 |
My Life as an Immigrant in the United States
A friend, her husband and I arrived to Ciudad Juárez,
Chihuahua from México City on April 25th of 1980. We
were going to meet at the bus station with the pollero, who
was a friend of my friend’s husband. The night came,
and the pollero did not arrive, so we left to a hotel to get
some rest. Before we left, my friend’s husband left
a message with some friend to ask the pollero to get in touch
with us.
The next day we received news that we were not leaving until
the 28th at night because the pollero still didn’t have
the number of people he was expecting for the trip. My friend’s
husband told me to stay in the hotel, and that his friend
would go to pick me up. My friend and her husband had to go
back to México City because he was a bus driver and
he had to make the trip back. I stayed in the hotel until
the night of the 28th, when the polleros went to pick me up
in a cargo truck, where there were already a lot of people.
They took us to a farm, and there they arranged bales of hay
leaving spaces in between where all of us who were traveling
could fit. I counted everyone; there were thirty of us in
that truck. Since it was going to be a long trip, the polleros
arranged it so that we would be sitting. They gave us a metal
stick to knock in case we needed something, but told us to
only use it in case of emergency. In those conditions, we
departed.
The next morning we stopped to eat, to go to the restroom,
and to stretch a little. Then we went back to the truck, and
at night, we stopped again. By then, we had started to talk
to each other -- where we came from, what our names were,
who knew the pollero, whether or not it was true that he would
take us all the way to California to harvest apple, and how
much he had charged each of us. Those were our conversations,
and that is how the trip went until we arrived to our destination.
When we arrived in California, the pollero registered us in
a hotel and told us to be ready at five in the morning to
go to work.
He went to pick us up in the morning as he had said and took
us to a ranch where he introduced us to Jimmy, the contractor.
Jimmy then took us to Richie, the foreman, who took our names,
birthdates, and gave us instructions on how we were going
to work. He divided us into couples. In each couple there
was one person who already knew the job, and one of us who
didn’t. He gave each of us a big bag, and to each couple
two ladders, one short and one tall. We started to work at
seven in the morning on May 1st.
On the first day, the pollero brought us burritos and sodas
for lunch. Half an hour later, we went back to work. It all
looked like a circus: going up and down the ladders, as fast
as possible, so that we could make more money.
At three-thirty in the afternoon we finished and went back
to the hotel. We were very tired. There, the pollero was waiting
for us to pay him the 15,000 pesos that he charged each of
us for taking us there. He told us that the hotel had been
paid up until the end of the week.
Friday arrived, pay day. They paid us $120. We were not familiar
with the dollar exchange, so we didn’t know if what
they had paid us was much or not. What we did know was that
we were very tired and disoriented. We didn’t know what
we were going to do now that the support of the pollero had
already left. Then the group disintegrated. Each one left
to wherever they thought was more convenient. I was left alone,
but some of the women I had worked with let me stay with them.
One day I would be living in some place, the next in a different
one.
I continued working until the harvest ended in September.
The same co-workers helped me to find other jobs. Like them,
I started to clean houses, take care of children, nurse old
people, or do whatever job that would come up.
One day some friends invited me to the harvest of strawberries
in Salinas, California. I left with them in May of 1981. We
rented a house between the six of us. I liked working there
more than I liked the harvest for apples because there, we
didn’t have to be going up and down. However, it was
also very tiresome because we had to work with our back bent
all day. We started at seven in the morning. They gave us
a little cart with wheels that had a wood board on the top,
with a cartonbox, and small plastic baskets that we had to
fill with strawberries. As we filled each box, we would give
it to the foreman to write it down on his list. I also liked
it better because they paid me $300 a week, and the fields
were beautiful and vast. The smell of strawberries is very
peculiar. It is a shame that it’s harvest only lasts
until July.
The years passed by in this way, going from job to job, until
February 2nd of 1986. My daughters called me to let me know
that their father had been robbed and murdered in the taxi
he used to drive. I left to México on the first flight
I could catch, and I went back fifteen days later to the city
of El Paso. I stayed here to pick chile. I spent some time
living with some friends in the Segundo Barrio. They taught
me all the ways to not get so tired at work. We would, for
example, get to the fields before everyone else to get a spot
close to the truck where we had to empty the chile containers,
that way we didn’t have to walk so much. Sometimes I
still wonder about going back to those fields because our
hands burn like fire, and they only pay 45 cents per filled
container. But sometimes I still go, and in the afternoons,
I study to get my GED diploma so that I can find better opportunities.
BY: SUSANA RAMÍREZ
TRANSLATED BY: MINERVA LAVEAGA DUARTE
|
|
