Interviews
Interviews
Octaviana Trujillo: It Takes a Village
Last Updated on Wednesday, 02 February 2011 21:19 Written by Barb Friday, 02 April 2010 21:15
Growing up in Guadalupe, Arizona, a small town halfway between Phoenix and Tempe, with seven brothers and three sisters, Octaviana Trujillo worked in the fields with her family but when you ask her about her childhood what she mostly talks about isn’t her immediate family but the larger community.
She begins with a bit of history. The story of the Yaquis in Arizona dates back to the late 1800s and early 1900s when many fled persecution in Mexico and came north to present-day Arizona where they had established military and trading posts to support the warriors fighting back home. There the Yaquis became a major labor force in the development of the area. “They worked on the railroads and in the mines, building dams and of course in agriculture. Yaqui are very good at agriculture because the place we come from in Mexico is very fertile land so Yaqui were prized farmworkers. We didn’t migrate, but we were seasonal workers, picking cotton, collecting citrus crops, then watermelon, onions, potatoes.”
Guadalupe was a small, rural town without much infrastructure. At the time Octaviana was growing up there was no sewer system. “Everyone had outhouses. Everyone built their own home out of adobe brick. You didn’t get a mortgage back then; you got help from all your relations.” It was also a time and place of much discrimination, racism and classism. “We had segregated schools and the segregated elementary school was English only. In pre-first-grade --they didn’t have kindergarten back then-- I remember not understanding a word my teacher said!”
Ben Obregon: Long Life of Service
Last Updated on Wednesday, 02 February 2011 21:23 Written by Barb Wednesday, 02 December 2009 21:20
Ben Obregon's father wore many different hats during his lifetime. Miner. Farm laborer. Longshoreman. Methodist minister. But there's one theme that runs consistently through all of them: "My dad" Ben explains, "was always helping others. That was always in the forefront of his mind. He did so much for other people and that is what always stuck with me".
It's a lesson his son took to heart. For Ben and his family, service to the community was as integral to one's life as one's career; the two went hand-in-hand. Ben was born in the 1930s to a family who migrated doing agricultural work mostly between Arizona and California and occasionally up to Oregon and Washington State. His father coordinated a group of about 8-10 families who all traveled and worked together. His mother did the cooking for all of them. No housing was provided so they lived in tents in the fields. A truck would carry all their supplies and kitchen equipment. His dad was involved in the Bracero program. His experiences growing up left an indelible impression.
Ben began volunteering as a translator for the public library system in Oakland California, as soon as he got out of the military at a young age. He's been a member of the Kiwanis Club for 40 years. He's helped start many charitable organizations mostly focused on providing health and educational services to children of migrant workers. He's served on the boards of many more organizations and he's the board chair of UMOS, Inc. a Wisconsin-based multi-state non-profit organization that "provides programs and services which improve the employment, education, health, and housing opportunities of under-served populations."
A Lifetime of Advocacy: How the War on Povery Shaped a Generation of Farmworker Advocates
Last Updated on Wednesday, 02 February 2011 21:24 Friday, 15 May 2009 00:16
“When people say the War on Poverty didn’t work they’re absolutely wrong”.
There’s a movie that captures, for Roman Ramos, the racism that Mexican workers in Texas encountered during the 40s and 50s. “Giant”, George Stevens’ sprawling 1956 epic about a wealthy Texas rancher starring Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean, contains harshly accurate depictions of the contempt that many white Americans exhibited towards their Mexican and Mexican-American neighbors. The film was “pretty symbolic” of his own experience with white people at the time he was growing up. “It really displayed the disparities that existed. To our interns at TRLA [Texas RioGrande Legal Aid], I always recommend they watch that movie.”
Mr Ramos has worked as a paralegal for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, Inc. for over 30 years. There are few farmworker advocates who have the breadth and depth of on-the-ground experience with farmworkers that he has. He grew up in a family that worked in agriculture and he knows from first-hand experience the triple obstacles of racism, xenophobia and invisibility that many farmworkers face. He has done outreach in nearly every state in the country, visiting workers and following up with individual clients/witnesses. His work often takes him to Mexico to interview guestworkers after they return home.
I asked Mr Ramos about some of his early experiences growing up and how he came to be a farmworker advocate.
Read more: A Lifetime of Advocacy: How the War on Povery Shaped a Generation of Farmworker Advocates
Humberto Fuentes: Growing up in the migrant stream
Last Updated on Wednesday, 02 February 2011 21:26 Written by Barb Saturday, 02 February 2008 21:24
When Humberto Fuentes was growing up, he worked in the fields, with his parents, hoeing sugar beets. They were paid by the acre. The work was brutal but they did it –all of them, even the children—because they had to. “Education,” he explained “came second. It was something that you did whenever you had the time. Survival was more important.”Mr Fuentes, a pillar of the farmworker rights movement in the United States, is a natural story teller. I interviewed him when he was in town recently for an FJ Board of Directors meeting. He has a kind grandfatherly face and a gentle smile. When you meet him, he’ll give you a warm handshake and maybe tell you about his kids or grandkids. You would never know that here was someone who helped shape one of the greatest social movements in our country’s history.
That is, not unless you catch him reminiscing with someone else caught up in the heady days of that time period, Gene Ortega. Both men are on FJ’s Board of Directors and when I met up with them to do the interview with Humberto they were drinking Coronas, laughing and talking about the “old days”. They mentioned Jorge Gonzalez, Jose Angel Gutierrez and someone named Lalo de Coalo –names completely unfamiliar to someone who probably was not even born when they were changing the world!I wanted to hear more about what it was like back then, what it must’ve felt like to be hanging out with the likes of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, how things were different now and what hope they had for the future but my assignment was specifically NOT to cover these usual topics. Everyone knows about those days, my boss told me. What I want to hear is stories about his childhood. What did he experience as a youth before he became a lifelong farmworker activist? So that’s what I asked him about.
Born in the little town of Cruillas in the state of Tamaulipas in Mexico (about 100 miles from Brownsville, Texas), Humberto’s father would cross the border regularly to find agricultural work in the U.S. In 1952 his family moved here permanently to settle in a small town in the Rio Grande Valley. From there, they joined thousands of other families who traveled across the country, following the crops northward to places like Idaho, Washington and Oregon as part of the Northwestern Migrant Stream.
Read more: Humberto Fuentes: Growing up in the migrant stream
