Thread: MIGRANT CAMPS IN SAN DIEGO COUNTY

By EDWARD SIFUENTES / North County Times

DATE: 19 SEPTEMBER 2002


To see them, you have to look closely. But they are there. Nestled just out of view from wealthy North County communities is a hidden, silent agricultural work force living in Third World squalor.

They live in camps behind the nurseries, in creek beds near the flower fields, clinging to the hill sides next to strawberry fields.

No one can really be sure how many homeless farmworkers there are because of the workers' tenuous living conditions and their geographical, linguistic and cultural isolation.

The county's Regional Taskforce on the Homeless estimates there are at least 7,000 day laborers and farmworkers in the county, many of them living in the 100-150 migrant camps throughout North County. The San Diego County Farm Bureau estimates there are about 35,000 agricultural jobs in the county.

Camps much like the one near the Agua Hedionda Lagoon just north of Carlsbad's Car Country Mall, where Juan Hernandez lives.

Far from home

For the 18-year-old Hernandez, dusk is the end of a long day picking strawberries. In his camp, there is no running water or electricity, but it is home to more than a dozen men, some as young as 15.

Hernandez says he doesn't mind the hard work or the demanding bosses. Some of the men complain there is not enough work. One of the men said he took on a second job at a plush restaurant washing dishes to supplement his income and send money home.

In the evening, Hernandez's dinner is a warm tortilla and a hot cup of coffee. Most of the other men have gone to the lunch truck, which serves overpriced, plastic-wrapped food.

"I'm here to earn money to send home," he said, while sitting on an old, throwaway chair eating his dinner. The scene is a sharp contrast from the sound of laughter and a motorboat on the lagoon and the expensive homes on the north shore.

Feeling out of place, most of the men speak in short, polite sentences. Some are shy, but many are Indigenous people for whom Spanish is a second language. Just about everyone in the camp is from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, whose indigenous populations are among the most marginalized in Mexican society.

The smile full of white teeth and the lowered gaze -- traits among many in the camps -- make it difficult to discern whether the answers Hernandez gives are what he believes to be true or what he would like the interviewer to believe is true.

As an example, it is surprising how many 18-year-olds there are in the camps. Some look much younger than that and if questioned a little closer some will admit they are 16, maybe 15.

At three months, Hernandez is one of the newer arrivals to the camp. His cousin sitting across from him at the dinner table has been here eight months.

Life in the shadows

Living in the camps is not easy for the workers. They are vulnerable to thieves and bigots. The city hires a security firm to patrol the area, but some of the men fear its employees, too.

In November, the city of Carlsbad ordered the residents of the camp evicted and their shacks razed because of health concerns. But the camps have been rebuilt. Again. And again.

Now there are three small rooms leaning on each other.

The building is as crude as it is ingenious. Plywood panels are nailed to a wood frame and double-covered with plastic tarps to make the rooms rainproof. Dirt is kicked up against the bottom side for wind protection and the roof is tied by rope to nearby trees for stability.

Hernandez's room is the last facing west, he said. It's a two-man, 8-by-10-foot room. A larger, similarly designed shack is in front of his and another in back of that. There is another to the east up the hillside and many more west along the lagoon up to Interstate 5.

Walking west toward the freeway is a well-worn labyrinth leading to the other shacks. There is music, laughter and conversation hidden behind the tall grass and low canopy of old trees.

There are clotheslines with work shirts and pants drying. There is bath water mixed with runoff water from the strawberry fields above.

In another encampment, there is the smell of alcohol and the stench of working men living in close quarters. The talk among them is still of the incident last Sunday in which several of the men allegedly were rounded up by "security guards."

The men say there is a boy in the next camp who was among those detained. One of the younger men in the group is asked to lead a group to the boy.

For about a hundred yards, the only sure thing among the fallen branches, soaked grass and loose dirt is the work boots of the young man.

At the encampment there are two more shacks. Three young men are sitting with their backs against one of the shacks. One is gently strumming a little guitar.

Inside the opposite shack is a boy 15 years old. The boy, Atilano, said he was "walking up near the strawberry fields when the security" men approached him and asked to see his identification. He said they told him they didn't believe the "green card" was real; it probably wasn't.

The men held him for about a half-hour before letting him go. Most of the talking was done by his older brother, the one strumming the guitar.

When asked for a description of the vehicle the security men were driving, an older man from a nearby camp joined in the conversation.

"We don't pay attention to what color or what number license plates," the older man said. Having borrowed $1,100 to pay a coyote, or smuggler, to bring him into the country, he said he couldn't afford to lose his job. None of them could.

Hard work, little money

Each day, the men rise early in the morning to begin work promptly at 6:30 picking strawberries. Several complained there are no breaks until lunch, which comes at about noon.

They crouch down to pick the plump, ripe strawberries row by row. When they finish at one end of the nearly 2-mile-long field, the workers walk to the other end and begin picking again. They don't get paid for the time it takes to walk from one end to the other, the men said.

It's a minimum-wage job, $6.75 an hour, but that's about twice the minimum wage for a full day of work in Oaxaca. Some of the men talk about "el contrato," the contract the strawberry company has with the workers.

"El Contrato," the men said, means they get paid by the boxful, or $1.75 per box of good strawberries. The older, slower man said he can fill up to 15 boxes on a good day, which means he earns about $26 a day.

"This week, I'll probably make less than $200," he said. "I've been here a month and a half, and I haven't been able to send much money home."

The man said he borrowed $10,000 pesos, or about $1,100, with 15 percent interest to come to the United States.

"So you can understand why I can't afford to lose my job," he said. "I'll just keep sinking in debt.

"When you reach out for that food (from the lunch truck) you really think about it. Sometimes you have just one meal a day."

Camp life

Few of the men who are in the country illegally wander far from the camps. To break away from the boredom, solitude and monotony of camp life, some will walk to nearby stores. Others will walk around the fields and some will drink alcohol.

The solitude also makes the workers good customers for prostitution rings that bring women from Mexico, according to North County health and law enforcement authorities. Parties are organized for the men bringing women and beer to sell to them.

Sexually transmitted diseases are also a problem, said Eduardo Gomez, a health worker for the Vista Community Clinic. He visits the camps each Tuesday looking for sick workers.

Gomez said the clinic has been able to reach the men by teaching them safe sex practices and distributing condoms to help prevent the spread of diseases.

Hernandez said the worst time for boredom is the weekends when there is no work. Local farmworker advocates from the Ecumenical Migrant Outreach Project try to help by bringing the men food and organizing parties with traditional dances, music and other entertainment for them.

The Ecumenical group also takes some of the men on Sundays to Fallbrook to teach them how to build "Superadobe" homes out of mud, barbed wire and plastic sandbags.

Like most ordinary teen-agers, Hernandez says he prefers to sleep on his days off. When asked when he will return to his family in Oaxaca, he said maybe in a year.

And what he will do later this year when there is no more work in the strawberry fields?

He simply shrugs his shoulders.

"I don't know, we'll see," he said.

Contact staff writer Edward Sifuentes at (760) 740-5426 or esifuentes@nctimes.com.

LEE ENTERPRISES

Post subject: CARLSBAD: FARMWORKER SHELTER ADVOCATES FINDING FINANCING

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-151098.html

Anybody else catch the part where this guy lives in a camp with no toilets or running water and works in a plush restaurant?
I wonder how many people eating there know this and if they would still eat there after being told?

This all happens becuase there isn't the enforcement of the guidelines for the current guest-worker programs..of none that are currently used because most of them require that the employers be responsible for the housing and medical care of these guests. Instead, they are allowed to enter our country illegally, which causes a host of other problems, and are also allowed not to be responsible for any of the requrements in regard to guests' welfare. This takes the strain of cost off the backs of the employers and they reap even a bigger profit..but at the expense of the taxpayer and the guest worker.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS, HOW COME THEY ARE WORKING PICKING THE FRUIT AND I'M HEARING AMERICAN'S ARE WORKING PICKING THE FRUIT?


I'M WHITE, AS A KID WE USED TO GET ON AN OLD RATTY SCHOOL BUS WHEN SCHOOL WAS OVER AND PICK BERRIES.


I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW COME MORE AMERICAN'S AREN'T OUT DOING THIS?