North County’s Farm Worker Camps: Third World Squalor Amid Affluence

For years, scores of undocumented farm workers squatted on a one-acre triangle of federal dirt not far from the perimeter of the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base.

Their crude dwellings lined an earthen basketball court, where, on Sundays, the laborers would play ball and spectators would gather, imparting the squalid, isolated hamlet with a festive air.

Conditions in the makeshift encampment were so bad that, in September, 1985, a U.S. congressmen visited the Oceanside site and others in northern San Diego County and condemned conditionsthere. “Exploitation at its worst,” exclaimed U.S. Rep. Daniel E. Lungren (R-Long Beach).

After much delay, U.S. authorities finally determined that the area was a “serious threat to public health” and closed the site last May, giving workers two weeks to claim their belongings. An area farmer bulldozed the dwellings.

Now, with the summer farm cycle well under way, the village is gone but the workers are back. These days, even after passage of a landmark immigration law that proponents said would stem such “exploitation,” many farm laborers reside in nearby arroyos and ravines where, if anything, their living conditions have worsened.

They sleep wrapped in blankets on the ground, in crude caves known as spider holes, or in primitive boxes, fashioned from scrap wood, plastic and cardboard, that resemble doghouses or chicken coops; they cart water pirated from irrigation pipes or taps; they use the bushes and fields as their toilets and they cook over open fires or gas-powered camping stoves.

“We live like the Indians of old,” said Santiago Rivera, 29, as he sat with a group of workers beneath some shaded brush on a recent afternoon. “Except that at least the Indians were citizens; we’re not even that. We have no rights.”

Their situation is not unique here. They are among the many undocumented farm workers, more than 10,000 of them, mostly Mexican men, who annually venture across the border into San Diego County where they pick and plant, prepare the soil and trim the trees for area growers at minimum wage.

Work for Minimum Wage

While many cram into rented apartments or houses, others live among the bushes for months at a time, their flickering campfires the only nighttime signs of their existence. Although most of the squatters are minimum-wage farm workers, some also find work in construction and other industries.

They represent a shadow community amid a mostly affluent Anglo suburban area, an otherwise largely quintessential Southern California place where pastel-hued condominiums proliferate and sunbathers frolic on sandy beaches.

The laborers have been coming for at least a decade; their presence in primitive camps hardly raises eyebrows anymore--although newcomers are often taken aback by the situation and word of the squalid conditions prompt sporadic flurries of media attention, as do periodic reports of crime and other misdeeds routinely attributed to the workers.

Elsewhere in California and the nation there are scattered squatter communities of farm workers living in the open adjacent to farms; also, field laborers routinely crowd into substandard rental houses, apartments and grower-provided housing.

But interviews with migrant labor experts from California to Florida indicate that nowhere else--even in other border areas--are such primitive settlements of homeless workers so extensive and so ingrained in the area farming economy as in San Diego County.

‘Bad as It Gets’

“I think North (San Diego) County is as bad as it gets,” said Herb Goldstein, assistant regional manager for the wage and hour division of the U.S. Department of Labor in San Francisco, whose jurisdiction includes all of California, Arizona and Nevada.

“San Diego County is the worst,” said Lupe Bautista, an organizer with the United Farm Workers and lifelong migrant farm laborer who has worked throughout California and Arizona. “They’re like slaves over there.”

Federal, state and local officials acknowledge that the sitution is “deplorable,” but they say the workers fall through the cracks of a bevy of laws aimed at avoiding just such exploitation.

“That situation with workers living in the fields like animals, to me it’s a national disgrace that people are living like that,” said Stan Sussman, a farm labor specialist with the U.S. Department of Labor’s area office in Santa Ana. “Unfortunately, they don’t fall under our law. Something ought to be done. It’s deplorable.”

Viewed from a helicopter on a weekend afternoon, the camps below proliferate like tiny hamlets amid dozens of clumps of brush and the natural crevices that abut tilled fields. The roar of the helicopter prompts men to emerge from the brush like wild animals.

“They live in every condition imaginable,” said Roberto Martinez, who, as a representative of the American Friends Service Committee, works with illegal aliens. “They’re in canyons, boxes, caves . . . I’ve seen them eight to a box. I’ve seen a married couple in a 4 by 5 box.”

Contrasting Conditions

Particularly “shocking,” noted U.S. Rep. Lungren, was the contrast between the workers’ living conditions and the suburban-style prosperity nearby.

“You expect to see that in a Third World country, in the slums and suburbs of Tijuana. You don’t expect to see it in one of the wealthiest counties in the United States,” said Lungren, a Reagan Republican, as he recounted his 1985 visit. “And I don’t think that the average American thinks it’s necessary that people have to live in those conditions so that we have food on our table.”

Until the late 1970s, experts noted, seasonal citrus workers in Arizona habitually settled in crude encampments amid the orchards, giving the state a reputation as one of the worst for migrant workers. Extensive publicity and a successful organizing drive by the Arizona Farm Workers Union, however, prompted some growers to provide improved housing.

“Now at least they have some roof over their heads, even though the housing is generally inferior,” said Dan Devereux, a spokesman for the Arizona Farm Workers, which has also sponsored organizing efforts in the southern United States. “We’ve heard all kinds of horror stories about San Diego County.”

In Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, one of the nation’s poorest regions, many migrants live in squalid neighborhoods, known as colonias, situated on the outskirts of communities such as Brownsville. Even though their accommodations are often considered deplorable, they still have some shelter--as do the thousands of Mexican nationals who commute each day from their homes in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands to U.S. farms.

Roof Over Heads

“Many farm workers live in terrible conditions in the colonias, but they don’t live out in the open, under the trees,” said Esther Chavez, an attorney in the Texas attorney general’s office in El Paso who has worked on farm worker issues in Texas and elsewhere in the Southwest.

Why did such a singular living arrangement evolve for farm workers in San Diego County?

Experts say the precise causes are unclear, but cite a confluence of circumstances--the area’s relatively high rents; the proliferation alongside the rich fields of rugged, hilly terrain, which provides some protection from the elements and the authorities; and the sparse rainfall and temperate climate, which allow workers to survive outdoors.

In the vast farmlands of neighboring Imperial County, observers note, the flat terrain and extreme weather tend to discourage workers from living amid the fields. The proximity of the Imperial Valley’s fields to the border--and an established network of farm-labor contractors who provide transportation--also allows many farm workers to commute daily from the Mexican border city of Mexicali.

A wide array of federal, state, county and municipal laws and codes are aimed at averting the kind of exploitation found in San Diego County. For a variety of reasons, however, the laws don’t work.

No Legal Obligation

Because the workers are technically trespassers, federal and state officials say the growers who hire them are under no legal obligation to provide decent housing or other benefits while the workers are off-duty. The landowners, or the farmers who lease the land, simply maintain that the workers are here without their acquiescence.

“There just isn’t that much we can do about it,” said Jack Taylor, assistant area director for the area office of the U.S. Department of Labor’s wage and hour division. “We’re just sort of between a rock and a hard place . . . . We don’t like it better than anyone else . . . . It’s almost an insoluble problem.”

Added Roger Miller, regional manager for the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement of the California Department of Industrial Relations: “It’s been that way for a long time. And unless there’s some kind of (new) legislation . . . it’s not going to change.”

On occasion, San Diego County officials, reacting to complaints, have ordered landowners to clean up the camps, citing violations of state and local housing codes and sanitation laws. However, once a site has been cleared, the workers typically move to the nearest area where there is sufficient cover--as happened in the case of the squatters on the federal land adjacent to the U.S. Marine base, long one of the largest encampments in the county.

Issued Eviction Order

“It was terrible to have to go out there and kick people off the land when they had no place else to live,” said Leslie M. Cone, area manager for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Palm Springs, who issued the eviction order last May in response to complaints from county officials and others. “It wasn’t fun to have to do this.”

The laborers’ illegal squatting works to the farmers’ advantage, guaranteeing a plentiful supply of low-cost field hands without the bother of having to construct labor camps and meet legal migrant housing standards--which many growers maintain are too stringent. In North County, farmers say that they cannot be held responsible if the workers decide to squat on their property rather than spend their paychecks on rent.

“The farmer cannot play nursemaid to all his employees,” said Charles Woods, executive director of the San Diego County Farm Bureau, a growers group.

Accused of Vandalizing

If the employers were to provide housing, Woods claimed, the farm workers “will bust up everything they can--windows, toilets, sinks . . . . They feel vandalizing has some value for them.”

Several growers said they were unaware that the living circumstances of workers here were any different than elsewhere along the border. But government officials and farm labor advocates insist that San Diego County farm labor housing conditions are unique, and that the entire arrangement is blatantly exploitative.

“I think it’s absolutely unfair,” said Rev. Rafael V. Martinez, a Presbyterian minister who came to the area three years ago intending to retire but instead has founded a chaplaincy among the farm workers. “I think the growers who hire these people . . . should either provide some kind of housing, or pay them wages that would allow them to live decently.”

Living side-by-side with affluence, the farm laborers who migrate are often blamed for everything from committing burglaries to harassing school children to spreading disease.

Often Victims

In fact, however, they themselves are often the victims of unscrupulous growers, who fail to pay legal wages, or other malefactors. In one well-publicized case, a local Marine was charged with leading para-military raids on their encampments and assaulting workers. U.S. Border Patrol agents have raided the camps regularly, shipping the the workers back to Mexico.

Even though many of these farm workers appear technically to qualify for temporary legal status under the new immigration law, it seems likely that large numbers of those living in the fields may never be legalized for a number of reasons--they lack documentation; they’re confused and intimidated by the law; or they’re just plain afraid of having anything to do with U.S. immigration authorities and live in constant fear of apprehension by the green-clad agents of the U.S. Border Patrol.

“I would say 99% of them don’t know the basic particulars about the law,” said Ozvaldo Venzor, who heads a group called Friends of the Undocumented and has attempted to inform the workers about the possibilities for legal residence under the new law. “Some are resorting to attorneys and consultants and are getting fleeced . . . You’ve got to remember, for the average Mexican, when you talk about inmigracion , you’re talking about a guy in a green uniform who’s going to arrest you, throw your ass in a van to take you back to Mexico.”

From Mexican Interior

Most of the squatters are campesinos from the Mexican interior who are unaccustomed to paperwork and officialdom and have come to expect treatment that would be unacceptable to most Americans. They are not resigned or defeated, only aware of their tenuous position--and suspicious that any changes may work against their interests.

Hence, the new immigration law has not been greeted as any kind of panacea. Indeed, farm workers here seemed confused about the provisions of the statute, assaulting a U.S. visitor with questions that have obviously confounded them for some time. Some thrust forward faded paycheck stubs and asked if the documents would assist in any amnesty applications. Apparently, no one has bothered to explain the law to them.

“Will we be able to continue working here?” asked one of a group of men crouching on a shaded mound on a recent Sunday afternoon talking to a reporter.

“What if I don’t have any documents? Can I still qualify for amnesty?” asked another.

“Who’s going to work the fields if we Mexicanos have to leave?” ventured a third.

Day of Rest

Even in this insular, work-oriented society, Sunday is a day of rest, a time when the men relax, wash, play musical instruments and listen to battery-operated radios, unwind from a week in the fields. On a recent Sunday afternoon, drying clothes adorned the bushes throughout the area like so many oversized flowers.

For the particular group of 75 to 100 workers who live in the ravine near the Marine base, finding a place to live meant simply carving a niche out from beneath the graceful carrizo weeds that provide ample shade and camouflage. The narrow, heavily vegetated ravine snakes for about a half-mile between two fields.

To one side of their encampment is a brown slope of stakes where tomatoes were to be planted; on the other side is a picked strawberry patch, with remnants of plastic used in the planting still evident. The workers carry water from the nearest spigot, about a third of a mile away; other workers sometimes procure water from irrigation pipes.

“The situation here is bad, bad, bad; it could hardly be worse for us,” said Jorge Rivera Chavez, a father of four who said he had been coming here since 1980. “All we want to do here is work; we don’t bother anybody. Yet we’re forced to live in these extreme conditions. I think we deserve better treatment.”

Can’t Afford Rents

The workers say they cannot afford the high cost of area rental housing while still saving money to send back to their families; residing in town also means risking arrest by immigration authorities. In the fields, they can usually walk to area farms to seek work.

As the men speak, a melancholy Latin air from an accordion floats over the settlement. “I can’t really play, but it helps pass the time,” said the accordionist, Antonio Rodriguez, 42, who wore a U.S. Marine Corps T-shirt.

Nearby, Isagro Perez, a 37-year-old father of five, shows a visitor his crude dwelling, constructed, like others, from scrap wood salvaged from a dump. The fact that he has some shelter marks him as one of the lucky ones. Inside his shack are his meager worldly belongings--and an image of the Virgin Mary.

“It’s not the greatest, but it’s better than sleeping outdoors,” said Perez, who shares the structure with several other men, among them a deaf mute who also works in the fields.

Mostly Mixtex Indians

Most of the men here are Mixtec Indians, or part-Mixtec, from the Mexican interior state of Oaxaca, more than 2,000 miles to the south. Some speak limited Spanish. Many are related and come from a single Oaxacan village--not unusual among the farm workers here.

“They congregate in groups; it’s almost like the old underground railroad-type situation,” said Venzor.

The men recount how they took the 2 1/2-day bus trip to Tijuana and sneaked into the United States through the rugged border terrain; many had been captured by the Border Patrol numerous times and returned to Tijuana, only to attempt the journey again and again until successful.

Most men said they have families and small plots of land back in Oaxaca, where they generally visit every winter; others said they have been living in the fields for some time and haven’t seen their families for years. Still others have brought their spouses and children up to Tijuana, where there is a sizable community of Mixtec Indians.

Oft-Repeated Story

Their story is an oft-repeated one: They do not like having to leave their country and live here illegally, but feeding their families in Mexico has become nearly impossible for them. For much of the year, they said, many of their native villages are largely populated by women and children--all of the men are off working in the fields of the United States and Mexico.

“We have to hide in the bushes like animals and we work like slaves,” said Santiago Rivera, one of the few workers who shows palpable anger at their predicament. “We pay income tax, we pay Social Security, but what do we get for it? Nothing. With the new law, we heard the patrones (bosses) would give us permisos (documents) to allow us to remain in the United States. Pure lies. We’ve received nothing.”

Others suggest that Rivera tone down his rhetoric.

“At least here we have work,” said Constancio Rivera, Santiago’s older brother and one of the most senior settlers at age 57, who said he has been coming here for eight years. He is referred to respectfully as Don Constancio.

Fear of New Law

The men speak of a widespread fear of the new law. Many of their compatriots, they say, have remained in Mexico--a fact borne out by decreased U.S. Border Patrol arrest figures earlier this year. Many of the men say they plan to apply for legalization, but their lack of knowledge of the law and their paucity of documentation seem to make it unlikely.

“I sent back to Mexico for my birth certificate,” said Roque Ojeda, 19, as he carries water to the clearing where he stayed. “But I’m not sure I’ll qualify. I came here in January of 1985. Is that long enough ago?”

Among the men were two students from the Autonomous University of Sinaloa who came to the north for their summer break. “It’s a difficult way to live, but we only want to stay a short time and earn some money,” explained Domingo Cerrito, 23, a civil engineering student who, along with his colleague, was washing his clothes at a nearby tap.

The workers--only one woman is present--cook their food on crude gas stoves positioned in clearings. Earlier, they purchased foodstuffs from one of the lunch trucks, known as fayucas, that plod up and down the dirt farm roads, selling field hands everything from meat to tortillas to Pepto Bismol--all at a considerable markup from supermarket prices. The catering trucks’ arrival is the camps’ major social event.

After the lunch truck pulls away, the men return to their simple campsites to prepare their meals. As dusk approaches, soft voices emanate from behind clumps of bushes throughout the area. The next day is Monday, and the men would once again resume tilling other people’s land.