SANTA MARIA, CA. — The strains of the music, the colorful dances and the scent of the food were not strange to Aurelia Rodriguez, an immigrant from San Juan Mixtepec who has spent the past 20 years working the fields in this farming region 150 miles up the coast from Los Angeles.
What was strange on a recent summer day was that Rodriguez and thousands of other immigrant farm workers were able to attend their annual Guelaguetza, a festival highlighted by folkloric dances, foods, and other cultural treats from the different regions in the their home state of Oaxaca, Mexico.
"Many of us came [to the Guelaguetza] because there is no work — but if there were work, we would not be here," Rodriguez said, adding that she expects to be idle for several months until the next crop arrives.
Sitting on patch of grass, enjoying some tamales with her daughter and nieces enjoying, Rodriguez tells how the life of the women of the Oaxacan community is difficult in the fields due to the economic downturn and the knowledge that the work that is available will disappear with the end of the current harvest season by the end of July.
Rodriguez says that she currently earns between $400 and $500 a week picking strawberries from 6:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. from Monday to Saturday. That money, along with income earned by her husband, Feliciano Santiago, is enough to get by, but only because they and their children share a three-bedroom house and its $1,400 monthly rent with six other families.
Family expenses take up most of the rest of her income, although frugality allows her to set aside $150 to $200 per month to send back to Oaxaca for her parents — Marcelino Rodriguez and Tiburcia Ramos Ortiz — who are both around 80 years old and depend on their immigrant children.
"Since two years ago the situation has gotten difficult, there is not as much work, that is why my husband and I work, in order to help our parents," Rodriguez said, noting that increasing numbers of immigrants have sought work in the Santa Maria area over the past two years, bumping up the competition for jobs and keeping wages in check. "A lot of people from Oaxaca came now, especially from the Juxtlahuaca, San Martín Peras, San Juan Piña and San Juan Mixtepec areas"
They come because, for all the problems the U.S. economy is facing, the situation has been and continues to be much worse in rural sections of Oaxaca.
"Everything ended, and that is why we came here," Rodriguez said. "My whole family is here, practically the whole village of San Juan Mixtepec."
It has been eight years since Rodriguez has seen her parents or her hometown, and her undocumented status means she'll likely wait much longer before making a return trip.
"I miss my village, but since I am not legal I cannot go, and less so now because the border is very difficult," she says. "If I had papers, I would go see my parents in the season when there is no work (July, August and September) and then I would come back during the work season."
Her aching for family and the land she left offers a reminder of the importance of the many community cultural events that immigrants stage in cities and rural areas throughout California and the U.S. For Rodriguez, the annual Guelaguetza is all of that and more — a chance to keep in touch with the culture of her native land and get together with her fellow Oaxacan immigrants.
Related article:
* 1 Day Only: Desolation in the Fields, Celebration for Farm Workers
Mireya Olivera is editor of Impulso.
Photos by Impulso
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