They came into town late every Saturday night at certain times of the year, farm trucks filled with dark-haired men, standing up in the truck beds. They parked on the court square, next to the police cars – perhaps it was a kind of warning.
If you were downtown when the trucks arrived, you saw parents grab their children’s hands, and leave quickly. My teacher had said that if people looked different or you couldn’t understand them, get away from them fast. I guess people were following her advice.
Some of the men had money in their hands, others got handed a white envelope from the driver as they stepped down from the truck. I never knew exactly where most of them went or what they did, though I saw two get ushered out of the grocery where I’d been sent to get a loaf of bread.
And once, I saw them at the movies. My best friend and I sat through the Saturday matinee three times. (My parents, a little distracted by giving birth to their fifth child, thought I was at home with my big sister.) When we left, it was dark, and the lobby looked to be filled with these men.
Spanish! I could understand it a little: “My wife in . . Guadalajara. . not enough money. . . for the children. . . . grandmother. . . two sons.” Worry and soft smiles alternating. I knew the words for family members, but it was the voice tone and expressions that made the words stick in memory.
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I’d seen people, in the distance, working in the fields that surrounding our small town. Utterly flat Mississippi River bottomland, in the process of becoming a mechanized, monocrop culture; giving up the labor-intensive farming that was an outgrowth of slavery. Black families had been moving to northern cities in huge numbers since WWII, leaving a pressing shortage of labor in places.
Our landlord explained things to my father, who knew of some tenant farmers who had been turned out of houses they’d lived in for generations. Our landlord wasn’t the guilty party, but he understood and approved. If you bring in those Mexicans, he explained, you don’t have to deal with their women and children. Don’t have to get kids to school, or keep a house up, or keep people year round. And they (the braceros) work cheap. You threaten to send them back if they act up. Pretty much keeps them in line. They can’t go anywhere else and get a job – they don’t speak English. They have to stay and work until you are through with them. Then they’re gone.
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He wasn’t telling the entire truth. Once a month my mother helped divide and distribute surplus farm goods for poor people. Cheese, butter, sugar, flour, and different vegetables in season. I got to go once on her delivery route. In addition to the places I knew, my mother stopped at a camp far out in the county. It was a group of small wooden buildings, hard by a stand of cottonwood trees. The buildings looked familiar – probably more of the same leftover military temporary barracks that provided extra classrooms at my school. As we pulled up, a few very young children came running out of the buildings, along with two or three adults. We unloaded our goodies and drove away.
It seemed to me that we left a lot of food for those women and children. It was still daylight, my mother explained, and most of the men staying there were working in the fields. Rounding the turns, we saw what the cottonwoods had blocked from view: in the field were men and women and children of varied sizes, picking. My mother remembers my outburst
“Those aren’t men, Momma, those are ladies, and boys, and girls AND men.”
I asked questions. There were lots of folks, and only a few buildings. Where did they all live? Why were children in the fields? Where did they go to school? Why did I only see men come into town on Saturdays? Where did they go when the field was picked? I got answers, but I didn’t understand. It didn’t make sense to me then.
I understand now, but it still doesn’t make sense to me. Hard labor made even cheaper. No responsibility to the laborer. Virtually captive labor. Few worries about labor regulations. Few worries about working conditions. No long-term investment. Devaluing and dehumanizing of the laborers.
It was the 1950s.
Bush’s proposal is like that, with very slight moderation. A “compassionate” moderation, if you will.
Turning back the clock 55 years to the 1950’s.
With echoes of the 1850’s.
