My Life as a Migrant Farmworker

I grew up in the Salinas Valley. East Salinas, to be exact. Nearly every classmate, from kindergarten to third grade, had parents working in the fields. If you haven’t heard of Salinas, that’s where Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez did a lot of community organizing for farmworkers to have the right to not be injured or die at work while growing and harvesting our food. Instruction in my elementary school was 100% bilingual. English and Spanish were prioritized equally. I have happy memories of singing “Las Mañanitas” and “The World is a Rainbow” in the first grade. After school, my siblings and I went to our babysitter’s house. Our “Soccorro” was an older lady who only spoke Spanish, with grown kids living at home. We did whatever the family was doing that day, whether it was drying chiles on a tarp to make mole or stirring the masa y manteca for tamales, they included us in their daily life. Soccorro would ask us to answer the phone (a rotary dial landline) and take messages for her so she could keep cooking or doing housework. My mom was an elementary school teacher for the migrant education program and my dad worked for the county. Sometimes Soccorro would invite us to family parties on weekends. Our neighbors, the Magallones family, would take me and all of their many kids to Catholic mass. I was the youngest in the bunch and was showered with affection by their two daughters who treated me like their doll, dressing me up and giving me adorable hair styles. When I entered kindergarten, I was given tests in English and Spanish. I cried when I didn’t know what an oval was in English…and I was put into the English as a second language reading group. By first grade, my reading had improved and I was sent with a small group of kids each morning to a special classroom for an above grade level reading group. The summer after third grade, my family moved to San Jose, about an hour north, for my dad’s new job. After a few years, we moved to Morgan Hill, a suburb of San Jose, with rolling hills and the remnants of an agrarian society quickly being replaced by technology companies in mass expansion mode in the 1990’s. We stayed in Morgan Hill, I graduated high school and fell in love with a young man from Denmark. His family invited me to stay with them for part of a summer so I worked, saved and travelled to Europe. I married that young man and emigrated. It was pretty tough being an immigrant in a country with a tiny, homogenous population. The internet was new and paper documents were the norm. I took the bus to the local university and asked for an application. They refused to give me one and asked if I was in their country…legally. I tried to register over the phone for a night class at the local adult school and they hung up on me. If I went for a night on the town with friends, anyone who wasn’t white was asked to wait outside in a roped off area, with claims that max. occupancy had been exceeded.

After many failed attempts, I finally got a job in the hospital laundry department. Cars and gas were terribly expensive so I rode my bicycle in the dark and snow about 5miles each way, washed hospital laundry for several hours and tried not to lose too much weight. One day it was just too cold to ride a bicycle. On a poster inside the bus, I saw that the engineering college had a lack of students and was actively looking for people with “foreign or ethnic backgrounds” for a new year long program of prerequisites to qualify for a degree program. The next day, I went in and applied. There were no requirements except a language test. I passed the language test thanks to the free class provided by the city. I couldn’t work at the hospital laundry anymore since it conflicted with classes so I got a job cleaning a machinist factory at night. I rode my bicycle about 8 miles each way and cleaned for several hours, then rode home and did homework. I got good grades and applied to the degree program. I also applied to the medical school at the university. I didn’t think I would get in, but I did. The university was across the street from the hospital laundromat. So when the semester started, I knew the way, and just parked my bicycle across the street. In Denmark, they have universal higher education, prepaid by taxes. There was no tuition to attend any of the classes that I took while I was there. I kept working and studying, riding that bicycle through every kind of snow, sleet and ice you can imagine in a city that is rather close to the Arctic Circle. Then one day, all hell broke loose at home and it became clear that the marriage was over, my residency was contingent on the marriage and I was going to have to leave…but I had no money. I talked to the university, to the few friends I had, to the student housing office. My mom called one day. Things were bad financially and with my dad’s health. I didn’t say anything about what was happening. I said, “I love you” and I took the bus to the employment office.

This was in the year 2001. The employment office had paper flyers posted in the window and in binders. They had some tables with telephones set up for people to call prospective employers. I was there all day. Most people hung up on me. The employment office workers looked concerned. Finally a kind man showed me a flyer for a job on a farm several hours away and said “I know for a fact that this farmer doesn’t discriminate. Call him now. He has hired other people on the spot.” He was right. By the time I was off the phone, I had an appointment to report to that farm the following day. I ran over to the train station, literally ran, and bought a ticket. I raced home and packed a bag, left a note for my soon to be ex-husband, and grabbed a pre-paid cell phone that I had purchased recently and didn’t even know how to use. The train ride was over 4 hours. I arrived at a tiny train station surrounded by farm fields in a town named “Snake Village”. The farmer picked me up and drove me to the ranch. He showed me the barracks that I would be sharing with the other farmworkers, told me how much I would be paid, what time work started and what the rules were. He had converted a 100 year old stone barn into “housing”. There was a tiny kitchen and one bathroom for 12 people, most of which were from Hungary. The Lithuanians lived in a travel trailer on the other side of the farm. A few weeks later, the Spaniards arrived and lived in tents inside of a greenhouse. I had a bed and I shared a room with a young lady from Sweden who I’m pretty sure was running from the law. We worked all day, every day, 12 or more hours a day, harvesting and packing lettuce, hoisting tall stacks of plastic bins full of lettuce way over our heads, flexing every muscle over and over until we collapsed into bed and slept through the charlie horses and oozing blisters. After learning the cold packing routine, I was sent out to harvest in the fields, bent over all day pitching heads of lettuce onto a conveyor belt or in a bin, keeping up with the tractor and other workers, making sure to pick the right heads at the right time. Everyone shared tips on how to prevent injuries and survive the writhing pain of perpetual repetitive motion. I had money and a place to live. Soon, I would have a way to get home. I asked my boss if I could use his phone to call home to the USA. I had found a way to charge it to my bank card. He said to use the office in the cold packing house. With the time difference, and the reaction that I expected from my mother, I went into the office in the middle of the night and made the call. It had been a few months since my parents had heard from me. I will never forget the pain in my mother’s voice, learning of what had transpired in my life, and her inability to help me. They had done so much to give me a good life. They had left their tiny town and taken us to Silicon Valley, I had been in college, why wasn’t I in college, I needed to go back to college and these Danes just didn’t understand what marriage was and they have no morals and how could I come home and was I safe? I didn’t have any answers but I promised to come when I was able to. A few days later, I called the family home of my best friend, in Salinas. Her dad was so upset with me. He said “if I had known you were just going to go work in the fields, I would have sent you some guaraches!”. I thought of never going home. I couldn’t face them.

The next day, all of the Turkish women who worked together labeling clamshells of baby greens, came running toward me, yelling and waving their arms. They grabbed me and pulled me up a metal staircase to an attic, pleading with me to hide, hide now! They were all Danish citizens and assumed that I was in Denmark illegally. I laughed and said I had a visa. They sighed in relief. Before I could move, my Swedish roomate jumped over my head and locked herself in the attic. I went back to my post and the immigration officers walked right up to me and asked me if I knew Danish. I said, yes of course, in Danish, and they walked away. I worked on that farm for months, about a half year. I saved religiously, ate the food that was provided and when the cold weather began to creep in, I knew I needed to go. Then I got a phone call from my mom, my sister had been in a car accident. She was ok, but was scraped up and had a broken arm, could I come home? I talked to my boss, said goodbye to everyone and caught a ride to the train. That was Sept. 10, 2001. The next day, just as I was about to leave my old apartment for what I thought was the last time, to buy a plane ticket home, I watched what I thought was the beginning of World War III unfold on live television. The travel agent told me that because I had a permanent resident visa, I would not be allowed to leave with all of the other Americans, even though that visa was going to be invalidated by my impending divorce. She put me on a waitlist and told me that I should buy a ticket to Australia, that way I wouldn’t have to wait as long. So I did. I was willing to take a train to Spain and get on a transatlantic ship if I had to. My flight had a layover in Los Angeles. It would still be a few weeks, but I would have to be ready to leave when she called. I stayed with a friend and my boss from the farm said I could come back anytime, even live with his family if my country went to war. I was hell bent on getting home. The travel agent called on October 5th. I got on a plane Oct. 6. I had been in Denmark for over 4 years. I have never been back.

Once in California, I felt like I was in a bad movie. I landed in LAX in the middle of the night and it was eerily quiet. A security guard escorted me to a taxi. It was an overnight layover and I had made a reservation at a youth hostel. The next morning, instead of going back to the LAX international terminal, I bought a commuter flight ticket and went home to San Jose. When I stepped into the San Jose airport, I wanted to kiss the ground. My dad picked me up after going through intense security. I hugged my dad and then I picked up my 75 pound suitcase with one hand. Dad stood staring, with his mouth open. I was home for 3 days and it was clear that with the recession and my parent’s financial situation, I was going to have to find a job somewhere else. I called my best friend and she said I could live with her. My mom drove me to Davis, where my friend was attending college. Mom gave me some food, hugged me and cried. I borrowed a bicycle and pounded pavement every day until I got a job as a secretary in a CPA office. That lasted a little over a year, I finalized the divorce, bought an old car, and found a job in Lake County where I could live cheaply and finally go back to college full time. I worked in a winery, then a vineyard, back to the winery, then another winery, another vineyard, yet another vineyard. One day at a gas station, my community college counselor saw me covered in mud head to toe. He asked me a few questions and then informed me that I was a migrant farmworker. We met at his office and went through the application for the College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP). I met the legal classification for a migrant farmworker and was enrolled in the program.

The meetings were fun, there was always food, they helped me with my resume, paid for some books and most importantly, paid for an eye exam and glasses. I could finally see the tops of the gorgeous evergreen trees surrounding the community college campus in Ukiah, CA. Vineyards had been a source of stability for me. My high school in Morgan Hill was across the street from an old vineyard that I sometimes cut through to get to work after school. I had taken the train to France while living in Denmark, which wasn’t really that far away, to see the vineyards. Vineyards in northern California had given me much needed income and a lot of peace of mind. So, I applied to the new viticulture program at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. A transfer agreement wasn’t available, so I had to submit a regular application. I was admitted in the middle of the academic year. I packed my car and arrived in the sunny central coast on a nice 70 degree day in January. I was walking on air when I turned the key on my tiny studio apartment on an alley of garages in an old neighborhood. Classes started in 2 days, so I stocked the fridge, got to bed early and the next day as I arrived at my very first class, I looked around the room and realized I was the only caucasian woman in my major. I’m not sure that I mentioned that at the beginning of this story, and I’m certainly glad you have read all the way to the end. You see, I am a white woman. A blonde, blue eyed, Causasian woman. My ancestors are northern European and one was American Indian, but I look like I could be from any of the northern EU nations. This entire story is true, every bit of it, and my dear friend from Sweden who worked on the farm with me, is still my friend to this day. My best friend from Salinas is still my best friend. The very best anyone could ever hope for. I’ve even tracked down my community college counselor on LinkedIn. I will always appreciate what he did for me. I’m wondering what you think and I would love to read your comments.