Adrian Lopez, left, of Madera demonstrates a traditional Mixtec folk dance. Sacramento Bee/Hector Amezcua

Struggling in El Norte

Mixtec Indians seek better life in the U.S.

By Stephen Magagnini -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Sunday, October 20, 2002

For years, Salomon Juan Bautista has followed the crops, picking strawberries in Santa Maria, blueberries in Oregon, raisins in Fresno, olives in Madera, pears in Corning.

But this raisin harvest, Bautista, 62, sits morosely outside his shack in the vineyards around the Fresno County town of Kerman, a purple Nike cap shielding his head from the sun. After more than 50 years in the fields, he's been forced to quit by a tumor in his right leg.

"I don't like not working, but the doctor says I can't," he says in Mixtec, his native language -- the only language he can speak. "Still, I grow a few things around here, green beans, jalapenos ..."

Bautista, a Mixtec Indian from a poor village in Oaxaca, Mexico, who became a legal U.S. resident in 1987, says the most he's ever made in one year in El Norte (the United States) is $4,000.

"He doesn't know he has a right to minimum wage," says his daughter, Natalia, 29, who crossed the border two years ago with her teenage daughter, Esmeralda. "Here, we have food, but I'm a slave."

They call themselves Nuu Savi -- "People of the Rain" or "The Cloud People." There are now as many as 100,000 Mixtecs in California, making them the largest Indian group in the state. Roughly half have come in the last five years, working their way north from the fog-draped mountains of La Mixteca, their homeland in western Oaxaca, Guerrero and Puebla.

Like the Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos and Mexican mestizos (mixed bloods) before them, the Mixtecs have fled gut-cramping poverty for the broiling fields and tule fog of the Central Valley. They also are fleeing the twin demons of racism and discrimination that have shackled them at the bottom of Mexican society.

"The story of the Mixtecs is the story of the indigenous peoples in the Americas," said Hugo Morales, the Mixtec founder of Radio Bilingue, a Fresno-based network that broadcasts a weekly show in Mixtec. "Ever since colonial times, there were strict definitions of the status of races, with Europeans on top and the black and indigenous on the bottom.

"In Mexico, the native people have been left to live in the most remote places, the least habitable and the least productive. So, they've gone to other states, like Veracruz or Mexico City, to become the peons, the maids or the beggars."

Now, they're coming to California by the thousands, scared and desperate -- often to be exploited all over again.

Chances are some of the strawberries in your cereal, the garlic in your chicken, the tomatoes in your sauce and salad were picked by Mixtecs. The farms and labor camps John Steinbeck brought to life in "The Grapes of Wrath" are filled with Mixtecs. They are the shock troops of California agriculture, a $28 billion-a-year industry that supplies half the nation's fruits and vegetables.

Used to coaxing corn, beans, squash and chilis from La Mixteca's harsh terrain, they are known as tireless workers who rarely complain.

"They perform the jobs nobody wants to do," said Santiago Ventura, a Mixtec who does field inspections in Fresno and Madera counties, home to upward of 20,000 Mixtecs, for the advocacy group California Rural Legal Assistance.

"Whether or not they get paid," he said, "whether or not they have a toilet in the field, they're still going to work."

In part, this is because most of the newcomers are undocumented, and only about 20 percent speak Spanish fluently. Far fewer speak English. Most are not educated beyond elementary school.

Despite their growing numbers, the Mixtecs remain largely invisible. The spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Labor in San Francisco had never heard of them. Advocates say there isn't a single Mixtec-speaking doctor, lawyer, dentist, nurse, social worker, police officer or public school teacher in California.

There isn't even a Mixtec-English dictionary. Michael Kearney, an anthropologist at the University of California, Riverside, is working on one, but says Mixtec dialects vary widely from village to village. "If you get far enough away, they're virtually incomprehensible."

Because Indians have been discriminated against in Mexico, many here are afraid to admit they're Mixtec and don't speak Spanish -- sometimes with tragic consequences.

One Sunday earlier this year, Irma Luna, a Mixteca who works with Ventura in the CRLA's Fresno office, was called to the hospital to interpret for a homeless Mixteca who had just given birth.

Hospital officials, thinking she spoke Spanish, asked if she wanted to give her newborn son up for adoption and thought she had agreed. But a social worker who interviewed the young woman realized she didn't understand Spanish and called Luna to translate. When Luna asked her in Mixtec, she replied, horrified: "Are you crazy? Give him up for what?"

Ventura himself nearly spent life in prison because of a tragic miscommunication: In 1986, Ventura, then a 17-year-old strawberry picker in Oregon, was convicted of killing another farm worker.

He and six other farm workers were questioned after a stabbing, which took place at a party. When he was interviewed by the only Spanish-speaking police officer in the county, he did not make eye contact -- Mixtecs think it's rude to look people directly in the eye -- and the officer concluded he was guilty.

Ventura sat in terrified silence throughout his trial, forbidden by his lawyer to testify because of his limited Spanish. The only thing he understood was the verdict, and when he heard it, he let loose a heart-ripping scream that caused several jurors to publicly question their decision.

They helped spark a grass-roots effort to prove Ventura's innocence. After he spent four years in prison, his verdict was overturned, and he won a scholarship to the University of Portland. He went on to become fluent in Spanish and English and has devoted his life to helping fellow Mixtecs through CRLA.

"There's a complete lack of understanding among public officials as to how alien our legal system is to the average indigenous Oaxacan farm worker," said Jeff Ponting, a CRLA attorney who has fought to win justice for Mixtecs cheated by farm labor contractors, landlords and immigration consultants.

"The county, state and federal agencies who are supposed to be providing services to them are completely ignorant of these people and their needs."

That ignorance has cast a deadly shadow over 50 Mixtec families who thought they had found paradise in Tall Trees, a rundown trailer park in northwest Fresno that sits beside one of America's worst toxic waste dumps.

For years, dating back to the 1980s, the stench of gas and manure filled the trailer park each night.

"Despite the smell, we thought we had a pretty good life," said Lorenzo Morales, who came here in 1986 with nothing but his two hands and a dream: to work and make enough money to build or buy a house.

While thousands of Mixtecs live in labor camps, sheds, orchards, cars and abandoned houses, Morales seemed to have made it. The rent was only $160 a month; people tended gardens, raised chickens and felt safe letting their children run around. Tall Trees became a Mixtec village.

The toxic waste site next door had belonged to Purity Oil, which recycled oil from 144 companies, including Chevron. The sludge was stored in unlined pits, and spread beneath the ground in plumes contaminated with lead, copper, zinc, pesticides and other chemicals.

The site was abandoned in 1982; and in 1984, the federal Environmental Protection Agency began a $30 million cleanup that continues today.

But the trailer park stayed open. Starting in the late 1980s, county officials and the EPA posted signs on the site, warning in English and Spanish that it contained chemicals known to cause cancer and birth defects.

But the Mixtecs couldn't read the signs, Ponting said. And, their children played and walked their dogs on the property until 1998, when a Mixtec family told Ponting about black slime oozing from the ground behind their trailer. "When this guy tried to scoop it out, he had to use bleach to get it off his hands and arms."

Ponting got county and EPA officials to meet with the Mixtecs. When one mother expressed her fears in Mixtec, "You could almost see their jaws drop," he said. The EPA's outreach worker said, "I knew I wasn't getting through to them, and now I know why: They speak a different language."

In a rare show of cooperation, the EPA, the county, Chevron, CRLA and the National Farmworkers Service Center joined forces to give every Tall Trees family either $30,000 in compensation or a new home.

After rising in the indigo pre-dawn light to cut garlic for eight hours, Morales, 35, sits eating a nectarine on the porch of his new blue-stucco house five miles away. He knows the home may have come at the expense of his family's health.

His son, Irvin, 3, has asthma and anemia.

"I want to know if it's because of where we lived," his wife says. "I'm afraid of the answer."

Others have suffered miscarriages and respiratory illnesses, Ponting says, "but these folks have been exposed to so many environmental hazards -- lead paint, asbestos, chemicals, pesticides -- at home, at work or in their migrant journeys that it's impossible to say if any illnesses are linked to Tall Trees."

Labor consultant Edward Kissam, who worked with Mixtecs on Census 2000, estimates that 10 percent to 15 percent of California's roughly 800,000 farm workers are Mixtec. Though many came to escape discrimination in Mexico, at a park outside Kerman, about 20 Mixtec farm workers trade tales of being cheated or abused here, often by other Mexicans.

Arnulfo Lopez, who has been here since 1983, is one of the few Mixtecs to speak up for farm workers' rights. He has paid the price.

Lopez said that when a labor contractor charged his wife and a friend $30 for clippers they didn't need, he protested. "They finally got their money back, but I was told there was no more work." There are a lot of accidents in the fields, he added. "If you get cut too deep, they tell you, 'Don't come back tomorrow.' "

The riteros, or day haulers, who ferry workers to and from the fields, are sometimes in league with the labor contractors, Lopez said. "If you pay the ritero $6 to drive you out to the fields, you get hired; if you come in your own car, they send you home."

Lopez's friend, Emillio Hernando-Santos, said he was picking garlic near Huron recently. The garlic was small, and after three hours, the contractor fired him and 20 others. "I'd picked 11 cans, and he paid me nothing," he said. "I told him, 'There's human rights.' He said, 'Not today.' "

It's illegal not to give farm workers -- even undocumented ones -- breaks, toilets or drinking water. It's illegal to pay them for less than four hours' work per day and not to pay overtime. It's illegal to charge them for rides or tools. But these abuses happen all the time, Ponting said, and indigenous people who can't communicate are the most vulnerable.

The U.S. Labor Department's Western Region has 200 investigators who speak a combined 22 languages. None speaks Mixtec. The State Labor Commission uses Mixtec interpreters on a case-by-case basis but doesn't have any Mixtec employees on staff.

"It's ludicrous to expect people who are isolated culturally and linguistically to speak up for their rights in the fields," Ponting said. "How do workers know they're not going to lose their jobs if nobody (at Cal-OSHA or the state or federal labor departments) speaks their language?"

Luna, the CRLA investigator in Fresno, has helped hundreds of Mixtec farm workers get paid what they deserved, plus penalties, but often it takes years to get justice. Her T-shirt reads, "Ten Years of Struggle."

In 1992, Rufino Dominguez and other Mixtecs in Fresno formed El Frente Indigena Oaxaqueno Binacional -- the Oaxacan Indigenous Binational Front -- to represent Oaxaca's 16 Indian groups on each side of the border.

In Mexico, home to 12 million Indians, there are no Indian casinos, no government programs to help indigenous communities get ahead, said Leoncio Vasquez, Frente's Mixtec liaison.

"We don't get electricity, running water or schools unless we march, boycott, take over government offices and fight for everything we get.

"We come here for survival. If I had a good job to support my family, I wouldn't want to come to the U.S."

Oaxaca, a state rich in culture, is one of Mexico's poorest, and the Indians are the poorest of the poor, the most malnourished, the least likely to have medical care, plumbing or telephones.

Many Mixtecs can't read because their families can't afford to send them to school.

Luna said she quit school after a week because the village teacher spoke only Spanish and wouldn't let her speak Mixtec, which sounds like a blend of Chinese, Japanese and Spanish.

Mixtecs come from the same language family as Alaska natives and Pueblo Indians, said California anthropologist Bonnie Bade. Most anthropologists think the Americas were populated by people from Asia who crossed the Bering Strait some 14,000 years ago. The Mixtecs, like other indigenous peoples, believe they sprouted from the soil, the fruit of a great tree.

Mixtec culture goes back 3,000 years.

"The ancient Mixteca was an extremely sophisticated, complex civilization comparable to ancient Egypt, China and Greece," Bade said. "They had their own forms of architecture, art, philosophy, religion, engineering, medicine and writing."

In the 11th century, the Mixtec warrior-king Lord 8Deer Tiger Claw ruled much of Oaxaca, including the ancient cities of Mitla and Monte Alban. Pictographs tell how 8Deer won part of his kingdom in a game of pelota, a cross between baseball and volleyball that's still played today.

The Mixtecs were enslaved by the Aztecs in 1456, and then in 1521 by the Spanish, who tried to wipe out Mixtec culture.

But the language survived, and so did the Mixtec world view. Luna's father told her stories of Jesus and the Virgin Mary picking mountain flowers, but he always sacrificed a chicken to thank the Rain God for a good harvest.

The bonds that tie Mixtecs to their native villages have endured for centuries. In 1998, Luna's brother Luis was called back to his village in La Mixteca to perform unpaid community service -- [TEXT]el tequio[/TEXT] -- that pre-dates the Spanish Conquest.

"He'd been gone 18 years and boom! He was selected," she said. "He had to quit his job."

No matter how far away a Mixtec lives, he may be called home to serve on the city council, the police force or the Patron Saints Day committee. Men are expected to send money to pay for schools, roads and fiestas that can cost $10,000.

If you don't perform [TEXT]el tequio[/TEXT], in some towns "the authorities will transfer your house and your fields to someone else, or knock your house down and scratch your name off the rolls -- you're expelled from the community," said Kearney, the anthropologist.

Women aren't called back for [TEXT]el tequio[/TEXT] -- "We don't have a voice; we don't get to serve on anything," Luna said. They're bonded to the community in other ways. Mixtecas as they mature are expected to become [TEXT]comadres[/TEXT], or godmothers, to a growing number of children, and by the time they are elders might have 60 godchildren they have nurtured, Bade said.

Mixtec women are gradually gaining a measure of independence in El Norte -- but that independence often comes out of domestic strife. Many Mixtec families cave in to the pressures of life in America.

"The poorer the family, the more stressed and tense they are, and the more prone to domestic violence" and alcohol abuse, Ventura said.

Rosa Dominguez came here in 1990. For the first five years, she said, she was a virtual prisoner, passing the time washing clothes and embroidering blouses and tortilla covers.

"My husband was very jealous, so I never got to leave the house," she said. "I was sad. I didn't have any money. I asked to go back and he refused."

Finally, she began working in the fields and learning her way around.

Today Dominguez, 30, lives with her four children, her nephew and another couple in a $500-a-month, two-bedroom apartment in Madera. Six months ago, she told her husband to move out.

On this August Thursday, she gets up at 4 a.m. and picks garlic until her knees are bloody. By the time she quits at noon, it is 106 degrees. "I made $27," she says.

When she gets home, she sits on her faded yellow couch with the red and green floral print and rubs her swollen knees with alcohol. She takes out a coverlet she's embroidered with two peacocks, a purple duck and a bouquet. She's worked on it for four months. She hopes to get $7 for it.

Her daughter Beatriz, 7, hands her a note from her second-grade teacher at Serra Vista School: "Your daughter got a B-in spelling and didn't complete one homework assignment." Dominguez asks her to translate it in Spanish.

She doesn't understand English; her kids don't speak Mixtec.

"I miss everything about my village," she says, but her kids are Americans.

"I like the computers and the math," says Beatriz.

She hops on the couch, shouting, "Serra Vista -- We're Number One! I don't ever want to go to Oaxaca."

Every night, mother and daughter watch "Salome," a Mexican soap opera about a pretty young mother who runs a beauty parlor.

"It helps me learn words in Spanish," Dominguez says.

There are no Mixtec words for soap opera or television or radio or telephone.

On her wrist is a $200 wristwatch braided in gold and silver.

"I went to the jewelry store, and the guy said I'll cash your welfare check if you buy this watch for $5 a month," she explains. "I didn't even know how to tell time, but no other store would cash my check because I don't have ID."

Dominguez dreams of having her own house and yard and a permanent job, "maybe doing housecleaning. I want to learn to read, to write, to defend myself. And I want to learn to drive."

As a peach-colored August sky slowly fades to blue, the Mixtecs' past and future merge at a farmhouse tucked in the vineyards outside Madera. The yard is still draped with purple and white flowers from a 15-year-old girl's quinciniera, a coming-of-age celebration.

In the driveway, a dozen Mixtecs, animated by spirited songs coming from a boombox, practice the dance of el diabolitos (the little devils) and la paloma (the dove). The centuries-old dances are taught by Adrian Lopez, a 28-year-old construction worker who's passing on his passion for the culture to his son, Adrian, 8, who prances around in goatskin chaps like those worn by his ancestors.

The dancers, most of whom are male, are practicing for the festival of San Miguel, patron saint of Luna's hometown of San Miguel Cuevas.

"We're thanking him for our good health, for having survived another year," Luna says. "He's the patron saint of justice, the one who fights evil spirits."

Soon, Luna joins the dancers, whirling with abandon in front of her daughters, Ivette, 11, and Raquel, 9.

"The women in my village are forbidden to do the dance of el diabolitos," she says. "Since I was a little girl, I've wanted to put on the traditional costume -- a deer's mask and chaps -- and go to the front and dance. I'm going to do it someday."

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