Frontera NorteSur October 2000

Doña Lencha married at age 16 and had ten children. At age 25 she began her first job, cleaning houses, so that her family would not have to live in misery--"para no vivir muy en la miseria". In May 1970, at age 30, Doña Lencha crossed illegally into the US to work in the fields for the first time. She and some friends crossed the river and caught a bus in El Paso near the intersection of Overland and Santa Fe. The bus took her to work for a week in New Mexico, near the town of Mesquite. She left her kids with her mother and her husband with whom she was still together at that time. The older children looked out for the younger ones as well.

Doña Lencha's first work in the US was in the onion harvest. Her first day out she picked and topped 18 costales, or sacks, of onions. Paid by the costal she quickly learned to work at a faster rate. She picked 40 costales the next day, then 50, then finally 100. When she returned to Cd. Juárez she had with her over US$40. For a week's work in Mexico at that time she could not have made over US$10, she said. With a smile on her face Doña Lencha remembered what it was like coming back with so much money: immediately she began buying clothes for all of her children.

At first, in 1970, she could cross into downtown El Paso and the busses would meet her and other workers there. Soon however the Border Patrol began detaining people in that part of the city so Doña Lencha and her friends would walk up the Rio Grande/Río Bravo on the Mexican side to about Mesa Street and ford the river at that location. When the Border Patrol caught on to their northward movement Doña Lencha began walking up to Vinton to cross there and stay ahead of border enforcement agents.

Border Patrol was not so bad back then, she said. "They never treated us horribly. They were not bad men." Doña Lencha was picked up only once by the BP, in Deming, where she was going to pick grapes.

Señora Adelita's Farm in Salem, New Mexico

For years, Doña Lencha lived on a farm in Salem, NM where the owner Señora Adelita would hide all the female farm workers in her bedroom when immigration came through to arrest people. The men who stayed at Sra. Adelita's farm would all be detained and deported but Adelita would not let agents into her room so the women were safe.

While unsure of Sra. Adelita's last name, Doña Lencha certainly remembered her fondly. For US$10 a week she and other female field workers rented rooms in Sra. Adelita's home. The $10 fee also included all meals and the women could bathe there and Sra. Adelita would also give them clothes. Sra. Adelita could not walk and had other health problems and always needed someone to stay with her. Thus the women would take turns staying home from the fields and they would help her bathe and do other chores around the house for her. Forty or fifty men also lived in twelve or so rooms built in the patio of Sra. Adelita's house.

Amnesty and Papers Were Beyond Her Dreams

Doña Lencha said that she was lucky that she never had to walk north of Vinton to get around the Border Patrol. It was about 1986 when she was going there to catch the busses that would take her to the New Mexico farms. In 1987 she applied for papers under the amnesty program that was announced in 1986.

"I never thought I would get papers," she said, visibly emotional at the memory of it, "not even in my dreams--ni en sueños." After that she got some of her children papers and would use her ability to freely cross the bridges between El Paso and Cd. Juárez to take money to the Cd. Juárez families of her undocumented friends.

Graciela García Primero--Murdered

While this story was supposed to be about a different aspect of life in Cd. Juárez--what it is like to come to the US to work in the fields--Doña Lencha's story unfortunately intersects with the lives of those mentioned in this month's other Frontera NorteSur stories about the abused and murdered women associated with Casa Amiga, Casa Peregrina and Voces sin Eco. In 1995 Doña Lencha's daughter Graciela García Primero was murdered by her husband. After he was arrested both of her daughter's children, Claudia and Santiago, ages 12 and 9 at the time, would have effectively been orphaned if Doña Lincha could not have gained custody of them.

Living in El Paso at the time of the murder, Doña Lencha was told by a judge that she would have to apply for citizenship if she wanted to be named the children's guardian. Thus Doña Lencha began taking citizenship classes and on July 2, 1997 she passed all the necessary exams, "pasé prueba" she said, and two months later she became a US citizen. On January 2, 2000 both Claudia and Santiago gained resident status here (perhaps out of pride or some other reason Doña Lencha remembers all of these dates effortlessly).

Doña Lencha is very proud of her children saying that all of them have been a success. All of her daughters with children are married and one of her sons joined the US military. Two of her children are also studying careers. She has 36 grandchildren, "but only seven live with me," she noted as if to indicate that there were to few in her house.

Got her CNA but Prefers to Work Outdoors

Doña Lencha earned her CNA so that she could work as a nurse assistant but very much disliked the job. "I'd come home a mess," she said, "llegué trastornada."

In the fields Doña Lencha says that you will never see anyone sad. "We work together and do well. We don't earn money easily so we spend it carefully," she said, "no ganamos facilmente y por eso gastamos con cuidado."

Over the course of her life Doña Lencha has worked as a promotora de salud or health educator. She felt that as a cancer promotora she was very effective. She would talk with women about breast cancer and give them pamphlets.

She has been trained recently as an AIDS promotora by a group out of Washington D.C. but complains that they have not given her enough material with which to work. "They gave us only 3 pamphlets each," she said, "I can't do anything with that."

Doña Lencha has also served as a legal aide and has been involved in local politics regarding the opening of a farm workers' center in El Paso.

Low Pay, Health Concerns

Doña Lencha seems to have kept just about every pay stub she has received for a day's work for about the last 20 years. Over the last month she has earned about $52 to $57 for every day she works for a contractor (farm workers don't usually work directly for farmers, instead the farmer hires a labor contractor). The days are at least twelve hours long with ten in the field and at least two hours on a bus between El Paso and the New Mexico farms where she works. Most recently she has been picking green chili peppers and earns between 65 cents and 70 cents a bucket.

Doña Lencha does not work year around as there are periods when there is not much demand for labor in New Mexico. In February, March and the first half of April she plants onions. In May she helps "clean" or weed fields of chili, cotton, cabbage and lettuce. Starting in May and continuing through the first half of August she picks onions. In September and October she begins harvesting chili.

Now however, even when there is farm work, Doña Lencha cannot work every day. She has excruciating pain in her wrists and arms, probably a combination of arthritis and carpal tunnel, from years of demanding work. She will not go to the doctor because she does not want to go on disability. She also wants to keep on working so that she can build up her Social Security for retirement. Even though she has been working in the US for over 30 years her employers have not always paid into Social Security for her.

At the close of the interview Doña Lencha speaks almost pure poetry, "Así fue mi vida. Es nuestra vida. No la dejamos. Podemos buscar otro trabajo pero nos gusta esto."

"This is my life, our life. We won't leave it. We could look for different work but we like this."