Given all the work Carmelo Ortiz does picking broccoli at a McHenry County farm, he`s puzzled by the treatment he received last week: a crowd of white men hurling rocks and bottles at his home.
Ortiz, a seasonal worker from Mexico who has lived in Harvard for two years, said the violent outbreak illustrated the lack of respect some in the small farming community have for the laborers.
”I`ve never seen any white people come in to do the jobs we do,” Ortiz said, explaining his feelings of frustration. ”I don`t see any white people bending over in the heat.”
Although residents say what happened July 14 to the home of Ortiz and several other Mexican farm workers was an aberration, they added that they find the incident no less troubling. Moreover, it has placed the spotlight on underlying tensions between Hispanics and a segment of Harvard`s white community.
The attack on the white wooden-frame house capped a day of swirling anger that began when two white neighbor girls started throwing stones at the home of the 12 Mexican workers, according to occupants of the house.
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One of the tenants, Evodio Castaneda, said he asked the baby-sitter of one of the girls, a 10-year-old, to stop them from throwing stones.
The baby-sitter refused, Castaneda said, and soon after that, police arrived to investigate a complaint that two of the workers had assaulted the girls. Castaneda was taken into custody, but police released him after determining that the charges against him were false.
Nonetheless, rumors of the assault spread. And by about 11 p.m., a group of 20 to 25 whites showed up in front of the Mexican workers` home while they were sleeping. Armed with baseball bats, the young white men showered the home with chunks of asphalt, bottles and racial epithets, witnesses said.
Several windows were broken, a door was kicked in and one occupant of the house was hit in the chest with a stone, witnesses said.
The attack lasted about 15 minutes. Police arrived and arrested Luther Mounts, 28, a Harvard man who lives across the street from the workers` home, and Sean DesFosses, 20, of Walworth, Wis., the baby-sitter.
Both men, charged with ethnic intimidation, were released from McHenry County Jail in Woodstock after posting bond.
Harvard, best known for its annual Milk Days festival, is a small farming community in the northwest part of McHenry County. Hispanics, many of whom work in the agricultural industry, make up about 14 percent of its 5,975 residents.
But as in many towns that play host to migrant workers, a segment of the white population still doesn`t seem to accept them.
”In a small town, even if it`s a small number of different people, their presence can be a threat or a source of tension,” said Rev. William Schuessler, who as the Rockford Catholic Diocese`s vicar of Hispanic ministry works with various migrant communities.
Seventeen-year-old Diane Gonzalez, who became Harvard High School`s first Hispanic valedictorian when she graduated in June, said her family and other Hispanics with a long tenure in the community generally have been treated warmly. But she feels many of the migrant families often are mistreated.
”They are viewed as trash,” she said of migrant workers. ”They get dirty looks at stores. They feel they are not wanted. They see your last name and wonder, `What you are doing here?` I would like to see a day when Mexicans are not stereotyped.”
Gonzalez, who plans to be a cardiologist and will attend Stanford, said that some of the migrant students at the high school also are treated as outcasts and frequently sit together.
”At least in part it`s because they don`t live here all the time, and it`s hard to break into an established group of friends who have known each other for a long time,” she said.
Nevertheless Gonzalez`s grandmother, Aurora Gonzalez, 66, said families like theirs, who have lived in the community 20 years, feel comfortable.
”We`ve always been treated very nice,” she said. ”We feel we belong here.”
The tension that exists, however, predates last week`s incident. City officials 1 1/2 years ago approved a request to prohibit single-family homes in two areas of town from being converted into apartments, prompting some Hispanics to insist the move was directed against migrant workers. In need of inexpensive housing, many migrant workers live in such apartments.
At public hearings of the Harvard Zoning Board of Appeals, some residents complained that ”they feared for their families” because of how many Hispanics lived there, said Margaret Sanchez, a liaison officer for the Illinois Department of Agriculture`s migrant labor affairs.
But Harvard Mayor Robert Iftner said the zoning change had nothing to do with ethnic differences.
Maria Castro, 28, a migrant farm worker at Twin Gardens farms, just outside Harvard, agreed that for the most part she and her family are treated well.
But, she said, there are unpleasant moments, such as their occasional encounters at a fast-food restaurant where two servers are rude to Hispanics. But, she said, she does not feel alienated.
”This is my country. I was born and raised here. I am proud to be an American.”
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