Juan
Rodríguez considered himself an American, not Mexican-American. He was born in
Texas and lived his entire life in the United States except for his deployments
to Iraq and Afghanistan as a soldier in the U.S. Army. He felt the fact that he
was bilingual didn’t diminish, dilute, or enhance his status as a U.S. citizen.
He’d voted in every election—local, statewide, and national—since he turned
eighteen. He began working before he was legally allowed by law to work yet
paid taxes and social security since he began his first formal job at fourteen.
Anyone who tried to contend that he was somehow less of a citizen because his
parents had come to America outside of legal channels was going to lose that
argument, at least if Juan were party to the discussion.
He’d been a
DEA special agent for five years, serving first in Seattle after his training,
and then Miami. His features were more European than Mexican which was an
advantage in undercover work where he was able to pose as Spanish, Moroccan,
South American, or a dozen other nationalities. He was a gifted linguist and
could mimic just about any Spanish accent from Castilian, to Cuban, to the porteño
lilt of Buenos Aires. His French was just passable, but he could speak Spanish
with a French accent and could pass for a Parisian or North African when
dealing with Latin Americans who spoke no French, or at least not as well as
Juan.
He also
possessed in abundance the most important quality necessary for undercover
work: he had nerve, balls, cojones. Perhaps he was born with this virtue
or perhaps it was something he learned during six years in the infantry, much
of it in combat in some of the most contested spots in America’s Middle East
wars. His combat experience also guaranteed that he knew his way around dozens
of different small arms, as well as light artillery and explosives.
His personal
evaluation reports were the highest granted at DEA and no one who worked with
Special Agent Juan Rodríguez had anything but glowing things to say about him.
On a personal
level, he tended not to socialize much with his coworkers. He didn’t golf or
play softball, the two big sports at the Miami DEA office. He wasn’t
anti-social, by any means, he simply had friends who weren’t agents. Not being
one of the boys, along with his success as a new agent tended to breed some
resentment among the ranks. It also meant he often didn’t have someone to
defend him when his name came up in conversations behind his back.
Miami had not
too long ago been the most prestigious of the DEA offices, but trafficking had
shifted. El Paso was now where every special agent wanted to be, at least those
with ambition, or, in Juan’s case, those who needed to be near the action. He
applied for a transfer when he was first eligible, and was immediately
selected, leap-frogging over other candidates with twice as much time on the
job. No one who worked with Special Agent Rodríguez or who supervised him had
any doubt that he was qualified for the transfer to Fort El Paso, as the office
was called among DEA agents.
Rodríguez
worked several cases with another young agent in Miami and was as close to a
friend as he had there among the DEA staff. They trained martial arts together
in their off time and were drinking buddies. Not that Juan really needed it
with his coworkers, but Jenkins had his back. So, when Jenkins overheard three
agents mention Juan’s transfer to the coveted El Paso office, he eavesdropped
at a discreet distance.
“He’s a
fucking diversity hire. Christ, I wish I had two Mexican names,” one of them
said.
“Why not
change it? You can be Roberto…what is Miller in Spanish?” another asked.
“It would be molinero,
numb nuts,” Jenkins said, interrupting the trio.
The three
were embarrassed that they’d been caught in their bad-mouthing of a fellow
special agent, something looked upon very unfavorably at the DEA.
“Was it a
diversity move when he got his Distinguished Service Medal, Afghanistan
Campaign Medal, and his Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal? Not that
he needed a boost from those to make the cut here. He was second in his class
at Quantico. Oh, and he received a Bronze Star for an operation in Afghanistan.
Any of you boys have a Bronze-fucking-Star?”
Of course,
none of them had.
“Me neither,
but I’m not a diversity hire.”
The more
Jenkins spoke, the angrier he became.
“I’ve heard
the three of you speaking Spanish, and all three together wouldn’t amount to a
decent junior high Spanish student, not a good one anyway. Or maybe you
don’t think Spanish is important in this job?”
As the three
agents made mealy-mouthed appeals about what they’d said before, attempting to
back down from their insult, Jenkins continued his assault.
“Any of you
blue-bloods think you could match Juan on the pistol range, or know as much as
he does about small arms of every variety? And forget about hand-to-hand
combat. I train with him regularly. He’s been doing jiu-jitsu since he was a
teenager. I don’t consider myself a slouch on the mat, but I’ve never beat the
guy, not one fucking time. I feel like a five-year-old fighting his father when
I roll with him.”
It wasn’t
that Jenkins had nothing but praise for his friend. Juan drank too much, but
who among them didn’t? Jenkins was also ex-military, an organization
practically built around functional alcoholism. He knew that Juan was never
going to be the career man who works his way up through the ranks to eventually
run the show, or at least a big piece of it. Those posts were reserved for
family men, careerists at heart. As far as Jenkins could tell, Juan didn’t even
like his job.
They had many
conversations at the bar about their work. In Juan’s estimation, the entire
drug interdiction idea was a lie. Everything they did at DEA was doing nothing
to curb the influx of illegal drugs into the United States.
“Sooner or
later, we’ll just legalize everything. I say, the sooner, the better,” Juan had
said. “What does this say about all the people we’ve put in prison so far?”
Juan liked
working under-cover, he got off on the danger. It was his way of dealing with
his PTSD from too much time spent in war zones. He confessed all of this to
Jenkins. Even though he knew that Juan didn’t believe in his work, he wasn’t
about to let these three blue-blood douche bags tear into his friend.
“You guys
really want to go to the El Paso office?” he asked. “Be careful what you wish
for.”
The three
“blue-bloods” had nothing to say.
“Special
Agent Juan Rodríguez a diversity hire?”
Jenkins
almost spat this out. Now he was fuming.
“Diversity
hire, my ass.”
*Juan
Rodríguez is one of the protagonists in John Scheck’s novel, La Frontera Saga.
