Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Migrants No More
Mexicans used to come to California's San Joaquin Valley to work the harvest and go home. But now the migrants are settling in -- and so is a stark, new kind of poverty.
It is night when the day begins.
At 4:30 a.m. in a dusty farming town in California’s San Joaquin Valley, the lights are on in a one-room house no bigger than a garage. Inside, Isabel makes tortillas and beans for the workday ahead, while her husband, Vicente, puts on his farmworker’s uniform of long pants, long-sleeved shirt, work boots, and a baseball cap. Much of the town of Arvin is awake by now: The local panaderias -- Mexican bakeries -- open at 5 a.m., as do the small markets where farmworkers buy gas and pick up coffee before heading to the fields.
...
Vicente will spend the day on a 12-foot ladder, pulling bunches of cherries from the tops of the trees, while Isabel twists the fruit off the branches below. Over the next seven hours, with one 15-minute break, Vicente will pick more than 100 pounds of cherries, dumping them into deep trays harnessed to his shoulders. His pay will depend on how quickly he can fill the trays. No matter how fast he works, it’s often less than minimum wage.
...
Vicente is 30 years old, short and strong, with a small mustache, a straight-ahead gaze, and a kind, slightly reserved manner; like the other farmworkers interviewed for this story, he didn’t want his last name used. For 14 years, he has worked blueberries, cherries, grapes, oranges, watermelons, and onions. A scar wraps around his left index finger from the time he cut it to the bone with pruning shears. His ankle bears another scar, from the day he stepped on a blade in the onion fields. One summer he slept atop a flattened cardboard box in a vineyard. Another year, he lived in a two-room house near Santa Barbara with about 50 other men -- “lined up like pigs,” he says with a small smile.
...
Vicente paid a coyote $1,200 and filled a backpack with gallon jugs of water, tortillas, canned beans, and two changes of clothes for himself and Isabel, who was 14 years old and five months pregnant. They left behind photos and mementos. (“If they catch you,” Vicente says of the Border Patrol, “they’ll take anything from you, even pennies.”) Along with about 30 other migrants, Vicente and Isabel hiked across Arizona’s Sonoran Desert for three nights, sleeping and hiding out during the day, when temperatures can reach 110 degrees. ...
Mexicans used to come to California's San Joaquin Valley to work the harvest and go home. But now the migrants are settling in -- and so is a stark, new kind of poverty.
It is night when the day begins.
At 4:30 a.m. in a dusty farming town in California’s San Joaquin Valley, the lights are on in a one-room house no bigger than a garage. Inside, Isabel makes tortillas and beans for the workday ahead, while her husband, Vicente, puts on his farmworker’s uniform of long pants, long-sleeved shirt, work boots, and a baseball cap. Much of the town of Arvin is awake by now: The local panaderias -- Mexican bakeries -- open at 5 a.m., as do the small markets where farmworkers buy gas and pick up coffee before heading to the fields.
...
Vicente will spend the day on a 12-foot ladder, pulling bunches of cherries from the tops of the trees, while Isabel twists the fruit off the branches below. Over the next seven hours, with one 15-minute break, Vicente will pick more than 100 pounds of cherries, dumping them into deep trays harnessed to his shoulders. His pay will depend on how quickly he can fill the trays. No matter how fast he works, it’s often less than minimum wage.
...
Vicente is 30 years old, short and strong, with a small mustache, a straight-ahead gaze, and a kind, slightly reserved manner; like the other farmworkers interviewed for this story, he didn’t want his last name used. For 14 years, he has worked blueberries, cherries, grapes, oranges, watermelons, and onions. A scar wraps around his left index finger from the time he cut it to the bone with pruning shears. His ankle bears another scar, from the day he stepped on a blade in the onion fields. One summer he slept atop a flattened cardboard box in a vineyard. Another year, he lived in a two-room house near Santa Barbara with about 50 other men -- “lined up like pigs,” he says with a small smile.
...
Vicente paid a coyote $1,200 and filled a backpack with gallon jugs of water, tortillas, canned beans, and two changes of clothes for himself and Isabel, who was 14 years old and five months pregnant. They left behind photos and mementos. (“If they catch you,” Vicente says of the Border Patrol, “they’ll take anything from you, even pennies.”) Along with about 30 other migrants, Vicente and Isabel hiked across Arizona’s Sonoran Desert for three nights, sleeping and hiding out during the day, when temperatures can reach 110 degrees. ...
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