La Lucha Unida De Los Jornaleros
by Andrew Herring
September 12, 2002
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| Carlos Mares La Lucha Unida De Los Jornaleros |
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On December 24th, 1991 Carlos had gathered with his family to celebrate Christmas eve dinner at their home just outside Mexico City. That evening he announced that he was going to the United States to look for work. Over the past few years, Carlos had been watching diabetes slowly consume his mother. She had wasted away from 140 pounds to 80 lbs because his family could not afford the treatment she needed. The Mexican economy was plunging deeper into recession there seemed little hope that anyone in the family would be able to find the stable well paying job needed to pay for her medical bills and support the family. One year later he had saved up enough money and on January 22, 1992, at the age of only 17, Carlos began his trip for El Norte.
Carlos arrived into the teeming desperation of Tijuana with $150, a tape player, and a sandwich packed for him by his mother. He was immediately approached by a one of the many profiteers of the border traffic in human cargo. With hours of arriving he was sitting before a man simply know as "El Aguila" or "the Eagle." El Aguila was a successful businessman managing a team guides or "coyotes" that transported hundreds of people across the border each year. Carlos bargained him down from $250 to $150 and his tape recorder. Carlos met his coyote and three fellow travelers at a gas station in La Libertad district of Tijuana that sprawled out in the shadow of the ragged 12 foot barrier of rusted sheet metal that defined El Bordo. The group gathered at the indiscrete hour of 3 pm to make their crossing. The plan was simple; run. As he emerged from a crawl hole in the border fence, into the desolation of no manís land, Carlos saw hundreds of people running across, huge groups of men women and children on either side of him sprinting for El Norte. mHelicopters flew over head and INS trucks chased down the unlucky. At one point an INS patrol spotted them, the coyote, totally un-phased, kept running because he knew that the INS would ignore them and go after the big groups of 20, 30, even 50 sprinting across the gap. By 9 PM that evening Carlos was standing in front of his Cousins house near Los Angeles.
The first years here were "a dream come true." Only a week after arriving in LA he was able to send home $100 every week. He was astonished that were as once he made $9 per week he could now easily earn $190 per week. After three years with the company, the initial bewilderment was wearing off and he began to feel more and more that he was being mistreated. His bosses were all from Central America and he felt that held a grudge against him as a "chilango," the slang term used for residents of Mexico City. He was stuck with the most unskilled and lowest paying job, grunting lumber and cement sacks around. In the booming economy he saw that it was easy to get work right off the street. Not only could he make as money as with the firm, he could acquire a diverse set of skills. Instead being stuck as grunt laborer, out on the street he get jobs that would show him how to install irrigation systems, work with sheet rock, lay tile, frame houses, and any number of other skilled trades.
After one year as a "Jornalero" on the street, Carlos again took steady employment with a construction firm and was earning an enviable $10/hr wage. After a few months the firm decided to move to Oakland California to cash in on the housing boom; Carlos left his cousins house moved with them. By 1997, his relationship with the company soured. He felt that those below him envied his high wage and that again the most highly skilled jobs were reserved for close friends and family of the contractor. The decision to leave was easy. At the Walgreens pharmacy in the center of the Fruitvale shopping district of Oakland the booming economy was driving a thriving labor market. Any given day as many 180 contractors were looking to pick up one the hundreds of workers that lined the streets. Carlos had developed his skills as carpenter and recognized that he could make more money as casual day laborer. Now on his own, with no family in the area, Carlos was also attracted to the community of day laborers that was forming. Even if some days the contractorsí trucks filled without him he felt it was better to be unemployed with friends than suffer the abuse of his former boss. 1999 he left the street and began working full time for a contractor that specialized in home remodeling. Soon his was earning $14 per hour but his boss was "hysterical." "They loved to yell." he explained. "They yelled and yelled, and when I asked them to stop they told me that if I didnít like being yelled at I should find another job. So I left." After three different companies were he felt abused, mistreated, and denied opportunity for advancement, Carlos was back on the streets of Fruitvale as a Jornalero by January of 2000.
By this time, the jornaleros in Fruitvale had become a "problem." Local merchants felt they were hurting their business and the local Parent teacher Association was angry that some men were making lewd comments to young girls as they walked to work. Carlos explained he and his fellow jornaleros no knew nothing of the complaints but did notice that the police began harassing them for loitering. By July the City council, headed by a Latino representative of the Frutivale district, had passed an anti-solicitation ordinance that made it illegal to pick up casual day laborers in the street. At the same time, the city funded a day laborer hall in a remote, industrial part of town, where contractors could go and hire the laborers through a sanctioned process that required both the contractor and the laborer to register. By August of 2001, staff from the laborer hall was on the street taking down the license plate numbers of contractors stopping to pick up laborers. Staff pursued a very confrontational style that went so far as to actually attempt to physically prevent the workers from getting into the contractors trucks. Carlos and many other jornaleros felt attacked. The market for labor in general was cooling down as the economy slid into recession and very few contractors seemed inclined to register to hire undocumented workers. "They never took in to account what the effect would be on the jornaleros. We need to work to survive." Carlos explained. From the jornaleroís perspective, the staff at the day Laborer Hall seemed more focused on getting the workers out of the shopping district than actually providing them with work or job training. Using day laborer hall was simply not a viable option for contractors or day laborers.
With 100-200 jornaleros out the street everyday, organization can happen quickly. Carlos began expressing his anger at the ordinance and the day Laborer staff to his friends. Within days that had met with Centro Legal de La Raza. Well versed the farm worker struggle, the staff at Centro Legal explained that they could organize and that all around the country jornaleros were organizing. That week a street meeting was attended by nearly 100 jornaleros, La Lucha was formed, and Carlos was elected its leader. In the months since La Lucha formed they have held numerous marches, met with members of the city council, and successfully advocated for a new a director at the Day Laborer Hall. However the ordinance still stands. On September 25, 2002 Carlos will speak before Congress a member of La Red Nacional de Jornaleros,[Thee national network of day laborers].
Recently the ranks of the day laborers waiting for work on urban and suburban streets has been swelling and more and more communities are confronting the "Day Laborer Problem." No longer is issue of immigrant labor confined to rural farming communities. Places as unlikely as Malibu, CA are emerging as centers of labor organizing. The debate around how to deal with the day laborers cuts across, political, and racial lines. With the Labor movement turning toward the organization of undocumented workers to revitalize its cause and Latino councilmen urging police crack downs on day laborers the traditional lines of conflict in American politicsóUnion vs. temporary labor, immigrants vs. citizens, White vs. Latinoóare losing their explanatory power and becoming more and more relics of a simpler political and social landscape. In this resulting political grey area the personal life experiences of day laborers themselves are important sources of insight.