Workers’ Encampments Feeling the Squeeze as Housing, Golf Courses Transform Rural Area

For most of the last eight years, Antonio Escobedo’s home has been a plywood shack hidden in a small canyon on the fringe of what has become some of the most exclusive real estate in North San Diego County.

The dwelling, built of wood scraps discarded from construction sites, lies in the shadows of new, expensive hilltop homes and directly below a showpiece golf course being built in the well-heeled community of Fairbanks Ranch--on land that once was part of the estate of actor Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and his wife, actress Mary Pickford.

But, after laying claim to the canyon for eight years, Escobedo, who is from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, has learned that there are no squatter’s rights where he and about 50 other men and teen-age boys--all of them aliens--are concerned.

When Escobedo first arrived, the canyon was isolated and a perfect place for a group of Mexican aliens to live--and hide from the Border Patrol. The surrounding hills were rugged and inaccessible, and the aliens had jobs on nearby tomato farms that lay below Black Mountain and in nurseries off Carmel Valley Road.

Escobedo, 36, and the other aliens would work for about 10 months a year and spend the other two, usually December and January, in Mexico with their families.

However, in recent years, two forces--the economic crisis in Mexico and Latin America, and the booming North County real estate

market--have combined to change the camp and its character, apparently forever.

As little as two years ago, there were barely a dozen Mexican aliens living in the canyon, and they were hardly noticeable in Fairbanks Ranch and Rancho Santa Fe, Escobedo said. Now, the 50 men and boys who live around Escobedo can be seen emerging from the eucalyptus groves every morning, spilling onto busy Rancho San Dieguito Road, where they look for work.

Frequently, their numbers are increased by other aliens who arrive and stay long enough to earn a few dollars before trekking farther north. Nowadays, the migrants are as commonplace as the BMW and Mercedes-Benz cars that drive the local roads.

Until last month, the camp’s inhabitants were able to walk across the golf course in the morning to San Dieguito Road, where they stand in front of Fairbanks Village Plaza waiting for contractors or homeowners to offer them a day’s work. However, the builder has put a chain-link fence around the golf course and hired security guards to keep the aliens and other intruders out. Eventually, Del Rayo Downs, a housing development being built by former Chargers owner Gene Klein around the golf course, will also be walled.

Longer Walk Required

The changes have made an already arduous life even more difficult. What used to be a 15-minute walk for the aliens to the shopping center is now a laborious 90-minute trudge up and down the hills, around the golf course and through a residential area that will soon have locked gates on its streets. The longer walk has forced the hopeful alien workers to get up at 4:30 a.m., an hour earlier than usual, to eat breakfast and be at the shopping center by 7 a.m. to wait for job offers.

“Getting up that early wouldn’t be so bad if we could work every day,” said Miguel Torres, 36. “But there are some times when we stand out there every morning, seven days a week, and work only one or two days. It’s a matter of luck.”

Among the older men like Escobedo, who have made the canyon their home for several years, the changes have altered that luck and brought a growing anxiety about their future there.

In the area south of Fairbanks Ranch, sagebrush-covered hills that were once home to coyotes and rattlesnakes have been stripped bare and graded. Mansions for the rich and the golf course with a 38,000-square-foot clubhouse now sit atop hills where Escobedo says he used to sit and drink a beer while watching the sunset.

It has been a while since the aliens have been able to climb the ridges and take in a sunset. And, sometime in the next three months, they will probably be forced to relocate to another canyon farther east, before the Rancho Santa Fe Farms Golf Course opens in September.

More Roads, More Officers

There is another reason to move on. Development also has brought more roads, a fact that has not been lost to the Border Patrol, which now patrols the area regularly and has occasionally descended on the camp.

For now, Escobedo, Torres and Luis Ramirez, 50, all from the Oaxacan village of Via Hidalgo Rancho, live in the same 5-foot-by-7-foot shack. Like Escobedo, Torres and Ramirez have lived in the canyon for almost eight years.

“Living like this is not good. We have to walk about 500 yards to get our water,” said Ramirez. “But it was more tolerable a few years ago, because then we at least worked every day on the vegetable farm.”

As Ramirez pointed east to Black Mountain, he noted the tract homes sitting on former farmland.

“Those houses sit in fields where we used to work. Eight years ago, I never thought that I would be standing on the roadside, hoping that someone would stop and offer me a job, any job,” he said. “Eight years ago, I could also walk on the trails to Via de la Valle. But now there are houses everywhere.”

As Ramirez talked about the past, another sign of encroaching development appeared, this time above the camp. A colorful hot-air balloon with two couples aboard floated silently by. The passengers, who were tipping wine glasses, waved excitedly to the aliens below.

‘Can’t Even Hide’

“When there were no houses around here, we used to be able to avoid Anglos. Now, we can’t even hide from them,” he said, looking up at the balloon.

Dick Thorman, general manager of the new golf course, said his group does not plan to ask that the aliens be removed from the canyon.

“They’re not on our property . . . we really are in no position to tell anybody to tear down the camp,” Thorman said.

Nevertheless, Escobedo said that he and his companions are making plans to move to another canyon about half a mile northeast. The three men are convinced that their days are numbered at the existing campsite.

“We’ll camouflage our house better, and buy a kerosene stove so people won’t see smoke from our campfire,” Escobedo said. “We’ll have to go back to the time when we lived in places where nobody would see us.”

Thorman agreed that moving to the nearby canyon may not be a bad idea for Escobedo and the other aliens. The land around the second canyon lies in San Diego and is governed by a local measure passed in 1985 banning development on it.

“It sits in an area affected by Proposition A,” Thorman said. “That area can’t be developed until 1995.”