HOW THE P'URHÉPECHAS CAME TO THE COACHELLA VALLEY
By David Bacon
New America Media, 1/11/11
http://newamericamedia.org/2011/01/coachella-labor-camp.php
THERMAL, CA -- Pierce Street sounds like
an avenue in any city old enough to name a street
after a nineteenth century president. In the
Coachella Valley, though, Pierce Street is a
narrow blacktop running through sagebrush and
desiccated palms, across alkali-crusted sand.
Heading toward the Salton Sea a dozen miles south
of Coachella, the nearest incorporated town,
Pierce Street passes the Duros trailer camp.
The desert here belongs to the Torres
Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, a Native
American tribe whose name for themselves is
Mau-Wal-Mah Su-Kutt Menyil, or Deer Moon Among
the Palms. In 1876, when the U.S. government
recognized the tribe, Toro was the name of the
local town here, and the Martinez Indian Agency
administered the reservation. Hence the combined
name of Torres Martinez.
The Duros trailer camp sits on
reservation land, along with a sister trailer
park, Chicanitas, on nearby Avenue Seventy.
Together they create a unique situation. This
small reservation is home to a few hundred Native
Americans, that is, indigenous people whose land
lies within the present borders of the United
States. The reservation is now home also to a
far larger number of indigenous Mexican migrants,
P'urhépecha people from the Mexican state of
Michoacan. Over 2000 P'urhépechas live in the
two camps, and the number of migrants here rises
to over 5000 during peak harvest in the
surrounding fields.
P'urhépechas now make up a significant
part of the workforce in the Coachella Valley,
one of the oldest agricultural areas in
California. It was in the valley's grape fields
in 1965 that Filipino farm workers walked out on
strike, leading eventually to the formation of
the United Farm Workers. Today hardly any
Filipinos are left in Coachella fields. The work
they did half a century ago - picking grapes and
lemons, and cutting lettuce - today is performed
by indigenous Mexican migrants.
The trailers at Duros aren't in great
shape. People came here looking for living space
after Riverside County began requiring the
demolition of tumbledown trailers in other,
smaller settlements outside the reservation.
Harvey Duro, for whom Duros is named, had a lease
for land from the tribe, and the camp quickly
grew as people were forced out elsewhere.
Chicanitas expanded for the same reason.
Eventually Duros too was threatened with
demolition, since its trailers were often in
worse condition than those the County had
condemned. In 2008 U.S. District Judge Stephen
G. Larson ordered improvements to the trailers
and the camp's infrastructure. California Rural
Legal Assistance went to bat for the residents,
advocating better conditions, but also opposing
any demolition. In April 2009, Judge Larson
agreed with them. Tearing down the trailers and
relocating residents yet again "would create one
of the largest forced migrations in the history
of this state," he said, comparable in size to
the internment of Japanese-Americans at Manzanar.
A caretaker was appointed for the Duros camp, and
today conditions are much better, according to
Meregildo Ortiz, president of the P'urhépecha
community of Coachella Valley.
In Duros and Chicanitas most residents
don't speak English or Spanish, but a language
that was centuries old when Columbus arrived in
the Americas. Every December, P'urhépechas
begin practicing the Danza de los Ancianos, the
Dance of the Old People. It too is a central
part of their cultural identity. Late at night
at Chicanitas, long lines of young people shuffle
around the trailers to the music of guitars and
horns, in a stylized imitation of the halting
gait of the very old. They're getting ready for
the procession they'll eventually make to the
church in Mecca, a few miles away. But the
practice also introduces children to the culture
in which they've been born. And as the lines
snake and shuffle, wood smoke rises into the dark
sky from a fire warming a galvanized tub of
cinnamon-flavored coffee, which everyone shares
when the practice ends.
People don't make much money picking
lemons or grapes. Jobs only last a harvesting
season, and many have to leave the valley for at
least part of the year as they follow the crops
elsewhere. But dancing together in the desert is
part of the glue that holds the P'urhépecha
community together in these two trailer camps --
something to come back for.
Pedro Gonzalez was one of the first
P'urhépechas to leave his home state to travel to
the U.S., looking for work. Over the three
decades that followed, he was joined by thousands
of others. He was the community's first
president, before Ortiz. Today he's 60 years
old, and lives in a trailer at Duros with his
wife Dorotea Gonzalez Fosar. In an interview with
David Bacon, he recounted the history of the
P'urhépecha migration that created the Duros and
Chicanitas camps.
I grew up in Ocomichu, Michoacán, which
is a P'urhépecha town. When I was growing up,
nobody knew how to speak Spanish. When you asked
them something in Spanish while they were working
in the fields they would run, because they didn't
understand what you were saying. You suffer when
you don't know the language. My father wasn't
P'urhépecha, though, just my mother, so he taught
us Spanish when we were young.
I first came to the U.S. in 1979. When I
first arrived in Riverside I didn't get a
paycheck for two weeks. We survived off
tortillas and oranges. We were working in the
orange fields, and ate them for every meal.
Someone lent us a couple of dollars and we would
buy a package of tortillas. We need to help each
other, even when someone just needs a dollar. I
just felt like crying back then, not knowing what
to do.
Today in Duros or Mecca you can
practically go anywhere and speak P'urhépecha
with anyone. It wasn't like that when I got
here. I didn't have anyone to talk to. I lived
with an African American man in Palm Springs for
two months, and felt very lonely. Nowadays the
younger generation says our memories of what we
suffered are not real and exaggerated. That
makes me feel bad.
We walked two nights and two days
crossing the border back then. Now it costs
about $1,500, even as much as $3,000 to cross the
line. You have to work for more than two or
three months to earn that much. It used to be
that you didn't have to pay another person to
help you cross. Now it's much harder, though,
and the coyotes charge so much. I used to help
people cross for $300, and it was no big deal.
I've helped others cross and they've never paid
me. They forget.
I would say we have about 3,000
P'urhépecha people in this area now. There are a
lot of us. In Riverside alone I think there
must be 1,500 people. Our hometown in Michoacan
has also grown a lot. It used to be a small
town, but it's now a lot bigger. A few years
back they conducted a census in Mexico and
determined there were about 8,000 indigenous
people living in the hills of that area of
Michoacán. I would say most are still there, but
there are many of us now all over the U.S. We're
spread out in Palm Springs, Coachella, Indio, and
Riverside.
Here in the Duros trailer park there were
only four trailers when I came in 1999. Slowly
people started arriving and everything started
growing. Now I think there must be hundreds of
people in these two parks, Duros and Chicanitas.
Most of us here work picking lemons and
grapes, depending on the time of year. I like
working the lemon harvest the most, because it
pays piece rate and not by the hour . If you
work by the hour, it's just over $7. On piece
rate you can make about $1,550 every two weeks.
If you do odd jobs here and there it's enough for
us to live on. But piece rate makes you work
fast, and some people don't like it because they
don't like to work hard. For example today I
finished nine rows while some others only did
five.
The owner of the park here is a good man,
a Native American. He even helped me fill out
the immigration paperwork for my family, and only
charged $500 when others would have charged me
$2,000.
But we used to have a lot of problems
[before the state took control of the park]. A
big one was the lack of security. Once my wife
heard a knocking right after we'd left for work.
She thought we'd come back, so she opened the
door. It was an intruder. She yelled and he ran
off, but the security guards wouldn't do anything
to protect us.
Rent on the trailer here costs us about
$250, and with garbage, water and security it
goes up to $300 a month. If you're getting paid
$7 or $8 an hour, that's hard. Gas prices keep
going up and our wages don't. Food prices are
high. I spend more than $300 every time I go buy
food. If people got together and decided not to
work for one day it would have a tremendous
impact on the economy, but people don't do that
because they are in need of money. We
participated in a strike once. But there were
other people who really needed work. They went
into the fields to work even though we told them
not to.
My kids are here legally now and I'm in
the process of obtaining legal residency for my
last child. They all speak P'urhépecha, which is
what we speak in the house. My wife doesn't
speak Spanish too well. She refused to learn it
in the beginning because she said she wouldn't
need it. But now look at how necessary it is to
speak English in this country.
When my kids were young we had such a
humble life in Mexico. They used to run around
with holes all over their clothes. But our life
has changed. Now if they have a little tear they
want to throw the clothes away. They even waste
a lot of food. They don't know how to value
things.
My family still has land in the ejido.
My brother sold his plot when the land reform law
changed, but I still have mine. My father died
but my mother is still alive, and my wife's
mother as well. We never forget about them and
send them money continuously.
I don't think my kids will return to Michoacán to
live, though. Even though some were born over
there, when we go to visit they always want to
come back.
But I don't think they will lose their
language and culture living here. We hold onto
the P'urhépecha traditions, with dances,
weddings, baptisms, and quinceañeras. We all
help each other out. There are many P'urhépechas
here so everyone feels at home.
I might go back to Mexico to live
someday, but I don't know when. I haven't been
over there in years. I don't even have my voter
card. I've never voted in my life.
Chicanitas, a farm labor camp of trailers in the desert in Coachella Valley.
Many Purepechas live in trailers like this in the
Duros camp on the Torres Martinez Reservation,
and work as farm workers in the fields of the
Coachella Valley.
Amelia Gonzalez in the kitchen/family room of her
trailer in Duros. Amelia is the daughter of
Pedro Gonzales, a leader of the Purepecha
community in the Coachella Valley.
Demetrio Rafael has been picking grapes for
fifteen years, and lives in the Chicanitas
trailer camp in the desert, on Avenue 70.
Maria del Carmen Tello lives in Mecca and works a
crew of farm workers picking lemons. Most
workers in this crew belong to the Purepecha
community in the Coachella Valley
Pedro Gonzales and his family live in a trailer
in Duros. Gonzales is the former president of
the Purepecha community in the Coachella Valley.
Meregildo Ortiz (l) is the president of the
Purepecha community in the Coachella Valley.
Seated with him are Max Ortiz and Julian Benito.
Armando Vicente lives in the Chicanitas camp and
works in a crew of limoneros. He is the
mayordomo, or leader, of the fiesta and
celebration of the Virgin de Guadalupe, in which
the whole Purepecha community participates
through dance, music, food and other customs.
A boy is the youngest member of the group of
musicians who play for the community as it
practices the Danza de Los Ancianos (the Dance of
the Old People),
Members of the Purepecha community in the
Coachella Valley gather at the Chicanitas trailer
camp at night to rehearse the Danza de Los
Ancianos (the Dance of the Old People), preparing
to perform it during a procession celebrating the
Virgin de Guadalupe.
For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org
See also Illegal People -- How Globalization
Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants
(Beacon Press, 2008)
Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002
See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US
Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575
See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the
U.S./Mexico Border (University of California,
2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html
--
__________________________________
David Bacon, Photographs and Stories
http://dbacon.igc.org
__________________________________
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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