David Barra came down from South Central in Los Angeles to work. He waits to be picked up by the bus in a parking lot on Imperial Avenue.
Farm laborers start streaming across border at Mexicali at wee hours to harvest fields in Imperial Valley
By Albert C. Jones
America, The Diversity Place
CALIEXICO, California — People, at two o’clock in the morning, are streaming through the border entry point that separates Mexicali and Calexico — Mexico and the United States. Others come across the border packed in cars, trucks and Sport Utility Vehicles. One man is seen exiting a cab at the border checkpoint.
The downtown is both pedestrian busy and busy with traffic, including white school buses which come to collect workers and transport them to farm fields in California’s Imperial Valley.
Some workers begin arriving earlier than two o’clock. This daily reoccurrence has been going on for about 100 years; that is, for as long as the American Canal has been delivering water from the Colorado River to irrigation ditches across the Imperial Valley.
There are 500,000 irrigational acres in the region of which 450,000 are producing summer or winter crops. Broccoli and California Iceberg Lettuce are being harvested in fields near Brawley, Imperial, El Centro, Holtville, Calipatria and Westmorland.
Cabbage, asparagus and carrots are also midwinter crops.
Traffic, most vehicles are transporting three to four workers, enter the U.S. at Calexico on Imperial Highway, which is California Highway 111. They make momentary stops, connect with supervisors, and then drive directly to fields they have been assigned to on this morning. They are “Braceros” who come to do contract work.
David Barra, wearing a hoodie, is waiting to be picked iup n the parking lot of California Super Market on Imperial Avenue. He has come down to work in the fields from South Central in Los Angeles, a place he describes as going through tough time, where work is hard to come by, and it’s better to be gone to avoid getting in trouble.
Barra shakes your hand then holds up a fist to bump against your fist.
“The work is fine. You get paid good,” he said. “I come down and work six months a season. I work ten hours a day. Half the money you get today, forty dollars, and the rest you get on the weekend. It’s pretty tough in South Central and I’m happy to be here and not there, where I could get in trouble or end up in jail like some of my friends.”
Alma Rosa Flores, who lives in both Mexicali and Calexico, displays a cheerful smile as she is photographed waiting for the bus in the nook of a business on Heber Street. Most up bundled up to stay warm against the cool morning. She has a day’s provisions in a backpack and is carrying with her a broad-brimmed straw hat.
Nearby, Paules Chanocia wants to be photographed, too. Magnolia and Jose Peralta stop what they were doing and agree to be photographed. Some speak English well enough to interpret in Spanish for a visitor who only speaks English. They are as cheerful this early in the morning as they are committed to hard work.
Martin Guevara is a supervisor for Edco Packing, a farm labor contractor. His company supplies 300 workers to field pack in large corporate farms in Holtville, Santa Barbara, El Centro and Calipatria. Edco is in competition with labor contractors El Don and California Harvest, among others.
Their white buses are seen going from stop to stop, picking up workers on Imperial Avenue, First Avenue and Heber Street — as close as they can come to the U.S. side of the border — and other parking lot stops between here, El Centro and Brawley, east to Holtville and farm fields across the Arizona border.
“Seventy-five percent of our workers come from Mexico and twenty-five percent from the El Centro area,” Guevara said.
The Imperial County Agriculture Bureau reports ten thousand farm workers are needed each day during the peak harvest in January and February. As many as three times that number is needed to have a reliable workforce.
“Our workers in Santa Barbara make a minimum of eight dollars and twenty-five cents an hour and the ones in Holtville make eight dollars and fifty cents an hour as a minimum,” Guevara said. “They work eight to nine hours a day.”
Lettuce will be chopped and packed through March 20, Guevara said. Clipping onions begins in mid-April. Cantaloupe thinning begins in mid-May.
Eddie, wearing a Boston Red Sox cap, poses on Heber Street for a picture. His friend, Unrue, doesn’t want to be photographed and shies away. They make a joke in Spanish. Unrue is a Cleveland Indians fan. He removes his baseball cap and reveals a balding head. The team’s recent ways of more losses than wins is causing Unrue to lose his hair is the joke.
Before the buses load up and the caravan of cars and trucks follow them to the fields, workers are consumers with predictable habits. They spend money at a number of donut shops and restaurants just across the border and on Imperial Avenue and its side streets.
Buses stop at kiosks and men get off to fill up Igloo coolers with a day’s supply of drinking water for as many as thirty people.
Donut Avenue, on Third Avenue at Palin Street, is packed with customers who sit at tables or exit the shop with white Styrofoam cups filled with coffee in one hand and a white bag with donuts in the other.
There are seventeen people milling about the parking lot of Frosty Donut, waiting for the caravan that will travel Highway 111 to California Highway 78 to Brawley to work the broccoli and lettuce fields owned by Jack Bros. Farms. They will begin work one hour before sunrise.
Francisco Rashvi is the owner of Temptations, a donut shop on Third Avenue and Palin Street. If you have a strong arm, you could probably throw a stone from the sidewalk in front of Temptations in United States across to Mexico.
“The economy is so bad we are only open in the mornings,” Rashvi said as a half-truth. “Things are real tough, especially being real close to Mexicali. Customers want to pay the same price as they pay over there.
“This is a good place. I’m sixty-two and my partner is sixty-eight. I can’t work as many hours as I used to for I get tired. May partner, she is tired too. I run two places. When you work with your family, there is a lot of trust. The kids are grown and gone. My kids don’t want to run the businesses. It’s hard to keep track of stuff. It will be better if someone else comes in and runs this business.”
Since the bomb scare on Christmas at the airport in Detroit, things are tense along the border with the Border Patrol. People get stopped and asked to present identification that didn’t get stopped before things got tense.
“Inspections at the border are so long,” Rashvi said. “People are treated like dirt. Terrorism is making us pay for our freedom. It seems our freedom is going out the door. If everybody is in law enforcement, where is the GNP (Gross National Product)?
Magnolia and Jose Peralta enjoy morning coffee and donuts while waiting for buses to transport them to farm fields.