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From a Memoir of a Farmworker’s Daughter: Migrant Souls
Author looks back on her girlhood enmeshed in the grueling yet
evocative lives of immigrant Mexican farmhands
By Rose Castillo Guilbault, New America Media, Memoir
I was not the only one who observed the seasonal rituals. For
migrant workers, the Salinas Valley was just one stop on the work
trail they followed. Their comings and goings with the seasons were
integral to our lives.
There were two types of migrant workers: the Mexican men who worked
the six-month agricultural high season (generally June through
November) and the Mexican families, who came from Texas or border
towns like Mexicali, children in tow, working their way through
California’s various harvests.
The men who arrived alone from Mexico led mostly ascetic lives. They
worked Monday through Saturday and preferred it that way. Some found
the energy to go into town Saturday nights, but most were seen in
town only on Sundays—at church and later at restaurants and bars. To
them the United States meant work and, therefore, their lives
revolved around it. They woke with the chill of dawn and returned in
the cool of dusk to their bare, crowded, cell-like rooms.
I’d see these men piling out of trucks and trudging up the long
dusty trail at the edge of the field that led to their housing.
“Pobrecitos. Poor men,” my mother would say. They resembled battered
birds—straw hats covering hair matted gray from layers of dust, and
ragged, thin shirttails over mud-splattered khaki pants.
Were the men young or old? I don’t recall, although they must have
been young because their voices, carrying ahead of their steps, were
always filled with laughter. Their inflection hinted at jokes being
told.
I noticed they never joked when the boss was with them. During those
times, they maintained a respectful silence, broken only by a wink
or a smile directed at me as they passed by. Did they see the
reflection of a daughter or sister in a skinny little girl?
Once inside their small whitewashed cabins, the sounds and smells of
their nightly rituals permeated the air. Percolating coffee, the
sizzle of frying food, the buzz of conversation. A lone voice
wailing a ranchero song of lost love and longing segued into silence
and soft darkness. Later, crickets continued the mournful song.
Maximiliano, or “Maxi,” as everyone called him, was one of these
men. He first came to California in the 1950s under the bracero
program, which brought thousands of Mexicans to the farmlands of the
United States. Maxi often stopped by our house at night to talk with
my father, usually outside beyond the front porch, a respectful
distance from the family. “What do they talk about, Mamá?” I’d ask.
“Manly things, hija,” she’d answer.
But once a year, some time in the fall, he’d appear right there on
our porch, freshly bathed, hair smoothed down with brilliantine,
white shirt gleaming against his brown skin, to announce his
departure for Mexico. Maxi was lucky—he had a green card—but like
many of the men who went back and forth across the border legally,
he never seriously considered bringing his family to live in this
country. Why? Because they could enjoy the best of both worlds. My
mother offered this insight: “They are the story of the grasshopper
and the ant. But in their case, they’re grasshoppers for six months
and ants for the other six.”
On that last day of the season, when Maxi would come to say
good-bye, I’d see him silhouetted against the porch light, his front
gold-rimmed teeth sparkling from his broad smile as he described the
latest letter from home. The babies were walking, talking. He and
his wife were well on their way to buying their own home. Next year
he could start putting away money to purchase a gas station; he
wouldn’t have to do this backbreaking work for much longer. Five
more years, he figured. That was the only reason he kept coming to
the United States.
With Maxi’s departure, winter seemed to descend immediately.
Around May, Maxi would return, new straw hat in hand, rested and
plumper, ready for another season. Once again those migrant birds
would pop up on the streets—first a couple of men, then a half dozen
families. By June a bustling new population had infused the town
with its spirit. The musical cadence of Spanish conversation echoed
through the grocery store, post office, and streets. “It’s beginning
to look like Mexico around here,” grumbled some of the townspeople.
They came from Texas—Douglas, Brownsville, Reynosa—or other places
in California—Porterville, Calexico, or the San Joaquin Valley. The
families would stay until school started and then leave by October
or early November at the end of the
carrot and bean season. The Mexicans from Texas, los Tejanos, as we
called them, spoke loudly, using expressions my mother and I didn’t
recognize. Words would start in English and end in Spanish. I
wouldn’t learn about “Spanglish” until college, so back then I
simply accepted what my mother said: “Pobrecitos, they have their
English and Spanish all mixed up!”
Summer and fall were abundant times. They brought work, food, jobs,
families, and friends not seen since the year before.
Luz was one, a special friend. She hailed from Brownsville, Texas,
and was older than I. Unlike most of the Texas migrant families, she
came only for the summer. She stayed with a married older sister in
Brownsville during the school year so she wouldn’t have to miss
class like most of the other migrant kids, who were always pulled
out to work with their families. Luz did well in school and she had
already decided to become a nurse. She would never be a migrant
gypsy like her parents, she vowed.
Somehow Luz had learned something I hadn’t – that one had to
assimilate in order to progress. Whereas she had made a point to
associate with Anglo kids at school, I wasn’t that calculating. My
friends were mainly Anglo because all the Mexican kids I liked never
stayed long enough for us to develop a relationship. Once I asked
Luz what she told her friends back in Texas about her summers.
“Oh, I tell them I go on vacation to California. And you know what
they say? ‘Oh, Luz, look at you! You got such a nice tan. You must
have spent all your time on the beach.’” Her mimicking voice carried
a trace of bitterness.
Luz did become a nurse and Maxi continued his trips back and forth
to Mexico until he retired at sixty-two. His family always remained
in Mexico, where he was able to provide a higher level of education
for some of his children. He eventually managed to buy his own home,
but the gas station never panned out. “Somehow there was never
enough money,” he said.
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