Mexicanos in Oregon: Their Stories, Their Lives

Testimonio by Jos

136 Mexicanos in Oregon Testimonio by José Sandoval This testimonio was written by José Sandoval, the second-generation son of immigrant parents from Hood River, Oregon, for a class on immigration taught by Gonzales-Berry at Oregon State University in 2005. His essay is published as written. My father began his immigrant pilgrimage into the United States at a very young age, in 1962. He is originally from Aguas Calientes, Zacatecas, and he made his first trip when he was only nineteen years old, right after he spent one year in the Mexican National Guard. He came to the U.S. on the Bracero program and spent his first six months in San Luis Rey Valley, where he picked an assortment of fruits and vegetables. When the harvest was over, he moved to Tijuana, Mexico, and stayed with his brother until the new harvest, and then he returned back to the U.S. My dad did this for several years. His travels took him all over California and all the way to Chicago, where he washed dishes. My parents were married in 1969, and my dad settled back down in Zacatecas and started his own little store in his village. Then in 1976, he got fed up with being broke and moved the family to Tijuana, where he became a street vendor. My mom used a fake passport to travel freely into San Diego to visit my aunt and cousins. On August 20th 1976, she crossed over the line to give birth to me, making me a legal citizen of the U.S. That same year my father traveled to Hood River, Oregon, on the advice of his brother- in-law. He began picking fruit for Mr. ———, who encouraged my dad to move the family up north, where he would provide housing and offer my father a supervisor position in the orchards. For nearly thirty years my father has worked on the same land and for the same landowner, and he is currently suffering from painful arthritis in both of his hands due to the miserable working conditions. My parents bought a new house in 1991, and, when we first moved in, we had six acres of strawberry fields that my dad soon got rid of and planted pear and apple trees. To this day he is constantly praised for having one of the best-looking orchards in town. Growing up in Hood River would prove to be very challenging for our family. My family was one of the first families to stay year round in Hood River, which is a big farmer and logger town. Up until I was in the third grade, there was just one other Mexican kid in my class, and his name was José 137 THEIR STORIES, THEIR LIVES Testimonio: José Sandoval Burrito. José and I quickly learned how to fight. We were constantly harassed by a lot of the white kids in our school. I learned to hate the word “Beaner.” Eventually more Mexican migrants came along, and I didn’t feel so different anymore. Most of my friends consisted of first-generation Mexicans who were here to stay just like me. But I also had many friends whose parents were a part of the transnational migrant circuit, so they would be in school for a year or two, then they would go back to Mexico or other parts of the U.S. for different types of jobs. José Burrito was one of these kids. They were usually gone for about a year or sometimes more. When the kids would return from wherever they were, they always had strange and new stories of gang life in the streets of Los Angeles or their poor living conditions in Mexico. Many times these kids would come back to Hood River, drop out of school, and go to work in the fields with their parents in order to help out their families. They were forced to grow up much faster than the friends they left behind in the public school system. Their families were stuck on the international migrant circuit, maybe forever. Life is different for the first- and secondgeneration youth from Mexico in a world that they don’t understand as being normal, but it is all they know. They are stuck between two worlds, locked in a different type of hyperspace where not everything is black and white but mostly just gray. They are not considered U.S. Americans because they look brown, and, at...