THE LURE OF AMERICAN JOBS From Oaxaca, Mexico, to north of the border and back-but with precious little to show for it
Stout, Robert Joe
The lure of American jobs Like many indigenous residents from the highlands of Oaxaca, Mexico, Valentin Cortez Yilabe has a short-legged physique that makes his head seem too large for his...
...We suffered from the heat...
...We had to walk to the high-way labout four miles | to get into it because the truck could not climb the road to our mm hitria...
...Out of the money that I earned, 1 also had to pay my way back to Oaxaca...
...Behind our building was a little build-ing made of cinder blocks where the jefes would lock up anyone they wanted to punish...
...Hardly had we gotten to sleep when men came through to wake us...
...Some of the younger men were frightened...
...Rarely did any of them leave until drought and a fungus destroyed several suc-cessive crops of maize and forced some of the men to seek work on lower land acreages...
...They worked so hard to e-arn so little, but still it was more than they could make staying home...
...believed him," said Cortez...
...Carrying only their sarnjvs and a little to eat, they climbed into the back of the truck...
...None of us had worked in fields like that before, tilling and cutting flowers and cutting and tying eu-calyptus leaves...
...On 'the other side,' another truck picked us up and took us to a ranch...
...And we would bang into one another when the truck went too fast around a curve...
...Every day thejefes woke us before daybreak and we worked until dark...
...Then we would line up and get food to take back to the building in which we lived...
...The jefe who gave out the money had a paper on each one of us...
...The lure of American jobs Like many indigenous residents from the highlands of Oaxaca, Mexico, Valentin Cortez Yilabe has a short-legged physique that makes his head seem too large for his shoulders...
...For many things-tear-ing a bag, or fighting, or taking too much time for lunch...
...I had not been able to send any money to my family during all that time...
...Mis heavy-lidded eyes have a sad milky tint and his wide mouth pulls his mustache into a drooping petulance...
...One said we would never gel out of the truck...
...I would have left, but I did not know where I was- or how to get back-and some of the workers said that if the migra caught us, they would beat us or throw us in jail and take the little bit of money that we had left...
...In a few months you will have enough to buy everything that you need and you can come back to your families...
...Cortez remembers the day that one of the villagers returned after a year's absence...
...I worked there for six months, but had only $110 to bring back with me to Oaxaca...
...For centuries they had lived in virtual isola-tion, seldom entertaining any visitors and marrying each other's children...
...From the dwelling behind him, a wide, low rectangular structure built of loosely mortared adobe bricks, children and grand-children, most of them girls in frayed but scrubbed white dresses and white cotton sweaters, peered shyly at us before scurrying away to do little chores that a beldam inside was assigning them...
...ROBHKI JOR STOUT...
...Even the goats couldn't find enough to eat...
...They gave us tortillas and coffee, wrote down our names, and told us it was time to go to work...
...I looked at Cortez's sad eyes and understood...
...All round the grounds of the casa grande there was barbed wire...
...As we talked, the forty-one-year-old Cortez stood with his hands shoved into the pockets of his handmade jeans...
...Come with me," he told Cortez and others...
...There, in a sloping clearing, sixty or seventy families raised maize and herded goats around their bunched houses, single store, and little church...
...Cortez had grown up in a beautiful small yoblado named San Ysidro Alaopan, perched "in the clouds" above the rain forests, a tortuous five-hour drive north of Oaxaca City...
...There were so many of us crowded together that we could barely sit down...
...Then we stopped to spend the night in an abandoned ware-house, and the next day coyotes took small groups of us across the border...
...When the driver would slam on the brakes, we all would crash forward, into one anoth-er...
...They said it was for 'san-itary purposes/ but I think it was to embarrass us...
...One night, two of the young men dug a hole under the barbed wire...
...They had us take showers and a man with an elec-tric device shaved our heads...
...He said his jefe was holding fifty jobs...
...Otherwise, we did not know what day it was...
...he urged them...
...Leave your women, come...
...The truck stopped only to let us urinate...
...So I said, 'Yes, I will go.'" A few days later the cousin returned with two men and a truck...
...We knew when it was Saturday night because that's when we got paid...
...When I got home to San Ysidro Alaopan, I was embarrassed and ashamed to see how much my family had suffered...
...I don't know what happened to them...
...At the end of three weeks, I had only about eleven dollars...
...On it was writ-ten how many meals we had eaten, how many other things we had bought...
...Our crops already were wilting...
...Others said we would never get back to our homes, ever again...
...They had never gone so fast or so far away before...
...We did not know where we were, but we were so tired we all lay down...
...Why were we punished...
...At noon they would bring tortillas and beans to the fields so we could eat...
...He showed them the new clothes he was wearing, a wallet thick with pesos, and told them there were good jobs waiting for them "on the other side...
...I first, met Cortez when 1 stopped to buy a soft drink at a misceldneu among a cluster of stone and sheet-metal dwellings a few miles from Oaxaca City...
...They locked us in a large room...
...One pants leg was tucked into the top of a heavy work boot, the other hung loose...
...After all, he was a cousin, from the village...
...Even so, the following year, when the patron's henchman came back, many from the village went with him again...
...We drove for three days, maybe four...
...We could not buy anything, even a cigarette or a petate, except from one of the jefes...
...When we got off work, they would drive us to the casa grande and check off our names...
...They said we owed money for our transportation from San Ysidro Alaopan, and took out for that...
...Some had even less than that...
...We drove for days...
Vol. 124 • July 1997 • No. 13
