I have for decades followed undocumented migration along the Mexico-United States border. Crossing the border without documentation is a crime, but those who slip in typically readily find work. In May 1982, I began to report on a group of Mexican undocumented workers from Oaxaca who traveled in California working. What I found appeared as stories in the San Diego Union. Here is an excerpt from my book:
The first stop for many Oaxacans was at the strawberry farms in North San Diego County. I discovered workers living in hovels, old cars and in thick brush adjacent to new luxury homes. In the coming months, homeowners would
protest the workers’ presence. They considered the makeshift encampment an eyesore and a potential health hazard.
On a typical summer day, dozens of Mixtec native people would pick strawberries for 90 cents or $1.25 per 18-pound box, depending on whether the leaves were removed. Few were able to pick more than 25 boxfuls during a 10-hour shift.
One day, the Oaxacans had just returned from a trip south, courtesy of the Border Patrol. They had been detained and sent across the border to Tijuana.
“It was just like in the movies when the officers came to get them,” said a woman living in a fancy home nearby. “They drove up in three or four cars and surrounded the place.”
Sergio del Mar, one of those picked up, said no one even tried to run. Del Mar and his co-workers had been rounded up. They returned to Tijuana so often and were so experienced at illegal border crossings that they viewed deportations as little more than inconveniences.
The farm owner, John Kobayashi, who supplied straw- berries to Smucker’s, simply shrugged when I asked about the Border Patrol raid. “You know, I’m not an immigration agent. These guys have been working for me for years. Unless someone tells me I must check to see if they are illegals, I won’t.”
As for the workers living in the brush, Kobayashi said he could not afford to provide housing. “I wish they had better living conditions. It bothers me for sure.”
One of his pickers, Fernando Hernández, said, “People must think we are used to living like this because we come from Mexico. We do live in houses in Mexico. Even when I picked tomatoes in Sinaloa, we lived in camps and had rooms with electricity.”
The brothers Celedonio and Avelino Guzmán had just attempted their first trip from Tijuana to Kobayashi’s strawberry farm. Traveling on foot, as all Oaxacans did at the time, they got as far as Bonsall in far northern San Diego County, when a group of white men intercepted them and demanded money.
“We didn’t have any. Well, they got mad, and one of the men cracked my skull with a club,” said Avelino.
Another man stabbed Celedonio in the stomach. They were hospitalized, and then US immigration officials returned them to Tijuana, where Celedonio depended on the generosity of other Mixtecs to feed him and his family while he recovered from his wounds.
“I’m worried that I may not be healing right,” he told me. “All along here,” Avelino said, rubbing where he had been slashed in the stomach, “I feel terrible itching deep inside. They feel better if I put a warm tortilla on the cuts.”
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 