The black stain of the earth is gone from his fingers. But the calluses never go away.
So even now, sitting in the eerie quiet of O`Hare International Airport, hands folded, fingers locked, listening for the boarding call for
the 3 a.m. flight home to Casacuaran, his pueblo in the bull`s-eye of Mexico, David Lopez doesn`t leave without a trace of the fields of Kankakee County.
There, for the last eight months, 62 hours a week, he has planted, replanted and picked sweet corn, crawled on his knees down long aisles of sandy soil searching for plump, green jalapeno peppers, heaved so many watermelons in a day that his 63-year-old back ached all night, and finally, in the early October chill, surrendered a flatbed full of pumpkins to the harvest.
This is Lopez`s 28th trip home from the fields north of the border. It is, he has decided, his last.
”I am not returning. I get tired a lot,” he says, matter-of-factly, in his native Spanish. ”Since one is now old, one gets tired more.”
So it is with the migrant farm worker. Come to America, young, hearty, filled with adventure and hungry to get a hold of the almighty dollar bill, which goes a lot further toward building dreams back home than a measly peso- now 3,000 to the dollar. Sure, there`s a price. You leave behind your village, your bed and the ones you love. Sometimes, your dignity.
You work till you ache in a strange land that pays you little money, even less respect. Dozens of harvests later, you head home for good, no longer young or hearty, yearning for nothing so much as the way the sunlight hits you when you sit in the plaza of your little village, hungry only for a bowl of your wife`s caldo de pollo. Your face, that last trip home, is wizened and tanned like hide. Your back, stooped. Your hands, your feet, and your knees, calloused.
It`s a long way from Casacuaran to the farm of Bernie Sikma & Sons, in rural Momence, roughly 65 miles south of Chicago`s Loop, in Kankakee County. But for the last three years that`s where you`d find Lopez, March to October, one day no different from the next aside from what you happen to be plucking from the earth and tossing in a bushel basket.
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Lopez, who made his first trip to the U.S. in 1954, a migrant worker in the fields of Oxnard, Calif., hasn`t been alone in his yearly trek from Casacuaran to Momence. He was steered to the Midwest, and specifically to Sikma`s-considered a prime picking destination because they pay more than minimum wage and don`t work their laborers into the ground-by his wife`s younger brother, Juventino Garcia. At 46, Garcia has just finished his fifth season at Sikma`s and his 23rd season of farm labor north of the border.
Garcia, an ex-baseball player from the small-town leagues northwest of Mexico City, shows some wear but he`s not yet worn out. He has been sending home his wages, a month at a time, all these years, hoping this winter to build a new house. He will be back in Momence in February.
New to the migration cycle is Garcia`s oldest son, Javier, 24, who just ended his third migrant season at Sikma`s. He finished his schooling before coming north, at 21, with his father and his uncle. Just last Christmas Eve, he married his longtime sweetheart, Maria Elena, whom he calls Nena and whom he had to leave at home two months later.
”It`s very hard (in the U.S.),” Javier says, ”but I`ve gotten used to it faster than the first time.”
Ripe months, quiet months
In Casacuaran, the month of December, when the men are home, is the time that many of life`s rites-baptisms, first communions, weddings-are scheduled at Iglesia de San Pablo, the Catholic church whose steeple towers over the squat adobe brick casas of the pueblo.
The younger Garcia has hopes of bringing his bride north in a couple of years and staying for 10 years, long enough to save for a home for them in Casacuaran. The young plant their dreams north of the border, the old plant them south.
In Casacuaran, the year is measured in ripe months-late October to February or early March, when the men are home and the population swells to 15,000-and quiet months-planting and picking season up north, when ”one feels all alone” in the village, says the elder Garcia`s wife, Elia, who has been left behind with their four children all these years.
”It gets so quiet and becomes so sad when all the men are gone, one can hear all the animals-roosters, mules, turkeys, cows in Casacuaran,” she says. It`s little better in Momence. There, the day begins at 6 o`clock in the little white farm house about a mile from the Sikmas` fields-unless it`s sweet corn season and the day begins earlier. The Garcias and Lopez share a cramped upstairs bedroom, filled with two beds, a couch, a color TV and a calendar of baby Jesus and Mary pinned to the wall. Five other people-all related-share the house, which the Sikmas provide for free, except for utilities.
”Without them (the migrant workers) we wouldn`t be in business,” says Bernie Sikma, a double-jowled farmer who retired four years ago when he hit 65.
The 370-acre farm has been in the family for 52 years. Sikma`s son David now runs it. But the migrants remain the ones toiling in the fields. Says the elder Sikma: ”No one in this country wants to do this type of work.”
There`s time for coffee, then it`s out to the fields. With hourly wages starting at $4.15, the day`s work begins. The season ranges from sweet corn to pumpkin.
The farm workers are divided on which is the killer crop: For Lopez, it`s watermelon, 10- and 20-pound orbs that have to be yanked at the ”tail” and heaved onto a flatbed. ”The hamstrings on the back of the legs start to hurt. One feels tired all over,” Lopez says.
For the elder Garcia, it`s jalapenos, without a doubt. Like the women back home, who on certain holy days crawl on their knees across the church plaza and down the long aisles toward the altar, the men in the fields fall to their knees, shuffling down long, sandy aisles to pluck the peppers from the rows on either side.
There`s a one-hour break for lunch, just when the sun beats on their backs. The workers pile into a Chevy pickup, its radiator well past retirement, and high-tail it back to the farmhouse, where the sweet scents of lunch seduce them before they`re even in the door.
A hearty lunch
It`s always delicious and there`s always plenty. There`s meat at every meal: beef or pork, boiled, and doused with homemade chili-pepper-and-tomatilla sauce. And there`s always a stack of steaming corn tortillas, and fresh salsa, made from field pickings-tomatoes, jalapenos, cilantro.
There are only four chairs in the kitchen, but at least there`s a table. Not everyone in Casacuaran has one of those. There`s no siesta after lunch. It`s back to the fields till sundown.
It`s not like that at every farm. Juventino Garcia once worked a farm in St. Anne, Ill., where everyone labored 91 hours a week, from 5 in the morning until 2 the next morning, without being paid overtime.
The economic lot of migrant workers across the U.S. is getting no better, according to a federal study just released. After factoring in inflation, the study shows wages have dropped 2 percent since the enactment of a 1986 federal law meant to improve migrant wages and work conditions.
”There are many people that abuse the people by the hours (worked),”
Garcia says. ”They (Sikmas) have confidence in us to work, without looking after us. They are very good people, the Sikmas.”
At sundown, it`s back to the farmhouse, but first the workers stop at a shed where they strip off their work clothes, draping them over a haystack outside to air out. Too tired to go out, they confine their evening activities to leftover lunch and sports on TV. Again, depending on the pick of the season, it`s los Bulls, los Sox or los Osos (the Bears).
It wasn`t until about a week before the red-eye flight home that a certain bustle filled the farmhouse. The men made time for shopping between pumpkin picking. Javier Garcia bought hightop sneakers for his 15-year-old brother, Mario; low-heeled shoes for both his mother and, wisely, his new mother-in-law; bars of Irish Spring soap; and bath towels, one white, one pink.
Juventino Garcia beamed after he bought a Singer sewing machine for his 19-year-old daughter, Rosa Lena, a second-year design student in Mexico whom he didn`t want to have to share a machine any longer. Lopez filled two large Army duffel bags, his last stash of U.S. goods for his wife and nine children. The sweet air of home
One long overnight flight and one bumpy cab ride later, Lopez and the Garcias passed the big white sign with green letters that spelled out Casacuaran, standing in what seemed like the middle of nowhere along the side of a two-lane highway. The cabbie took a right turn, and slammed the brakes. With potholes that could swallow a cow, 5 miles an hour was all the cab could manage.
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”It`s time to roll the window down and catch Mexico`s air again,” said Javier Garcia, his head already half out the back window.
”Everything looks very green,” said Juventino from the front seat.
By the time you could see the steeple of San Pablo, Javier had his head out the window, shouting greetings to compadres right and left. Everyone, it seemed, was his cousin.
First stop: Lopez`s house. Carlota, his wife of 38 years, squeezed him tight in the kind of hug that grows from eight months` absence. Soon, David was settled in his chair by the stove. Chickens flew into the kitchen. One of them became dinner.
Next, Juventino Garcia lept out. He took time to hug his wife, but soon headed off to what will be his daily stopping post for the next three-and-a-half months: the butcher shop of best friend Miguel.
Finally, the newlywed, Javier, was reunited with his bride. He`d been saying how much he missed her. But he didn`t hang around long before scooting off to El Jardin, the plaza in the center of town, where young men and young women of Casacuaran mingle. This is where Javier and Nena had courted for three years, and this is where he will spend most of his days before going back to Momence.