For Many Immigrants From Mexico, Farm Work Is Still The Only Way To The California Dream
Julia Mitric Capital Public Radio reports on the American Dream of farmworkers from Mexico.
Patricia Carabez stands by a row of black, plastic crates piled high with cauliflower, apples, and pears in the parking lot of a mobile home park in rural Dunnigan, 40 miles north of Sacramento. As children wander past the parking lot on their way home from school, Carabez calls out to them by name.
Speaking Spanish, she tells them to remind their parents to come pick up fresh produce. Carabez knows everybody here because she lived in one of these mobile homes until last year. Carabez says many of her former neighbors are farmworkers, like her.
Like generations of immigrants before her, Patricia Carabez saw farm work as a stepping stone to a better life for her children. “My husband and I came here because we had a vision for a better life,” she says. “We originally planned to be in California for two years,” she says with a rueful smile. That was 21 years ago.
Carabez works as a vegetable packer, 10-12 hours a day, six days a week. In her off-time, she volunteers at this mobile produce stand run by Yolo Food Bank twice a month. While Carabez instructs parents and children to fill a bag with fruits, veggies and bags of rice, she uses her her cell phone to call other folks who haven’t shown up yet.
Carabez, 39, emigrated to California with her husband from the Mexican state of Michoacan when she was 18. She started pruning and harvesting in the vineyards. She describes long days, full of physically demanding labor, with more to do on the family front, raising her two children.
U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement operations in farm country have generated concerns and here) in both immigrants and their employers.
KJ