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NANCY J. WELLMEIER 9 La Huerta: Transportation Hub in the Arizona Desert THE RAIN had been steady for the three days that Mario and his friends had been living under the orange trees.1 The grey Arizona December sky darkened as they sloshed through the mud toward the place where they had learned a meal was served every evening. The six young men, all from Barillas, Huehuetenango, in the remote mountains of northwestern Guatemala, spoke softly to each other in Q'anjob'aI, their Mayan language, and wondered how long the rainy season lasted in Los Estados, the United States. They hoped that the church people who brought the food would have blankets or shoes tonight. Grateful for the hot food and the dark green garbage bag he was given to use as a raincoat, Mario hoped desperately that tonight he and his companions would find a ride to Florida, where he had heard he could earn $30 a day picking tomatoes. From sometime in the early 1980s until July of 1997, the citrus groves around the periphery of Phoenix, Arizona, were a distribution point for groups of Mayas coming into the United States from Guatemala.2 In one particular grove, known from the Maya homeland to Florida as La Huerta, or the orchard, from twenty to a hundred Mexican and Guatemalan indigenous people, mostly young men, arrived every week on their way to find work and to connect with relatives and friends. Women and children at times accompanied the men. During their stay in the groves, they lived and slept hidden under the thick foliage of the orange and grapefruit trees, venturing out only for the daily meal provided by local church volunteers and perhaps to use the telephone and mail services at a nearby general store. To go farther without the protection of the night or of a vehicle would be foolhardy; it would risk losing all the investment of time, money, and physical effort required to reach this point. The migra, the Border Patrol, would escort them to the border and the whole difficult crossing would have to start over.3 In La Huerta, shelter was a piece of plastic draped over the branches of a tree and a bundle of rags and blankets spread on the ground. Con141 Copyrighted Material 142 NANCY J. WELLMEIER trary to popular belief, it both rains and gets cold in the Arizona desert, and people caught in bad weather could not build fires, for they would attract the attention of the Border Patrol. Occasionally the church workers who brought the food, clothing, and blankets would take women and small children home for a night, but not often. In the summer, the problem was to find sufficient clean drinking water to avoid dehydration ; all the irrigation canals carry pesticide-laced water. Every day at about 4:00 P.M., several trucks and cars pulled up beside La Huerta. Quickly, volunteers hauled out huge pots and tubs of steaming beans or stew, sandwiches, sweet rolls, coffee, juice, and clean water. The hungry travelers were lined up and led in prayer; then, one after another, women and children first, they received a plate piled high with food. Distribution of leftovers for tomorrow's breakfast, clothing, blankets, and shoes followed. On days when more than fifty migrants appeared, some went away empty-handed. On some days there were toilet kits; other days a volunteer doctor was available for examinations and to dispense medicine. The county health department occasionally sent nurses to vaccinate against measles, typhoid, and diphtheria. Often the newly arrived were given a short talk about their legal rights in the United States and a list of phone numbers of legal services agencies around the country where help could be found for political asylum applications. This scene was repeated daily without fail for at least ten years.4 Although statistical information on the number of migrants is nonexistent , the church volunteers from several Christian denominations agree with the estimate made by a supervisor of the citrus ranch itself: five thousand immigrant workers per year over a period of fifteen years. There were probably larger numbers in 1987 and 1988. The great majority were young men between the ages of fourteen and thirty-five; about half were single and the others had left wives and children behind. They spent from two days to two weeks in La Huerta, dependent on the availability of the "coyotes," or clandestine transportation providers, to take them to their destinations...

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