Mexicanos in Oregon: Their Stories, Their Lives

Testimonio by Esteban

172 Mexicanos in Oregon Testimonio by Esteban This testimonio is composed from excerpts of an interview conducted by Mendoza in 2008 in Esteban’s home in Harrisburg, which he shares with his wife and two children. Esteban agreed to be interviewed late at night, while his children were in bed and his wife was baby-sitting for a Mexican neighbor who works the night shift at a fast food restaurant in town. The interview was conducted in Spanish, and excerpts were selected, transcribed, translated and arranged by the authors. When I arrived in Oregon, I spent one month looking for work. Some days I would go with my brother-in-law to a construction site to help out with tiling or something, but I didn’t have full-time employment. I had already resigned from my job in Mexico and my former boss lent me some money to buy airline tickets for me and my family. I dreamed that soon after arriving here I would find a job without delay. On the first week someone helped me to get a license and lent me the equipment to gather wild mushrooms. They left me alone and I tried but I got lost in the forest, couldn’t do it. The only forest that I had seen in my life had been on TV. I was fat; I had never used a shovel before. I knew that here in Oregon I wouldn’t be working eight hours at an office desk but never anticipated that it would be so difficult. Then a cousin of my brotherin -law took me with him to plant pine trees on a mountainside. Those crews always need workers for that type of job. I got used to planting. I worked as a tree planter for three years (I was on the side of the mountain every day, even Sunday). We worked ten months and rested in October and November. One day I learned that the owner of an organic farm here in the Willamette Valley was looking for workers. I went with a group of people from Oaxaca. They are of indigenous descent, they are short, and they are discriminated just for that. The owner of this farm saw that I was taller and looked different and asked me: “Where you are from?” I answered that I’m Mexican, but the patron replied: “You are not like them.” The other men who were in the same group said that I could work in the fields too and the patron sent us to clean the vegetable beds. At the beginning I didn’t know how to do it. My companions from Oaxaca had been working in the fields since they were five years old, but I had only worked in factories before. Somehow I learned to do it. In organic farms, the farmer doesn’t use pesticides. We had to take the weeds out by hand. This farmer grows tomatoes, corn, garlic, watermelons, melons, leeks, 173 THEIR STORIES, THEIR LIVES Testimonio: Esteban carrots, and artichokes. When we started working there, the owner had one tractor in partnership with a neighbor, and he employed three older Oaxacans to work on a small field. These three did the same job as six other workers would have done it. He hired me and five other Oaxacans to work in his fields. Now the patron has six different fields and employs thirty workers. We work up to sixteen hours per day, and you cannot say “I’m in pain” or “I have stomachache.” You cannot miss a day of work because there are three or four immigrants waiting to take that same job. We start at 5:30 am and we go on until 2:00 pm without a break, then we have lunch and continue until the job it’s done. The first manager was Hispanic. He made us work very hard just to please the grower. There are no laws to protect you in the fields. You have no rights, only the right to remain silent. We get called names in English and we have to endure mistreatment. I get paid $10 per hour, but before I was paid $7.50 an hour. It was a fixed monthly salary, no matter how many hours you spent working in the fields each day. But there was a problem. Many workers left because the grower treated them poorly; then a guy came to the farm—I think he was with PCUN or...