Santiago Papasquiaro, in the Mexican state of Durango, sits at the foot of the Sierra Madre, among tan hills covered by a threadbare blanket of brush. Most of its young men have gone to America, so in the desert afternoons the public squares are empty, except for a few shuffling pensioners shielding their eyes with baseball caps.
Medina had been a fireman two years when he and his wife, Xochitl, took their four children to Durango to show them the family’s heritage. He brought along a box of Chicago Fire Department T-shirts to trade with his Mexican colleagues.
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“You’re crazy,” another firefighter told him. “I’ve been to Cancun. I’ve been to Mazatlan. Nobody lives like that.”
In the fall of 2001, Medina heard that a small town near Peoria was planning to scrap a gasoline-powered engine. He called the fire department. Don’t scrap it, he implored them. Give it to me; I’ll send it to Mexico. Medina spent $5,000 on repairs, even hiring a sign maker to paint the engine with its new seal: the city of Durango. When the governor of Durango visited the West Side Technical Institute as part of a trade mission, Medina handed him the keys. (It was ceremonial. Medina and a coworker later drove the engine to Laredo, where Durango firefighters took possession at the border.)
Soon afterward Medina was transferred to Engine 108, at Milwaukee and Wilson. In the corner of the parking lot, in the shade of an overhanging tree, he saw an open-cab engine. He watched it for weeks. It never seemed to go anywhere. Do we ever use this? he finally asked his district chief, Norbert Diaz. It’s on reserve, Diaz told him. We start it once a week, but it hasn’t been on a run in over a year. It’s going to be retired.
