Making it in America

Miguel and Esperanza Gomez beat the odds: the migrant
laborers are now homeowners outside Benton City,Wash.

Story by Katie Wilson
Photos by Ashley Baer and Amber Mees

Ashley Baer / Photographer

Miguel Gomez inspects rows of cherry trees in the small town of Benton City, Wash. Gomez applies his vast knowledge and skill to local agriculture.

Wearing a dust-covered gray hooded sweatshirt, jeans and a white baseball cap, Miguel Gomez stands underneath a cherry tree, one hand grasping his utility knife and the other blocking the sunlight. The rows and rows of blossoming cherry trees tower over his 5-foot-5-inch frame.

The creases underneath his eyes tighten as he holds an unripe green cherry up to the sun and then slices it in half with the knife against his bare hand. Miguel can gauge how big the cherries will be depending on the size of their seeds.

The owner of Canyon View Orchards in Benton City, Wash., wants big cherries this year, as opposed to a greater number of smaller cherries. Miguel is one of the few employees who has yearlong employment on the orchard, where he prunes, waters, paints, sprays and then eventually picks the cherries during the busiest season of the year.

Benton City, a fast-growing farming community known for its outstanding agriculture and viniculture, is tucked between the Horse Heaven Hills and Rattlesnake Mountains in eastern Washington. Nearly 13 percent of Benton County is of Hispanic ethnicity, compared with 9 percent in the state of Washington as a whole, according to the 2000 federal census.

Of the non-native population in the county, 63 percent were born in the Americas, and nearly 53 percent of that population is from Mexico. Within the United States’ non-native population, 65 percent is in the country illegally, according to federal statistics.

Miguel Gomez is just one of the estimated four million migrant or former migrant farm workers who have helped sustain the agricultural economy in the United States. As more and more migrants settle permanently in cities and rural towns, they are also helping to sustain their own heritage, culture, families and communities.

Most orchards need additional help only during the harvesting season, which lasts from April to July. It is then that migrant farm workers flock to the city.

After the harvest, the farm workers must leave Benton City to follow other work opportunities. With such a transitory labor force, it is difficult for Hispanic farm workers to settle down in Benton City, because there are few opportunities for permanent jobs and incomes to support their families.

Miguel and Esperanza Gomez beat the odds.

Miguel began his life in the United States in 1980 picking asparagus in Sunnyside, Wash. After five years of moving from harvest job to harvest job, he moved to Benton City to pick cherries and apples. He met his future wife, Esperanza, in a cherry orchard there.

Amber Mees / Photographer

Miguel Gomez and his family own their home in Benton City, Wash. Miguel and his wife Esperanza, often work long hours, seven days a week, in an effort to give their family a quality life.

Ten years and three children later, Miguel and Esperanza moved out of their trailer and purchased their own modest, two-bedroom home, a huge step for their family. Only 8 percent of homeowners in the county are Hispanic.

The path to constant employment in a job field that is never secure was not easy for the couple. Miguel began working on the fields as a tractor driver and “showed his responsibility by never being late and showing respect toward the other people.” His expertise of the cherry crop eventually made him highly sought-after as a full-time, year-round employee.

“He’s been working in orchards all his life,” said one of Miguel’s employers, Phil Mees, the owner of Red Mountain Reach Orchard. “When he prunes these trees, it’s a skill. I don’t pay him for his labor. I pay him for his skill.”

Esperanza likewise had to establish herself so that she could guarantee her family a steady income. She said that it took three straight years of her hardest work before the owner of two cherry orchards would hire her on a more permanent basis, and she still sometimes has to resort to picking apples with her brother on a different orchard.

Even at home, the work doesn’t stop for Miguel and Esperanza.

Esperanza begins the day cooking food at three in the morning. By 4 a.m., Miguel is awake, and by 6 a.m. they are both already at work in the orchard. At 6:30 a.m., the brown clock radio wakes their three children, Mayra, 17, Miguel Jr., 14, and Judy, 12.

The two oldest children get ready for school and Mayra drives them to Kiona-Benton High School in their parents’ Honda. Judy makes one of her two favorites breakfasts, strawberry oatmeal or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and then waits down the block for the bus.

When the children return home from school nine hours later, their parents are still working. Mayra and Judy usually try to help their mother by cleaning the house, which is kept immaculate. Judy often plays in the lawn or on the trampoline of their two acres of land until her mom comes home at 5 p.m.

Esperanza begins working again the moment she steps onto the plastic coating covering her perfectly white living room carpet.

On the pearly white counters in her small kitchen, she prepares traditional Mexican meals for the family dinner. When Miguel returns from the fields at around 8 p.m., the smells of beef tamales and quesadillas bring the family to the kitchen.

After Esperanza, Mayra and Judy clean the dishes, Esperanza finally sits down to watch some novellas on TV. She speaks only Spanish, and therefore has a very limited choice of TV channels.

“She is always working,” Miguel said of his wife. “She works too hard.” But Miguel, who cares for the cherry trees Monday through Saturday, is just as industrious.

When harvesting season starts, he works all seven days of the week.

“Sometimes my dad barely gets Sundays off,” Mayra said. “It’s really stressful for him, especially during cherry season. He barely sleeps.”

“It’s been the hardest for us when he can’t come support us at our games,” said Mayra. All three children play basketball. Mayra also plays volleyball for her high school, and Miguel Jr. is the shortstop for the high school’s baseball team.

Miguel admits that it is draining for him to be at the orchard so much, although he is more than willing to put in the time at work for his family’s well-being.

“Monday through Saturday, I can work,” Miguel said. “But Sundays I like to have with my family.”

Working any job every day is mentally and physically tiring, but the work required of farm workers is even more so.

“The work of a migrant farm worker is without a doubt harder work than other jobs,” said Jasmin Guerra, a University of Oregon student whose parents began their lives in the United States working in the field.

Amber Mees / Photographer

Jasmin Guerra, a University of Oregon senior, is proud of her mother’s and grandmother’s past hard work as migrant workers to support their family.

“It’s back-breaking,” Guerra said. “You get up really early and work until really late at night. It makes you understand what hard work really is.”

Guerra’s grandmother was ostracized from her village in Mexico for having a child out of wedlock. To escape social isolation, she married a widowed Mexican man who lived in the United States. He was 30 years older than she was.

With Guerra’s mother in tow, her grandmother sacrificed love for what was best for her daughter and became the stepmother to nine children. Guerra’s grandmother has lived in the United States for the last 46 years and has taught herself how to integrate into society without sacrificing her culture.

As a teenager, Guerra’s mother worked in the cannery and in the fields harvesting crops in Woodburn, Ore. She now teaches migrant workers’ children in Salem, Ore.

Her father’s family traveled from Texas to Washington, following the harvest seasons of various crops. They eventually settled in Oregon as well.

Growing up with two parents who had once worked on the fields, Jasmin was constantly reminded how lucky she was to not have to harvest crops as well.

“We were too poor to split a bean between people,” her father always half-joked over traditional dinners of beans and tortillas that her grandmother prepared for the family.

Guerra’s father was raised by a single mother who supported her nine children by working as a farm worker.

Guerra’s parents made it obvious that she should be grateful to never have to experience this type of strenuous labor. Now an undergraduate international studies major at UO, Guerra is an advocate for immigrants’ rights.

Even though she was born in the United States, Guerra is still offended when she witnesses anti-immigration sentiment.

In Mexico, she would be described as “ni de aqui, ni de alla” – “not from here and not from there.” She cannot define herself as from only one specific country because she feels a strong connection to both.

When people advocate anti-immigration legislation, she feels personally attacked. Guerra believes that the public is not aware of how much immigrant labor benefits the U.S. economy. For example, fresh, low-cost fruits and vegetables are largely harvested and processed with low-wage immigrant labor.

She also knows her family might not have made it into the United States today if anti-immigration laws were in force at the time.

Families like Guerra’s are not only producers and consumers but also are active citizens who care about the place in which they live.

Since she was young, Guerra’s family has been politically active with PCUN: Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, also known as the Northwest Tree Planters and Farm Workers United.

PCUN is the labor union for farm workers, nursery and reforestation workers based out of Woodburn, Ore. Its goal is to empower and inform farm workers so that they are not unjustly exploited. Ninety-eight percent of its members are from Mexico or Central America.

PCUN works very closely with CAUSA, Oregon’s statewide immigrant rights coalition that aims to organize, educate and mobilize to build power in the immigrant community. “The jobs that immigrants work when they first come to the United States are low pay with high occupational hazards,” said Aeryca Steinbauer, the CAUSA coordinator in Portland.

Amber Mees / Photographer

Miguel Gomez’s wife, Esperanza, comes home from an extended day in local orchards to turn up weeds at her home. For Esperanza, the day begins at 3 a.m. when she starts preparing meals for her family before they set out to the fields.

“These immigrants are also facing language barriers,” said Steinbauer. “It is very hard for them to put down roots when they are not familiar with the U.S. systems.”

According to Steinbauer, not all immigrants who come to work in the fields are looking to settle permanently in the United States.

“There are people in both categories, those who want year-round jobs and those who are looking to migrate,” said Steinbauer. “It just depends on their families and what they want when they come here.”

Many workers who are here illegally used to return to their home country after the harvest season but now stay in the United States because of the recent increase in border patrols, Steinbauer said. This has created more challenges for finding full-time, year-round employment.

When they are in the United States, immigrants such as Miguel and Esperanza are working more often than not.

Of the working Hispanic population in Benton County, 88 percent of the men and 75 percent of the women typically work more than 35 hours a week, according to state employment statistics.

Yet these long hours spent on the job do have the desired effect on their pocketbooks. The pay for these immigrants is usually minimum wage, which Steinbauer refers to as a “surviving wage,” not a living wage.

Even with all of the hours spent at work, the median earnings for full-time Hispanic employees in Benton County is $23,108, compared with $38,947 for all non-Hispanic ethnicities, according to state employment data. Median earnings for full-time Hispanic employees are $32,757 in Washington as a whole, $47,312 for non-Hispanic ethnicities. With such low salaries, poverty is often inevitable. Only 7 percent of the non-Hispanic population in the county was below poverty level, compared with 27 percent of Hispanic population.

The farm workers who fuel Benton City’s agricultural economy work long hours for little pay at a job that is extremely physically demanding, and almost never get the chance to settle down in the community and raise a family. Miguel and Esperanza, however, have secured a life of their own.

Their continuous hard work has made them stand out to employers in the community, and after years of saving small portions of his already small salary, Miguel bought six acres of land where he plans to grow his own cherries.

Based on his track record of exceptional labor, Miguel might be the boss of Benton City’s next big cherry orchard.

“I am very happy that I have made it this far,” said Miguel. “Going from working in the fields and now owning my own field of cherries, I have accomplished a dream.”