Mexicanos in Oregon: Their Stories, Their Lives

Testimonio by Maggie Garcia

94 Mexicanos in Oregon Testimonio by Maggie García This testimonio comes from excerpts from an interview conducted by Gonzales-Berry in 2004. At that time, Ms. García was a teacher at the MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in Woodburn, Oregon, where the interview was conducted in English. The excerpts were selected, transcribed, and arranged by the authors. My parents were migrants. That’s what they did. We came to Oregon, we went to California and Texas, and we did the whole migrant cycle thing. And then as we got older, my parents just traveled from Oregon to California, and then they added Idaho because it’s close, for sweet potatoes. So we’d come to the area to pick strawberries, cherries, prunes, berries, do the hops. And then, around October, we would all go to California to do the citrus, oranges, grapefruits. And then we would come back to Oregon. And then, at one point, my father added Idaho. So then in October, instead of going to California, we’d go to Idaho because it’s closer. We’d go from Woodburn to Idaho, to Jerome, Idaho, and pick potatoes. And that lasted about a month. When the potatoes were finished, we’d come back. One year we went to Arizona also. By that time we stopped going to Texas and settled out in the Northwest, Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, and Arizona. And then just Oregon and Idaho. And then we just settled in Oregon. My father was told that there were a lot more opportunities for work here. The racial thing wasn’t as evident as it was in places like Texas. And it was true, there was work everywhere. We’d work after school, all summer, on weekends, sometimes on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. If there was work on Sunday, we’d work on Sunday. The only months that we didn’t really do any work at all were November and December and most of January. I remember a lot of times I didn’t understand. But there was another thing that one always understands and that’s prejudice. And I understood that, even as a child. Discrimination—I understood that as a child. One of my first feelings when I started school in Woodburn was the discrimination and the prejudice against Mexicans with the children and some of the teachers too. Just the way they looked at you or didn’t; the way they helped you or didn’t help you. But the kids, I remember some of the kids would say, “Go back to Mexico.” “Where’s that?” I was born in Texas. Those are my earliest recollections of school. 95 THEIR STORIES, THEIR LIVES Testimonio: Maggie García Of course things didn’t get any better. It’s just that I got smarter. You know, you learn to identify certain feelings for what they are. When you are a child you are innocent. You know that the feeling isn’t right, and you know that there’s something wrong, but you can’t put a name to it. You just know where you’re comfortable and where you’re not, and school was not a place where I was comfortable. The school bus was even worse. I hated getting on that school bus, because I felt the discrimination was just so strong. I always felt the looks the kids gave us when we got on the bus. We were the only Mexican kids on the bus. And I always remember that I hated to go on the bus. It had to do with that, with the feeling that you were unwelcome and uncomfortable. But I always liked learning, and there was an occasional teacher that was nice… . Then I went to college—my girlfriend and I. Her parents took us. I didn’t even own a suitcase because we never traveled anywhere. When we did travel we packed in boxes, because you know, we were migrants. And then we stopped migrating, so we didn’t need to pack anything. I don’t even remember what I packed my clothes in. It was probably in boxes or bags. I might have even borrowed a suitcase from someone. So we took off for Eugene. I remember crying all the way from my house to Eugene. But I never turned back. I didn’t say I wanted to go back. I cried, because I was excited. I was scared. I didn’t know where I was going...