Six black Lincoln Town Cars are parked forming a single line along 110th Street between Park and Madison Avenues. Inside, their drivers sit waiting. And waiting.
“Hey you, guerita! Need a ride?” calls out one man interrupting a bite he was about to take of his beans and cheese burrito. Drops of red salsa land on the leather steering wheel as he pokes his head out the window. “I’ll take you wherever you want. Twenty bucks.”
It is 87 degrees on a Wednesday afternoon in East Harlem and once again the livery cab drivers that work for El Barrio’s 24 hour Cab Service find themselves without passengers. Ever since gas prices began to climb, the number of clients decreased. In a dwindling economy, staying afloat is harder than usual for middle class New Yorkers.
“I used to be home by 7:00 p.m. and now I’m home ‘till 9:00 p.m. I’m working two hours more just to cover the cost of gas,” said Jorge Arteaga, 44, whose base for 15 years has been the sidewalk just beside an empty lot on 110th Street.
A father of three, Arteaga makes $20 an hour. However, he explains that there are many dead hours when, despite his efforts to lure passengers in, nobody wants to hop on. On a 12-hour workday, if he is lucky, the most he will earn is $190.
He makes an effort to keep his 2001 Lincoln squeaky clean. He wants to ensure that his riders feel comfortable and call him back. On his dashboard, he keeps a stack of business cards that show the New York skyline, an American flag, and a number 20 that he has written down in blue ink so that returning customers can identify him when calling El Barrio’s 24 Cab Service.
Arteaga also owns a 2003 Lincoln that he rents to a fellow colleague for $350 a week. He only lets his co-worker use the car for six hours in order to avoid damaging it before its lifetime is over. Although the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission requires that they change their cars every ten years, Arteaga usually changes them after eight because he wants to make sure that he offers the best livery cab service.
“The economy is bad for those who don’t work,” Arteaga said. “If you work hard, it’s ok. Or at least that is what I tell myself when I kiss my wife good-bye at six in the morning.”
Leaving Nezahualcóyotl Behind
His wife, Silvia Perez, followed him to New York City in 1986, shortly after they married. Then twenty-two years old, Arteaga said he believed that moving to the United States from Mexico would be the best country for him and his wife to start a family. Only there, he says, his children would be able to go to college.
Originally from the city of Nezahualcóyotl in central Mexico, Arteaga finished high school and was then forced to leave his studies in order to help his parents support his six siblings. He first worked at a bicycle workshop doing repairs and then moved on to a local bodega where he was a salesman. However, the job experience that helped him the most was his time spent at a lithography workshop where he learned how to use a camera.
His photography skills became his golden ticket into the United States. The 1986 FIFA World Cup was to be held in Mexico from May 31 to June 29. Arteaga asked the American Embassy for permission to travel to New York with the excuse that he could take pictures of the public’s reaction to the soccer games. But that was the last thing Arteaga did when he arrived.
He secured a job as a photographer for a small magazine and called his wife Silvia back in Mexico. “Come and join me as soon as possible,” he remembers saying. “We’re staying at the land of opportunities!”
