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Oaxaca Connection

The migration of tens of thousands of people from Oaxaca to Oregon is altering both states

GABRIELA RICO
Statesman Journal

November 12, 2005

Ignacio, Sergio, Dagoberto, Neftali, Joel.

They are among the tens of thousands of people from Oaxaca, Mexico, who are in Oregon trying to make a buck, provide better lives for their families or find a piece of the American dream.

They all left villages in the impoverished southern Mexican state because they couldn't make it happen there.

Their migration to the United States is the latest chapter in a centuries-old story -- one that is changing them, their families and now the Willamette Valley.

Cotton in Texas, chiles in New Mexico, cantaloupes in Arizona, grapes in California, apples in Washington, potatoes in Idaho and berries in Oregon have long been harvested by migrant workers -- predominantly from Mexico.

In the past decade, many Mexican immigrants have risen from the fields and become construction workers, cooks, maids and factory workers.

But in Oregon, which takes great pride in its agricultural products, someone needs to tend the crops.

That someone is the indigenous farmworker from the mountains and villages of southern Mexico, home to ancient cultures and languages.

"The manual labor of the indigenous has always been admired," said Jesus Leon Santos, a farmer in Nochixtlán, Oaxaca. "And it has always been recruited."

Oaxaca -- Mexico's second-poorest state -- provides a significant farm labor force, according to Oregon employment and legal experts.

Many of these immigrants speak only to the handful of others who understand their language; Spanish is something they learn in the fields of U.S. farms.

Discrimination is unremarkable to the men and women who make up 75 percent of the farm labor in Oregon. In their own country, they also are treated like second-class citizens.

"They're so accustomed to discrimination, they don't respond even to Spanish speakers in Oregon," said Valentin Sánchez, co-founder of Organización de Comunidades IndÃÂ*genas Migrantes Oaxaqueños (Organization for migrant, indigenous communities from Oaxaca) in Salem.

"Many Mexicans don't have pride in where they come from and don't respect the indigenous," said Sánchez, a native of San Juan Cahuayaxi, Oaxaca. "They call us 'Indian, midget, short one,' and the Anglos learn that and think it's OK to treat us like that."

In the past five years, there has been a dramatic increase of Mixteco, Triqui and Zapoteco speaking indigenous workers in Oregon.

"I knew that it was happening," said Lynn Stephen, a professor of anthropology at the University of Oregon. "What surprised me was that absolutely no one in Oregon -- except for those who work with farmworkers -- knew this was going on."

Fernando Sánchez Ugarte, Mexico's consul general in Oregon, said the growth of Oaxaqueños in Oregon has been "explosive" but is difficult to quantify.

Although the U.S. Census Bureau counted 260,094 Mexicans in Oregon in 2002, the consulate says with the "uncounted" -- the migrant population and seasonal workers -- that total is closer to 600,000. More than 11 percent are from Oaxaca.

Oaxaqueños are the second-largest population of Mexicans in Oregon, behind Michoacán, if you count only those who register with the consulate for a Matricular identification card.

"Many of the farmworkers here don't need these IDs," Sánchez said. "They arrive in groups, live where they work and see no need to interact with the rest of the state."

The reason for the growth is no great mystery: they know how to work the fields and are easily exploited, farmworker advocates say.

"The bottom line is cheap labor," said Ramon Ramirez, president of Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United. "They'll do the job for cheap. I'm not saying it's right."

Stephen, who has extensively studied the connection between Oregon and Oaxaca, said the result of the migration is that in some villages, half of the people are gone. In others, all that's left are women, children and grandparents.

Languages are being lost and individual rights learned in the United States conflict with the collective rights that have bonded Oaxaca's indigenous people for centuries.

Oaxaca de Juárez, the state capital, is a beautiful tourist destination for international travelers, but the farmworkers in Oregon come from villages and mountains that aren't on the route of any tour bus.

"Where they're from, there's no work, no tourism," Stephen said. "It's a part of Oaxaca where no one wants to go."

While some immigrants speak of Oaxaca longingly, others say living in their new home -- Oregon -- has changed them.

"Home will always be home," said Dagoberto Garcia of Salem who grew up in Huajuapan de León, Oaxaca. "But, dreams change over time. Everything changes when you are here."