wired him some money so that he could take a bus home the next day. He stopped in to see us and to thank us for the help.