Imperial (112 page)

So we can understand who might like the bracero system. Who do you think dislikes it?—Some braceros, undoubtedly; for it’s not unheard of to pay Mexican officials a bribe of six hundred or even a thousand pesos to get on the approved list. But, after all, braceros are only foreign laborers; since when did their opinion count? The following is more germane:

In 1950, we find certain angels in a familiar Paradise of family farms busily fluttering their wings, trying to pass Senate Bill 272 in order to reinstate
the old ”crossing card” permit system for Mexican National stoop labor
so that
some of the labor difficulties of the Imperial Valley will be solved.
Which difficulties, I wonder?
Led by the Imperial Valley Farmers Association, the growers have argued that they are being forced to pay a premium for Mexican Nationals imported under the contract which was developed a couple years ago by the State Department . . . Instead of recruiting in Mexicali, where it would cost the farmers practically nothing, the USES
²⁰⁹
goes deep into Mexico for the workers.

Imperial will triumph as usual. Here’s Border Patrolman Dan Murray again, 1999:
Now, everything’s quiet here, but this street will be packed at three or four in the morning. That’s when the field workers come across with their work authorization cards.

In 1951, when Northside saves herself by arresting a hundred and twenty-seven thousand wetbacks, we see a jail cell in Calexico in which half a dozen men sit against the wall, one sleeping with his head in his arms, another, whose face is utter shadow, cupping his chin in his hands; another glares up into Imperial’s white light, and one, who is young and graceful, stands with his hands in his pockets; and a grid of shadows from the cell bars superimposes itself upon all of them in homage to the subdelineation which has caused their fate.

In 1962, in addition to the two hundred thousand braceros for that year, we find sixty thousand commuter field workers across the entire U.S.-Mexican border. Perhaps Kerouac saw some of these in Fresno; perhaps many of the laborers in “Mex town” were naturalized Mexican-Americans. Others must have followed the example of Don Maclovio Medina, 1946:
Well, those who had good luck went with contracts from Mexicali, the
braceros.
The only thing was, we weren’t picked, but we were there, too.
He scales Signal Mountain and comes into American Imperial. A Japanese rancher named Jimmy takes him on. Every field worker there is illegal, because
they wouldn’t give the Japanese contract labor.
Don Maclovio would not seem to be in competition with any bracero. But there must be instances when commuter workers, braceros and illegals all vie for the same jobs. As for the few native-born Anglo-Americans still stooping in the fields of others, how could they bear affection for any of these Southsiders?

In 1961 President Kennedy had unwillingly extended the bracero program, worried about the pressure it puts on native-borns. Senator Aaron Quick of Calexico (Democrat) stands firm against it. So does a Mexican-American leader in Los Angeles named Dionicio Morales. Braceros and commuter workers are taking away the farm jobs of Mexican-American laborers, he says. Dr. Ben Yeller down in Brawley hates the bracero system but blames the cheapskate growers who put native-born Imperial Valley farmhands out of business:
They do not want to pay American wages.
²¹⁰
They want the cheap labor from Mexico.

Mike Miranda is one those farmhands, and he cries:
Mexicali is swallowing us.
Robert Louis Kramer is another. He says:
You can’t keep up with those Mexican nationals. They work harder and for less than anyone else.

In El Centro, two unions come out with cardboard signs: ON STRIKE FOR FAIR WAGE $1.25 and
MERCHANTS: LOCAL WORKERS NEED YOUR HELP
. They stare straight ahead at us. They need
our
help.—My fellow Americans, wouldn’t you say it’s time for a new Exclusion Act?

On the first of January, 1965, the bracero program ends.

Chapter 115

OPERATION WETBACK (1954-1955)

Why is it estimated that at certain times of the year there are at least 80,000 wetbacks working in California? Because employers are willing to hire them.

—Ruben Salazar, 1970

A
nd wherever Exclusion establishes itself, up springs its opposite from the other side of the ditch.

By 1959, Jack T. Pickett knows it all. Let him explain:
In addition to the Mexican Nationals, there are a few Mexicans called “wetbacks” who want to work in this country so badly that they sneak in across the border. Some will work for less money, but what we consider “less” money in this country is to them a veritable gold-mine . . .

Before you know it, Northside is up in arms about
the wetback problem.

Ruben Salazar, 1970:
A wetback lives in constant fear. Fear that he will be discovered. Fear of what might happen to him once
la migra
finds him. Fear that he will not be paid before being deported.

And what do Northside’s nativists have to fear? Those wetbacks who for sometimes uncollected wages seek out the musty-geranium odor of brown rot in lemons in Coachella, or who enjoy the supreme pleasures of stooping in Imperial Valley watermelon fields, might be stealing American jobs!

Why does Northside have anything left to complain about? Back in 1954, you see, General Joseph Swing had launched Operation Wetback, and at first Northside averaged seventeen hundred and twenty-seven wetbacks caught per day! Victor Orozco Ochoa:
I was seven years old, American, and didn’t speak any Spanish at all . . . They had long trench coats and big-brimmed hats. They came in the nighttime.
General Swing soon announced:
The border has been secured.

Meanwhile, here comes another parade! The Rotary International float represents Mexicali and Calexico together, our bulging-breasted young ladies dressed in flowing neoclassical style; and there’s a little girl on top, and one man just to round things out; he’s darkhaired and serious.

Chapter 116

MEXICALI (1950)

During the 1940s and 1950s the valley’s economy consolidated around cotton.

—José Luis Castro Ruiz, 2006

I
n 1955 a pale-dressed man in a white-and-tan hat stands chest deep in corn, with the Sierra Cucapah behind him and a dirt road in front of him. Around him, Mexican Imperial’s pyramids of hay bales like miniature Aztec temples overlook seas of cotton and corn; small houses swim in leafy productions of the soil. Although Baja California’s forty-seven years of plentiful rain have ended, open canals still flow from deep wells, the water placid and clean with grasses on either side; this could be Northside’s Imperial Canal in 1901; and indeed it seems to be the rule that whenever history visits Imperial, it stops off at Northside first. Unfortunately, my attempts to coin rules of Imperial history achieve no more success than Lupe Vásquez’s attempts to translate Mexican political cartoons for me: He holds the newspaper at arm’s length and strains to read, muttering: In the sun I can see . . .—for Southside has certainly overtaken Northside in at least one department: population. In 1950, between sixty-four and sixty-five thousand people lived in Mexicali alone—more than in all Imperial County. If we count all the
ejidos
and
colonias
of the Valle de Mexicali, the number more than doubles. I see a dairy ranch in Colonia Rodríguez. Meanwhile, the city grows and grows! Five years later, Mexicali holds eighty thousand souls.

You see,
WATER IS HERE
. Northside has the All-American Canal; Southside now boasts the Canal Todo Mexicano. Moreover, ever since decree number 1276 began the Sonora-Baja Railroad in 1936, Mexicali has been easier to get to. The valley swells with braceros, ranchers, shopkeepers and
ejidatarios.
Even gringos drop in from time to time. A hit song by the Coasters assures Northsiders that a night spent “Down in Mexico,” and specifically in Mexicali, will reward the adventurer with chili-hot drinks and equally spicy señoritas.
And in material advantages they are already well supplied.

In short, these are the grand old days when Mexicali was, according to a famous journalist from Mexico City whose words were remembered by an ancient leftist ex-journalist in Mexicali and translated for me one long hot morning in the Restaurante Victoria by the masterful Lupe Vásquez,
four paved streets, sixteen alleyways, two rivers full of shit and a whole lot of assholes!

Many times people come to Mexicali hoping to cross to the other side, a woman said. But they stay here. And you rarely see people from Mexicali going elsewhere. They stay here because there’s opportunity here.

Look—here comes Señor Francisco Arellano Olvera! On 17 September 1951, he pays thirty-nine hundred forty-six pesos fifty-six centavos for six hundred and fifty-seven point seven-six square meters in the Packard Tract, lot 6885. (In other words, he pays exactly six pesos per square meter.)

Look—here comes Mr. Claude Finnell, the Imperial County Agricultural Commissioner, ready to enjoy a dinner with his wife.—We used to go there a lot, she told me, to take friends to eat. We used to go about once a week. In El Centro, the Barbara Worth, oh, they were special on steaks. A really good steakhouse. The produce people all lived there. Except for the Barbara Worth, there wasn’t anything else here. They had nice places and singers in Mexicali. I think we ate mostly at the Mission. Chinese food. Mexcali was . . . they had a lot of wealthy people there. We had a lot of people in the movies and so forth who used to play there in those days.

And Kay Brockman Bishop is running past them!—Here is how she remembered it: We always went to Alley Nineteen and Shangri-la for Chinese food and the Golden Lion for steaks. God, they were good! We always went to the country club in Calexico for Sunday night, but I bet you once a week we went to Mexicali.

I got stuck down there one time when I was very little, she went on. I was with Margarita, who came to the ranch the day I was born. Margarita, now, I basically thought I was—if the Immigration guys came,
they
hid under the bed,
I
hid under the bed. I didn’t know I was different. One time I got to the border coming back and I didn’t have papers and I was talking Mexican like a little Mexican kid and Margarita kept telling them I was white, and they took me into the office. My Dad said: Daughter, what daughter? He had a sense of humor.

Look—here comes Jack Kerouac! The narrator of his best novel,
The Dharma Bums,
visits Mexicali in about 1956, crossing into Southside and then perhaps gazing back over his shoulder across the line, as I have done when I let myself sink into period photographs, to the little pyramidal-roofed kiosk and the arched scaffold bearing the following words, one letter to each suspended signboard square:
UNITED STATES,
after which he reports that he
turned sharp right at the gate to avoid the hawker street.
This seems to imply that there was only one hawker street—Cristóbal Colón, perhaps, for that is the first
avenida
in Mexicali. Our narrator’s westward turn brings him to construction dirt and a muddy road. At this point he must be standing on the rim of the Río Nuevo gorge, for
I came to a hill and saw the great mudflat riverbottoms with stinks and tarns and awful paths with women and burros ambling in the dusk . . . I crossed the flats and narrow board bridge over the yellow water and over to the poor adobe district of Mexicali,
in other words Pueblo Nuevo. Then what? Do the croonings of the Coasters incite him into a chili-hot hour amidst the stinks and tarns? On this subject Kerouac is sadly silent. But it is clear that the Mexicali of 1956 resembles the Tijuana of 1924:
Still the same six or seven hundred feet of dusty and dingy streets running between two almost solid rows of saloons . . . with dirtier side streets taking care of the dives that couldn’t find room on the main street
(thank you, Dashiell Hammett), which in turn must have equated more or less to Los Angeles in 1867, courtesy of Major Ben C. Truman:
Crooked, ungraded, unpaved streets, . . . adobe houses, with flat asphaltum roofs; with here and there an indolent native hugging himself inside a blanket or burying his head in the inside of a watermelon.

THE WHITE GOLD

Thanks to cotton, said Lupe Vásquez, that’s what helped us out. After World War II, my grandfather had two big trucks; he had horses. He was a lot better off than the
ejidos
are now. I’ll never forget cotton, no sir! They used to call it the white gold. Then the United States stopped buying.

In an unnumbered photo album in the Archivo Histórico del Municipio de Mexicali I find a grey-on-grey image of two horses dragging something through what at first seems to be lacy grey mud-clods; the face of the rider has gone featureless grey beneath his white hat; the sky is speckled with dirty grey; everything is hot, flat and dismal; the legend reads
Pulverizadora de tracción animal, para combatir la plaga de la hoja del algodón.
Other photographs show more of this
algodón,
white-constellated fields of it growing on to the horizon. Ever since 1912, the valley’s yield had dragged along one and a quarter bales per hectare or even less; suddenly, right now at midcentury, productivity doubled. Production goes up! 1912: fifteen bales. 1925: more than eighty thousand. 1950: two hundred and forty-four thousand, six hundred and thirty-eight. Five years later, the yield will be more than four hundred and twenty thousand. And so a closeup shows great white puffs in clusters of three or four; they look softer than anything can possibly be. In still another view, two men stand amidst a sea of bales. The caption reads:
Patio of the cotton mill of Mr. West.