Settlement Eases Pain of Migrant’s Wounded Pride

The worst of it all, Candido Gayosso Salas now says, was losing his pride, seeing it snatched away by two men who abducted him from the parking lot of a rural Carlsbad market two years ago.

They not only took his freedom, he says. They also stole his honor the day they handcuffed him, bound him with duct tape and set him free after crowning him with a paper sack bearing a hand-scrawled smiling clown’s face.

And his honor, he says, is something they can never return.

But late Wednesday, the 28-year-old former North County migrant laborer secured a justice of sorts when he was awarded a cash settlement in a civil suit filed against three men--including the owner of the Country Store, where the abduction took place.

Salas, who has since moved back to his home near Mexico City, where he works as a plumber’s assistant, took a 55-hour bus ride to appear at the hearing in the San Diego chambers of U.S. Magistrate Leo Papas.

On Thursday, he acknowledged that the settlement--the amount was ordered by the court to remain secret--has eased some of his bitterness.

“I feel fine,” he said in Spanish.

The satisfaction comes two years after the brisk January morning when the illegal immigrant was grabbed by two store workers in the adjacent parking lot as he stood soliciting day jobs with other migrant workers.

With the help of store butcher Bill Zimmerman, Randy Alfred Ryberg dragged Salas behind the store, where he was left handcuffed to a railing for more than two hours--even after being seen by store owner Rick Ryberg--before finally being released. The facts of what happened were never disputed by either side.

Randy Ryberg, who said his job was to “keep the Mexicans away” from the store, was later convicted of misdemeanor false imprisonment in a criminal trial, which included testimony that store workers were frustrated by the numbers of migrant workers congregating there each day.

But a jury acquitted Ryberg, a stocky man standing 6 feet 6 inches tall, of a more serious felony count of using force against the much smaller Salas--a decision that angered North County migrant advocates.

Zimmerman was acquitted by the jury of similar charges. Rick Ryberg was initially arrested but not charged.

The civil settlement against all three men, however, closes the case that many say heightened the growing tensions between North County’s white middle class and the hundreds of migrant laborers from Mexico and Central America who work in nearby fields.

Marco Lopez, Salas’ attorney in the civil matter, said he thinks the decision will perhaps ease racial tensions in North County and stem what others have called a rise in vigilantism against migrant workers.

“I think it will have an effect--I certainly hope so,” he said. “You’re talking to someone who believes that people’s minds and attitudes can change. In any event, I think both sides learned a lesson to be more careful.”

Initially, the FBI announced it was investigating the filing of further charges against Zimmerman and Randy Ryberg on civil rights violations. Apparently, Lopez said, the investigation proved fruitless; no additional charges were ever filed.

Enrique Loaeza, the Mexican consul general in San Diego, said Thursday that while he does not know the amount of the settlement, he hopes it reflects “the humiliation” to which Salas was subjected.

“I would have liked to have seen those responsible punished criminally so that they served some time in jail,” he said. “They have to be taught that they can’t just go around doing these kinds of things without punishment.

“All Mexicans become concerned when one of us has become abused or mistreated. And the settlement of this case has, in a way, redressed all of us.”

Neither Rick nor Randy Ryberg could be reached for comment Thursday.

Contacted at his meat counter at the Country Store, William Zimmerman refused to discuss the court settlement. “I’ve got nothing to say,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

During the criminal trial, store workers expressed resentment over the presence of migrant workers, claiming that many shoplifted from the store.

On Thursday, there was little evidence that anything had changed at the Country Store, known by passers-by for the large fiberglass rooster perched over its door.

Several migrant laborers milled about the store drinking coffee while others stood outside, sheltering themselves from the rain.

Candido Salas, however, has not been back to the quaint-looking store since the day of his abduction.

Three months after the attack, Salas left North County for his home in the south-central Mexican city of Puebla, where he lives with his wife and three children, ages 6, 4 and 2.

“I feared it would happen again,” he said. “I kept thinking: ‘What if they had killed me? What if they had thrown my body in a dumpster where it would never have been found again? Who would have taken care of my family?’ ”

Salas still thinks of the day he was abducted. He has no urge for revenge, only a rueful, lingering feeling of powerlessness, of having something very important taken from him.

Worse than the fear of being harmed, he said, were the eventual insults he endured from fellow farm workers who witnessed or heard about the attack.

Back in the rural camps he shared with scores of other workers, Salas became known as “El Gallinazo”--for the chicken perched above the store. Workers yelled his nickname constantly. They laughed.

“It hurt me,” he said.

Salas acknowledged that he learned some lessons from his experience. He realizes how naive he was when he came to the United States years ago to witness for himself the much-discussed land of opportunity.

Back then, he never thought about racism. Now, however, he knows there are people who dislike him or others for no other reason, perhaps, than that they come from another country and have skin of a different color.

The United States, he said, is not a place he ever wants his children to live.

And, while he makes less than $50 a week at his job as a plumber’s assistant, he does not miss the fields of North County, other than for a handful of fellow workers who became his friends.

Slowly, he hopes, his sense of honor will return.

“I just prefer to live peacefully with my family,” he said. “It’s something I couldn’t do here.”