Chapter XIV

                El Amigo Is Coming

The long row of one-room workers' shacks ran along the 
canal bank. Behind the dusty unpainted buildings all 
exactly alike in their monotonous insufficiency mesquite 
and thorny huisache trees grew up and down both sides of 
the canal banks. In front of the row of buildings endless 
cotton fields spread. Since it was too hot and smoky to try
to use wood in the makeshift stoves inside the huts most 
occupants had attempted to cook outside on an open fire. A 
few such tired smouldered out of the gray ashes in front of 
a few huts. 
    Ferree's green and white Ayuda Voluntaria Frontera 
van rumbled and shook down the dirt road. He heard the 
small boys running behind his vehicle shout "Amigo 
Amigo." They'd given hin a name these people had. 
Amigo. It was the Spanish word for friend. 
    He stopped in front of a shack and went in. On the
cement floor in the center of the one-room building lay 
the body of a young woman. Her bare feet protruded from 
the covering of wild flowers which her friends had gathered
in mute testimony of her desperate need.  A few hushed 
neighbors sat in the room. 
    In an adjoining shack Frank found a mother of four
children who had lain for eight days in a corner of the

  -- 65 --

building, stricken with the same illness that had killed the 
young woman. 
    The woman who was still alive had called her family to 
her and begged them in a weakened voice to "go to the 
Colonia. El Amigo. He will help me."  
    A small boy had guided the tearfull husband on foot 
across the fields to Ferree's small acreage on the north side 
of Harlingen. The hov knew that the American would take
sick Mexican laborers into his home and help them to re- 
cover. Mexican field laborers knew that day or night they  
were welcome to make their needs known to the "Amigo." 
    When he learned ot the woman's plight, Ferree im- 
mediately drove out to the row of huts. He looked in at the
suffering woman who had propped herself up with her back 
against the wall, afraid to lie on the floor as the dead 
woman had done. 
    "Put her in the truck," Ferree said. He saw that she 
was made comfortable in the van, then found room for the 
husbands the children, the family's scant belongings. Before 
nightfall, the woman was stretched out in a bed in Ferree's
shack, had been given medicine, and was sleeping peace- 
fully.
    He then returned to the shacks on the canal bank and
asked the silent few gathered around the dead woman:
"Who knows of this?"
    A man ill the corner raised his face to the dim light in 
the rooms "She did not have a chance. When she was taken 
sick with the fever and the headache, we asked the Mexican 
foreman for a doctor. The foreman said to wait a while, she
might get better.
    "We waited two days. Her fever got worse. We asked 
for a doctor again. He told us, "Go into town and get a doc-
tor if you want one."
    "What can we do? We cannot go into town the patrol 
will catch us -- besides there is no money.
    So that night, without bed, table, or chair to break the
bareness of the room, death eased the suffering of the

  -- 66 -- 

young woman lying on the cement floor. 
    The foreman decided it was necessary to notify a jus- 
tice of the peace of the woman's death, but when the J.P. 
asked him to buy two boards from which a casket could be 
fashioned, the foreman refused.
    Ferree appealed to a county commissioner for the two
boards, and with two other men, and working by the side 
of the house where the body lay, they fashioned a suitable 
coffin. 
    Although Ferree and the others knew that under Texas
law bodies not embalmed were required to be buried
within twenty-four hours after death, there is just so much
a man can do, law or no law. So they rested, and started for
the cemetery at nine the next morning.
    Ferree's old white and green truck provided the trans-
portation for the body and a few friends to the open grave.
Two men climbed down into the excavation, which was
made long enough to stand in at each end, and gently low-
ered the body to its last resting place.
    Other helping hands pulled the two men up, and wait-
ing men filled and rounded the grave. A few flowers, 
gathered by women along the roadside, were strewn on
top.
    Ferree, the Amigo, said a few words of peace for the 
woman, the stranger. No one knew where she had come 
from, only that, with her brother, she had journeyed to the 
Texas border and swam the river to the promised land of 
Texas. Later the Border Patrol had picked up her brother  
out of the fields and hauled him back to Mexico. She, left 
alone, and anxious to do a man's work in the Texas fields 
until her brother returned, had found death, instead. 
    Somebody laboriously penciled "Maria Garcia, died 
April 15, 1949, age, 26 years," on the cross which had been  
made from packing crates. 
    A week later at the Amigo's house, the mothers fever 
left and the swollen face returned to normal The woman, 
anxious to show her appreciation, was up and about trying 

  -- 67 -- 

to do light housekeeping for her Amigo. 
    One night, in answer to Ferree's questioning, she 
pushed the kettle of beans to the back of the top of the oil
drum stove "Everywhere, in Mexico, in Texas, always it is 
the same.  Our people are continually struggling to get food 
to sustain them, never enough, never quite enough The 
grapevine told of much work and the many chances to earn 
dollars. That is why so many families in Mexico give up and 
risk everything they have, even their lives, to cross the Rio 
Bravo, to have a chance to earn enough to give their chil- 
dren food to eat so they can grow strong and straight and 
healthy and to go to school to learn to read and write and 
figure Bnt it is always the same, always just the same, 
much work and little pay We work hard, we cannot pay 
the store for what we buy, what we need " She paused as if 
afraid she'd said too much. Then atter a long silence, she 
went on, her voice low, barely audible 
    "I remember that young girl who died She and her 
brother came across together. He was a friendly boy, but
the patrol, they caught him one day and hauled him off 
    "The girl was in another field with me she was not 
really pretty, but she was so nice she seemed pretty. She 
laughed so much hefore they took her brother away. They
had such hopes. 
    "They tried so hard, and it finally came to this." The
woman used her hands to wipe silent tears from her eyes 
    It was late at night. The stove had cooled. With some 
American bread and a can of sardines, the woman and her 
family supped with Ferree and then prepared for sleep. 
    Much later Ferree heard the woman and her hushand 
talking about how pleasant the cool Gulf breeze was which
came in through the open windows From his cot Frank 
looked out and saw the large, red, semi-tropical moon  
climb into the night sky, and he thought how beautiful the 
night, how harsh the long hot days in the fields, how
greedy some men. 
    He heard the woman tell her husband to try to go to 

  -- 68 -- 

sleep soon, for the morning would come too soon, and the
cotton trucks would be loading to take the people with their
hoes to the fields.
    Next day Ferree roamed the back roads with his
mobile makeshift cafeteria and field hospital in his van.
He'd so constructed the stuff that it could be lifted in and
out as needed.
    The laborers smiled as he drove up. They stood in lit-
tle groups at the ends of the rows, in the weeds at the
field's edge and under the scant shade of the cotton rows.
Children cared for other children; crying babies waited for
their mothers' return; mothers who knew that only by fill-
ing the long white cotton sacks could they exist, continued
picking, continued breathing.
    He heard a woman's scream . He looked and saw a
frantic young female throw off her cotton sack and leap
across a few rows where she had left her baby sleeping in
the shade of some tall weeds. Horrified, he saw a tractor
bearing down upon the place the mother was racing for.
The woman, in a last desperate leap, sprang in front of the
on rushing machine and was struck down. She disappeared
underneath the tractor and the grass.
    The driver stopped the tractor, jumped from his seat
and rushed to the front. Gently he pulled the mother free.
Others laid her on the ground beside the bruised and
frightened baby while El Amigo cared for her broken leg
tenderly.

    Ferree came to learn the names of the decent farmers,
the men with a conscience. He referred wetbacks to such
men, men who were good to the Mexicans and who did
much to make them happy and contented. Men who under-
stood that by allowing the Mexican to work at his own pace,
admittedly slow, the result would be slow but excellent
workmanship, that oftentimes the Mexican would put in
overtime of his own free will, and eventually would accom-
plish as much or more work of a better quality than when 

  -- 69 --

he did when he was pushed and rushed to measure up to  
the Gringo standard of a lick-and-a-promise fast job. 
    Such farmers would take their laborers to a country 
store where they could buy at the same price that the large 
chain store charged in town. They also bought money or- 
ders for the men to send back to their families in Mexico. 
Sometimes a farmer would huild a large cement dance plat- 
form to keep the men away from the beer joints in town, 
where they would have spent all their money and have 
gotten into trouble. 
    Ferree's acreage on the north side of Harlingen came 
to be known as the "Colonia" among Mexican farm labor- 
ers. It was their haven, their medical aid station, their in- 
ternational bureau, the abode of the one man in the United 
States they were absolutely certain they could trust.  
 
  -- 70 --


                      Chapter XV

              Attention Cotton Pickers!

At the Colonia, the Amigo was alarmed at the increasing
number of bodies being taken from the river. Seven, eight,
ten or more bodies were being pulled from the river daily.
Untold numbers of others were washed out into the Gulf of
Mexico, never to be heard of again.
    Thirty-eight bodies had been discovered in a burial
place on the Mexican bank where bandits had been active.
    Near Santa Maria, twenty miles upstream from
Brownsville, residents told the Amigo how officers had re-
moved twelve bodies from a water hole beside the river
during the dry season in the spring months following last
year's cotton harvest. 
    A few pickers, filled with terror by the rumors, began
to walk back across the international bridges, only to be ar-
rested by Mexican immigration officers as they left the
bridge in Mexico, and thrown into the crowded jails to
serve a two-week sentence and be fined for their illegal de-
parture from the country. Many of them were beaten and
robbed by the soldiers and guards placed in charge of 
them, and later doled out to local Mexican farmers as un-
paid serfs, for punishment.
    The Amigo could see that with the record cotton crop
that year, increasing numbers of pickers would be returning 

  -- 71 -- 

to their homes with their earnings at the end of the har-
vest and they would all be at the mercy of the river killers
    For days,the Amigo, thinking the penalty of crossing
the bridges the lesser of two evils, tried to enlist aid from 
different groups and individuals to take steps to end the
deaths, but without results.
    At last an idea came to him.  He had ten dollars in his
pocket and he used them to get several large placards
printed tip in Spanish as follows: 

                 ATTENTION COTTON PICKERS

     When you return to Mexico go over the International
 Bridges and do not risk your life by the illegal river cross-
 ing where you may be killed for your small savings Your
 government guarantees your return have no fear of any-
 thing.

    The Amigo started nailing the cards on cotton trucks
and on the trailers at the various gins so the pickers could
see them when the empty vehicles returned to the fields. 
    Now the lines of home-bound pickers crossing the
bridges into Mexico grew more numerous and with the 
Mexican jails overflowing stockades were hastily built to 
confine the errant pickers and their families In order to 
ease the strained facilities. Many of the detained were doled
out free to local Mexican farmers to use in their harvests 
    A neighbor friend joined the Amigo and brought his 
auto with him. Together, working long days and returning
at night to the Colonia. only to rise and begin nailing the 
placards on the trucks at daybreak they began to spread 
the notices over the entire Valley. One hot afternoon while
they were in Progresso, a gin manager asked for a hundred 
cards to distribute to his truck drivers. A San Juan druggist
asked that two cards be mailed to him for display in his 
store window. 
    A Mexican immigration chief, one with a conscience, 
invited the Amigo to carry his campaign into Mexico and

  -- 72 -- 

the residents of his border area eagerly displayed and 
cherished the large white cards.  
    A rancher- asked for a few "Some of my wetbacks do 
not believe what I tell them about the river bandits. Now 
they will believe. I will nail the placards on my garage door 
at the ranch," he said. 
    In spite of the humanitarian purpose of his activities,
Ferree ran into much opposition from farmers, who thought 
such cards would only spell trouble for the Valley, although 
they seemed at a loss to explain exactly how. 
    Other farmers did not want anybody to post anything 
on their cotton trailers "Let one guy put up a notice and 
soon the whole trailer will he covered," one reasoned "Ev-
ery snake-oil vendor in the Valley will demand equal 
space. 
    In many places as soon as the signs were tacked on the 
cotton trucks and trailers at the gins, other men ripped the 
notices off and burned them.
    Ferree was now in debt over ninety dollars on his print- 
ing bill, but still the presses rolled on, and within two 
weeks six thousand notices had been displayed in promi- 
nent places giving their message in Spanish for all to read 
    More and more Ferree became aware of the building
problem of the half million men, women and children
stranded on the Texas side of the Rio Grande and who were
confronted with the bridge penalties he sat down and 
wrote a letter to the president of Mexico, Miguel Aleman, 
asking him to allow free passage, without hindrance to the 
returning braceros.
    Within three days he had his answer.  He went to the 
bridges and saw long lines of heavily laden pickers, carrying 
their entire belongings, walking off the bridge on the Mexi- 
can side without being halted or checked, unmolested by 
the immigration officials on the Mexican side, free once 
more to go where they desired. 
    He moved over the short distance from the bridge to 
the center of Matamoros, Mexico. At the market, at the

  -- 73 -- 

Plaza. on the streets people were everywhere waiting for 
trains to take them to their homes in the interior of Mexico.
    That night sitting under a dim light bulb at his Co-
lonia the Amigo slowly spelled out a telegram on the bat-
tered typewriter he had bought in Mexico City at bargain
prices many years before.

   Senor Miguel Aleman
   Presidente de Mexico 
   Los Pinos, Mexico, D. F.

     With the many thousands of residents of the Valley
 along both sides of the Rio Grande I join in sending this
 telegram expressing our thanks and gratitude for your merci-
 ful order opening the international bridges to the free pas-
 sage of the returning cotton pickers

    He signed the telegram simply "Frank Ferree."

    It was midday when two women and a man stopped 
under the shade of a tall palm near the bus station in Har- 
lingen One of them, Josefa, was reeling with a fever and
nausea. She lay among the bundles in the bright reflected
sunlight. 
    Late in the afternoon a truck pulled up and stopped at
the curb across the street. Frank Ferree stepped out.
"Buenos tardes Senor.  Is the Senora sick?"

    The man standing on the sidewalk beneath the tree  
exclaimed "El Amigo! it is El Amigo! Si senor. She is 
sick.  We wait. Maybe someone will give us a dime each. 
We want to go out of town a little way on the bus and wait 
along the road. Maybe the patrol will see us and take us to
the bridge."
    "Get into the truck." Ferree said. 
    He took the sick woman into his house placed her on 
a clean and comfortable home-made bed and pulled out his 
medicine which he knew from past experience was effective 

  -- 74 -- 
 
in fever cases. Sure, he was practicing medicine without a  
license, perhaps, but if he didn't practice medicine for such  
hopelessly sick people, who would?  
    Three days later the woman was well, but weak. She 
wanted to start for the Border, to return to her native  
Mexico. The Amigo took the family to the bus station and  
bought tickets for them, and in the late-afternoon sun he 
stood on a street corner and waved good-bye as they pulled 
out of town, destination Matamoros. 

   -- 75 -- 

                     Chapter XVI

           Food and Jobs for the Starving

Eventually the U.S. government having come to some sort
of tentative agreement with Mexico, set up a farm labor
processing center in Harlingen. Although farmers moaned
and groaned, as farmers are prone to do, even when they
are getting rich, an agreement with Mexico had been 
worked out whereby laborers could enter the United States
legally, be processed and shipped to fields anywhere in the
United States where they might he needed.
    The first year the Harlingen center had processed
50,000 laborers for the cotton fields of Mississippi, Louisiana,
Arkansas, and Texas.  As many as 2,000 a day had been con- 
tracted, assuring the men of good wages, subsistence when
not working, shelter and medical aid. No more were they
homeless fugitives from their own country and illegal resi-
dents of the land where they hoped to find employment.
    But the second year of the processing center, as in so
many government operations, hitches developed.
    Early in September Mexican men, Farm laborers, ar-
rived from the interior of Mexico. and looked across the Rio
Grande towards Texas Their hopes were high at the promn-
ise of something better on the U S. side of the river
They knew little else than the distorted information that in
the U.S. wages were so much higher than what they'd 
 
  -- 76 -- 

made in the fields of their home country.
    At dusk they. made small bundles of their belongings
and waded the low river to the Texas side and started out
for the contracting camp they'd heard about in Harlingen,
some twenty-five miles north and west of where they'd
crossed.
    They walked along little-used roads and across the
fields until daylight, and through the long hot day they
waited in the thorny mesquite that grew on a canal's edge
and ate tortillas taken from a bundle and drank the canal
water to slake their thirst.
    Everywhere in the open spaces among the brush, in
the weed patches, under the large mesquite trees, they saw
the sleeping forms of men seeking contracts, the dying
night fires glowing dimly.
    They lay down on the canal's dry path to wait for day-
light. In the early morning they learned that the center ex-
pected to start processing men on Tuesday. It was Sunday.
Only two more days. Their tortillas would last until then.
    From far and near, by day and by night, men had been
arriving. Many had exhausted their small savings just get-
ting to the border, and had arrived hungry and destitute
after wading the river. They lived in hastily erected huts
made from palm fronds or of paper boxes. Sheets of old
corrugated tin made walls for some and roofs for others.
Others slept under the large mesquite trees.
    At one end of the camp, near the offices, a small food
stand had been set up by someone, a friend of the officials
probably. The stacks of bread, the hanging bunches of
bananas only seemed to aggravate the hunger of the men
who had arrived hungry and weak and destitute. Others,
who had small savings yet, refused to pay double the prices
for which the same items could be bought outside the
camp's area at the risk of running into the patrol if they
left the area.
    By Tuesday, the crowd of hopeful workers had grown
to three thousand, but by midday the sign was taken down, 

  -- 77 -- 

and officials announced no work orders had been approved
by the Mexican government in Mexico City.
    Frank Ferree, the Amigo, had been keeping an eye on
the situation as he went about his other duties. He visited
the center, walked among the men and learned of their des-
perate need of food. Surrounded on all sides by the hun-
gry men, he looked at the sea of faces turned towards him,
all of them gaunt and drawn.
    Ferree was, himself; as thin and hungry looking as the
men. Dressed in cast-off clothing. and with his open Mexi-
can sandals cut from old tires held on by two straps, he
seemed to be the last person in the area that could do any-
thing for himself, much less for others.
    "I will try to bring some food," he said simply. No big
promises, no hot-air eloquence, just a simple promise to get
the help that was needed.
    "When?" a man close by asked.
    "At midday," the Amigo replied softly.
    As Ferree turned to leave in search of food, hardbit-
ten, lean, half-starved men cleared an opening before him,
while others laid their hats in his path for him to walk
upon. To the miserable, humble fieldhands, illegally in a
foreign land, without leadership, utterly destitute, waiting
day after day in the hope of finally securing a work con-
tract, this man, their Amigo, seemed their only hope.
    Ferree went to work. The president of a local bus line
volunteered to furnish transportation, to pick up the food,
and to provide a bus and a driver to distribute the food. A
couple of bakeries promised to give 100 loaves of bread
each, and another company donated 120 gallons of canned
vegetables.
    Shortly before midday, the bus approached the edge of
the camp. The manager of the center got on the loud
speaker and asked "that only hungry men get into line" and
for all to "preserve order when the food arrived."
    As the bus drove to the edge of the hungry mass of
humanity, the Amigo quickly realized he'd made a mistake.
It had been planned to have one man stationed inside the

 -- 78 -- 

bus at the front door to hand out the vegetables to a line
moving alongside of the bus. As the bus stopped, hordes of
hungry men crowded and swarmed over the top and into
the windows, and finally through the doors. All attempts to
pass out the food in an orderly manner failed.
    The Amigo pushed his way outside while the driver,
who had been crowded into the back seat, climbed over the
heads and backs of the packed men in order to reach the
driver's seat and try to move the bus into the open again.
The other helper, a small man, was stretched out on the
floor in the front end, literally run over and trampled un-
seen by the starving men.
    The driver started the vehicle and drove around the
edge of the camp and the milling throng.
    Laborers who had not been inside a building for
weeks, who had lived in the brush and had existed like
animals without food or shelter, asked if they might please
sit a moment in the bus seats to eat their bread. Others
grabbed and gulped down whatever they could get.
    Finally, a semblance of order was restored and the last
can of vegetables was handed out, the last piece of bread
snatched from the floor. The 200 loaves of bread and the
120 cans of vegetables had fed more than 2,000 men.

    The camp had grown to such proportions that at last
city officials were forced to take notice. The mayor had said
the problem of the starving men was the national
government's headache. Officials of the local Red Cross had
met and decided it was not a national disaster. Two
thousand starving men simply wasn't enough to bother
with. Besides, being aliens, they couldn't vote, so who
needed them?
    Local and national authorities were now solidly arrayed
against supplying more food, no matter that the men were
starving. The two bakeries refused to help further, and
pressure was being brought to bear upon the bus line to re-
fuse transportation.
    The Amigo made a public appeal to the press for 1,000

  -- 79 -- 

loaves of bread daily. A housewife, aware of the plight of 
the workers, solicited money and food from neighbors and 
friends. A local business promised to give 1,500 gallons of 
vegetables. By noon another load of food was loaded into 
the bus, but there was no bread. 
    No matter. The Amigo was used to making do with 
what he had.
    Back at the camp, the loudspeaker announced again
that food was about to he distributed and asked for order. 
The voice on the loudspeaker was a prearranged signal for 
the bus driver, who had guided the vehicle along a side 
street to avoid detection, to line it alongside of the ball park 
fence quickly, leaving a narrow lane for the men to pass. In 
order to avoid a repetition of the mess of the day before, 
the doors and all but two of the windows were closed. 
    Ferree instructed the waiting laborers to form a large
semi-circle leading to the front of the bus. The line started
moving, and out of the windows two men passed out the
gallon cans of vegetables, one can to every fourth man, and
later one to every three men. Ferree stood by the rear of
the bus, overseeing the project. 
    A local store had given some wilted grapes and 
bananas. A little boy who had come to the line with his 
father, stopped alongside Ferree, and tugging at his hand,
asked if he might have a few of the grapes. Who could re- 
sist such a request?  Certainly not Frank Ferree. The boy's
shy smile of thanks was picked up and reflected in the faces
of all those who stood nearby. 
    Even these rough-hewn laborers gradually began to get 
a feeling of the quality of the man they were dealing with. 
A hush settled over the camp as everyone ate in peace and
their voices were lowered respectfully in the presence of 
this ragged bum, the Amigo who, for no reason they could 
discern, had befriended them in their darkest hour. 
    Eventually, the population of the camp grew to 5,000
men. Almost all of them slept in the open under the stars 

  -- 80 --

at night.  Would they have food the next day?  When would 
the officials of the camp start processing?  When would they 
have work contracts?
    Finally, their camp fires low, they slept. 

    In the early hours of the morning, before it got light, 
Border Patrolmen surrounded the camp, roused the men 
and told them to get ready to move.  A few were ordered 
into trucks.  Then quietness settled again over the camp. 
Government officials had again, true to form, made a mess 
of things.
    The official plan had been to move all laborers during 
the night to a labor camp on the outskirts of the city, but it 
was soon abandoned when investigation of the proposed lo- 
cation showed the grounds were too small to hold the large 
number of men.  
   Later that day immigrations chiefs arrived.  New plans were 
made for the evacuation of the camp. 
   The men were lined up in four lines and loaded into 
trucks whose owners had been asked to haul them. without 
charge, back to the international bridges at the border. 
   That night the campground in Harlingen was quiet.
The campfires had gone out and only the makeshift shelters 
remained as evidence of the abandoned hopes and efforts 
the departed men had made in their urgent search for jobs. 
   That very afternoon, only echoes from the empty camp 
had responded when the announcement went out over the 
loudspeakers that work orders for 165 men had finally been 
approved and received from Mexico City, with more work 
orders soon to follow. 
   Ferree's knowledge of human nature and the ways of 
the world was uncanny.  That night he and a couple of 
others went over the abandoned camp, searching the  
grounds, guiding their flashlight rays among the brush and 
weeds, into the deserted huts along the dark canal.  He    

  -- 81 -- 

hoped the search would prove useless, that no sick or still
body would he found, left behind when the patrolmen had
passed through.
   As they neared the extreme end of the camp's bound-
ary they came upon three men crouched in the deeper
shadows at the trail's end by the canal bank. Seeing the
lights, the frightened men had retreated to the camp's 
boundary fence and awaited the searching party.
   "Buenas noches. We are friends," Ferree said. The
flashlight went over the rough clothes the men wore. It
stopped momentarily on their tear-ridden faces, gaunt with
hunger, and then quickly shone down to their bare feet.
   "Buenas noches, Amigo," one of the men said. He had
recognized the tall gaunt figure behind the light.
   "Do you have any food?" Ferree asked.
   "No, senor. We came early Sunday morning. Our tor-
tillas held out for two days. For the past three days we
have had nothing except one can of vegetables, the second
time food was passed out."
   One of the men with Ferree handed a fifty-cent piece
to each man. Ferree matched it with his own money. "We
are looking to see if any sick have been left behind. Do you
know of any?"
   "No, senor. We have seen no one. Even the empty
cans, they took them along with them."
   Ferree and his helpers left. 
   Back at his shack, the Amigo sat down to think. The
thousands of men who had been deported to Matamoros
and Reynosa would fare even worse in their own country
since they had no money to get to their homes. They would
jam the railroad stations, sleeping there at night, walking
the streets at day in the hopes of finding an acquaintance
who might help them. Others would camp along the river
banks and stare out across the water, wondering what to
do.
   Ferree knew that even if the men had stayed in the
Harlingen processing center, only one in five of them could

  -- 82 -- 

have signed up if given the chance to work, due to a sense-
less government ruling that would have required them to
have been in the U.S. before July 26 in order to be eligible
for contracts. Just why July 26 was such a magic date, only
a bureaucratic mind could fathom.
    Ferree sat beneath the single light bulb dangling from
the roof of his shack and pondered. He knew that provi-
sions had been written into the International Labor Agree-
ment to prevent and discourage just such a movement of
workers from Mexico to the contracting centers in Texas as
these men had experienced.
    It seemed to Ferree that educated men, sitting in air-
conditioned offices, with plenty of help, almost unlimited
resources and power, and whose orders were obeyed to the
letter - it seemed that such men could come up with bet- 
ter methods for dealing with human lives than they had 
just demonstrated. 
    He sat there and he thought of the children who had 
never learned to play, working alongside of their fathers, 
their faces growing a shade darker each day in the fields
under the boiling sun; the women trying to do the heavy
field work, a girl trying to climb the ladder to the top of the
cotton truck, carrying fifty pounds of cotton; the whole fam- 
ily working in the fields to earn what one man should 
make.
    Next day Ferree scrounged up thirty sacks of bread
which he personally distributed to the displaced groups at
Matamoros. He gave one half to the workers gathered
around the immigration station, and the other half to the
hundreds at the railroad station.
    He saw a train about to depart for Monterrey, Mexico.
It had been sent on orders from Mexico City to transport
all workers who wished to return to their homes. Only a
few of the seats were occupied. The workers still hadn't had
the hope smashed out of them. They still wanted to work
for the higher wages in the promised lands the fields of cot-
ton in the United States.

  -- 83 --

    "If we can only get a half a loaf of bread to last us two
days, we will wait for the chance of getting a contract," one 
said. Others hardly knew what decision to make. Should 
they board the train while they had a chance to get home? 
Could they get contracts if they remained? The only things 
they were sure of were the muddy, raging waters of the Rio 
Grande and of the thorny brush which seemed everywhere. 
And the mosquitoes.
    Ferree saw a man returning from a small store with a
half cup of dried beans. He had a fire in the brush, and he
dipped water from the river to pour on the beans while
they cooked over the fire. The beans had cost him his last
twenty-four Mexican centavos, a little over two cents in
United States currency.
    Ferree was not a man to dilly-dally. By mid-afternoon
he was on a second-class bus when it left Matamoros
southward for Mexico City.
    At the Associated Press office in the Mexican capital
Ferree called a loyal friend of the bracero and made an ap-
pointment to go to his home. Together, they typed up a
telegram for the Mexican president, asking for work con-
tracts or food for the hungry job seekers stranded along the
northern border. 
    At 2 P.M. the palace offices at los Pinos would close 
for the day. The president was scheduled to leave at 6 A.M. 
the next morning for a two weeks tour of Baja California. At
twenty minutes before 2 P.M. the Amigo filed his telegram. 
Then he rested. He had arrived in time. His work was
done . . . for a while.
    He was very tired. The days of trying to obtain food at
the border, that sea of hungry faces the useless, hopeless
efforts of those men trying to find work tugged at his heart-
strings. It wore a man out to see such suffering day after 
day. Then, too, the urgent journeys he had made in the 
interest of his "people" took their toll on his gaunt,
weather-beaten frame.
    He boarded an early-morning second-class bus for the

  -- 84 --

trip back through the mountains to Valles, Mexico. There 
he secured a small, stuffy, hot room, and then was glad to 
he on his way again the next morning. 
    It was supper time when he arrived at San Fernando,
the sleepy little town on the bank of the Conchos River. At
the hotel lunchroom, he ordered some pan dulce (sweet
bread) and water, which would cost his last remaining 
twenty centavos. A couple of new-found friends on the bus 
invited him to order whatever he wished. They would pay 
the bill. He declined the offer. For many days he had eaten 
only enough to sustain strength. In Mexico City a two-pesos 
meal had been sufficient. He did not know the outcome of 
his mission, and he had little desire for food. 
    The bus arrived in Matamoros too late for him to get a 
Matamoros-Brownsville bus which stopped running at 8 
P.M.
    Swinging his shopping bag over his shoulder, he 
started to walk the two miles between the neighboring 
cities. Nearing the Rio Grande, his lagging footsteps  
quickened, his burden became light, the heavy load was  
lifted from his heart, and as he crossed the International  
Bridge on foot, his journey seemed to have been worth- 
while. 
    No telltale flickering campfires gleamed along the river 
bank where, a week before, he had left a thousand hungry 
men.
    The Amigo knew as he walked across the bridge that 
new fires of courage and hope burned now in the breasts of 
the deported men who had been placed under work con- 
tracts, assured of food, medicine, and protection at good 
wages. 
    The Mexican president, acting on Ferree's telegram 
before leaving for Baja California, had given strict orders for 
immediate approval for all the work orders that had been 
pending.

  -- 85 --

                   Chapter XVII 

          Invitation From the White House 

It was May l96O, and it had been a long hard day among
the needy inhabitants along the Mexican side of the Border.
His bin was now empty of food, clothing, and medicines,
but it had been full when the Amigo had started out that
morning.
    When he arrived back in Harlingen, Frank checked his
post office box. A letter fell out on the floor of the post
office. It was from the White House.
    Inside was an invitation from President Eisenhower
asking Frank to attend a "black tie" dinner in the Statler
Hotel in Washington, D.C. Also invited were the ambas-
sadors of the fifteen countries that the president had re-
cently visited. 
    The local newspaper and TV stations started campaigns 
to raise funds tor Frank's trip. A bank president loaned his 
tuxedo, the airline that served the Valley offered him a free 
ride to Houston. A group of women in Washington wired 
the local newspaper that they wanted to help with funds 
and they also offered to see that Frank was taken care of 
while in Washington. 
    Texas Congressman Joe M. Kilgore and Harlingen's 
Mayor Worth Wood made arrangements to accompany 
Frank to Washington.

 -- 86 -- 

     At the dinner, Mayor Wood and Frank were seated at 
 a table with high State Department officials and their 
 wives. All stood when the president entered. 
     Frank ate one of the few complete meals he'd ever 
 eaten in his life. 
     On the passenger plane returning to Harlingen, Frank 
 was seated next to the aisle. Several persons passed by and 
 dropped bills into his coat pocket. Harlingen's Mayor Wood 
 had made known to the plane's passengers the events of the  
 "unofficial Ambassador from Texas" dining with President 
 Eisenhower. 

  -- 87 -- 

                    Chapter XVIII

               Volunteer Border Relief

Frank Ferree and his work are not as simple as they appear 
on the surface. He is a naive and unschooled man, crude 
rough-hewn in every sense of the word, yet he has over-
come most adversaries and performed miracles. 
    For more than thirty-five years now he has given the 
poor what they need - food, clothing, a few Christmas par- 
ties, some relief from pain. Most of all, he's given them the 
feeling that someone is paying attention to the fact that 
they are in desperate need.
    Many, who ought to know better, hold Ferree in con- 
tempt because he is so simple that he enjoys helping his 
fellow man.  How can he be smart, they say, it in all his 
eighty-three years he has not seemed to understand that  
people are good only because it makes them feel good to be 
good, that there's no such thing as an unselfish action? 
Ferree does good to the poor because he likes to do it, they
say.
   Well that's just the point. Ferree likes to do good. 
Most of us like to do something else, usually not nearly so 
praiseworthy. A lot of us like to get rich by whatever evil or   
unjust means we can, then salve our consciences with dol-  
ing out a few of life's goodies to the poor, via such avenues 
as Frank Ferree's Volunteer Border Relief. One may think 

  -- 88 --

of the Valley's incredible responses to Ferree s pleas for 
gifts as a collective means to cleanse our evil conscience, a 
sort of group confession, a penitential orgy disguised as 
community generosity. Or one can be more charitable in 
one's thoughts. 
    No matter. The work is done. The poor are eased, 
sometimes. Frank Ferree's work goes on, a reproach to the 
more skillful, more capable richer men and women among 
us who, capable of doing so much more, do so little. 
    Dozens of individuals and companies along the border, 
slowly convinced of Ferree's sincerity and usefulness, have 
given of their time, their money, their means to promote 
international friendship and to aid to the needy multitude  
of inhabitants along both sides of the Lower Rio Grande 
Valley of Texas. 
    Most of these people do not wish to be known for their 
kindness. If they did, they would have given to other, more
publicized charities. One of the biggest contributors even 
threatened the author with "serious action" if the donor's 
name was used in any way in any stories concerning Frank 
Ferree's works.
    No matter. The work has been done. Tons of 
medicine, bread, fruit, vegetables, meat, clothing, building 
materials, and other necessities have been distributed to 
those who need them most. Hundreds, perhaps thousands 
of lives in the area have been saved; the blind have been 
made to see, and the crippled made to walk. 
    Frank Ferree and his "fig politics" have brought to the
modern world in the southmost tip of Texas, the signs and
wonders which Christ promised to them that believe. 
    Frank Ferree is old. He is tired. He is weary. Only a
few more years, at best, remain to him. When he is gone,
what will happen to Volunteer Border Relief? Will the rat- 
tling old green and white buses still haunt the back roads 
and cotton fields of the Valley, seeking out those who need
help, any kind of help?
    No official of the Volunteer Border Relief receives a 

  -- 89 --

salary. No money can be paid out for advertising or fund
raising. Its very life depends upon voluntary contributions, 
of which every penny has been used for direct relief of
needy persons.
    If you would like to help in such worthy undertakings
as those described in this book, you are invited to send
your gift to the Volunteer Border Relief, Box 981, Har-
lingen, TX 78550.
    Additional copies of this book may be ordered from the
publisher, if you would like to give a copy to your friends.

  -- 90 -- 




       VOLUNTEER BORDER RELIEF

      Report of Contributions and Expenditures
             (for a typical month)
DONATIONS Cash $99

DONATIONS Supplies:
   large loaves bread                              896
   pastry                                 1,000 pounds
   meat, fruit, vegetables                2,000 pounds
   clothing from local housewives           600 pounds
   lumber from packing crates             1,000 pounds
   wrapping paper                         2,000 pounds
   4,000 vials streptomycin                 200 pounds

EXPENDITURES 

   gasoline & oil                               $45.00
   telephone, telegrams                          10.05
   lights                                        27.65
   prescriptions                                  7.00
   parts, labor on trucks                        33.93
   tire repair                                    9.00
   facial surgery, Reynosa                      100.00
   post office box                                8.00
   bus fare, two persons to eye clinic            9.00

WE APPRECIATE 

   Packing shed giving us It cases of grapefruit juice. La 
   Feria bus company manager giving us a large amount 
   of new shoes. Dr. John Kuppinger's continued treat-
   ment without charge of the blind persons we bring 
   him. Local businessmen, providing new roofing for 
   several shacks in Matamoros area. New York drug 
   manufacturer for sending medicines, freight prepaid, 
   month after month.

                                 F. Ferree



Note: 
Valley Morning Star (newspaper) ran the article announcing 
Frank Ferree's death on the front page of the 
March 11, 1983 issue.  

Information on the funeral service appeared in the 
March 13 issue on page A-2.

Return to Border Angel table of contents.