Dream Taking Shape : Despite a Difficult Life, the Carranzas Stake Their Claim for a Richer Future

Javier Carranza is at the dinner table when his children start filing home from school, bursting through the front door of the family’s split-level rental house in south Oxnard, eager to show off the day’s collection of school work.

“How nice,” he tells each of them as they line up seeking his approval. “Very good work.”

The children continue to trickle in, one after another, until all nine are home.

Suddenly, the relative calm of the afternoon is transformed by the buzzing energy of the Carranza children.

The youngest climb on their father’s lap or cling to his neck. Others launch into a rough-and-tumble wrestling match in the living room, bouncing on the three couches aimed at the family television. The set will see no action until the popular novelas --Spanish-language soap operas--come on in the evening.

Without being asked, the older girls head for the kitchen to help their mother fix dinner. On a farm worker’s budget and with so many mouths to feed--nine children ranging in age from 16 to 1--the evening meal will feature beans and rice and homemade tortillas, a simple mix that fills the house with a rich aroma that reminds Carranza of his homeland.

“It is all we can afford,” he explains apologetically. “We eat as economically as possible because we don’t have money.”

A couple of the boys run up to their second-story room, where the Nintendo game beckons under the watchful eye of a poster of Mexican boxing great Julio Cesar Chavez. In the next room, under posters of Spanish-language pop stars and the gang from “Beverly Hills, 90210,” one daughter has cracked open her books and has already started doing homework.

Carranza views the flurry of activity and sees his dreams of a better life taking shape.

“I love my children and I want the best for them,” he said. “I didn’t have the opportunity to study, or even to go to school. I want them to prepare themselves, to be able to build a better life than the one I had, that is the most important thing.

“I know that I can’t give them the things that other children have, but I give them everything I have.”

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Pushed by poverty and joblessness in Mexico, Carranza came to the United States two decades ago to pursue the same dream chased by immigrants for two centuries. It hasn’t been easy. For a time, his family lived with relatives--43 of them in all--squeezed into a south Oxnard rental because they could not afford a place of their own.

But two years ago, when a flash fire left the clan tearful and homeless, Oxnard housing officials were able to relocate the six Carranza brothers into six spare but clean houses and apartments.

Now, the 44-year-old farm worker measures progress by his new living conditions, even though his home is tucked into a housing project on one of Oxnard’s meanest streets.

And he measures his future by how well his children are doing in school, by how they are speaking English and how they have developed ambition to continue their education so they will never have to stoop in the fields like he does.

“I don’t want them to be like me who can’t speak English, who can’t write English, and who is very limited in the kind of work I can do,” Carranza said. “I work hard so they will never know what it’s like to work in the fields. I work hard because I want the best for them.”

He knows that the grinding poverty his family is forced to endure is hardest on the children. They have never been to a movie. And they don’t receive gifts at Christmas, simply because their parents can’t afford them.

They are not involved in sports. Carranza said he dislikes even taking them to the park because of the pressure that comes with having to turn down his children’s pleas for the frozen treats.

“We don’t go out because it takes money,” Carranza said.

So their days are filled with staying at home, playing in a small courtyard in front of their house or a tiny patio in the rear where Carranza is growing a vegetable garden. The younger ones are best friends, bouncing around the house until their mother sends them to bed.

And Carranza believes his older children understand the family’s deep-rooted poverty. He looks at the two oldest and figures he must be doing something right. Adela, 16, dreams of being a doctor. Her 15-year-old brother, David, talks of one day being an architect.

They earn A’s and Bs in school, and Adela is thinking of trying college.

“My children know the difference between people who have money and people who don’t,” Carranza said. “They go to school and they see that they don’t dress the same as the others and aren’t able to buy the same things. My two oldest tell me they want to go to work so they can help me, and so that they can give to their brothers and sisters the things they never had.”

Poor and crowded and barely making ends meet, the Carranza family represents the American immigrant experience. Javier Carranza is among the more than 20,000 farm workers in Ventura County who hunt for jobs during this high tide in the county’s agricultural cycle.

They also are among a small percentage of large families--less than 4% of the county’s 670,000 population live in households with seven or more people--who often are forced into crowded living conditions because rents are high and wages are low.

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And they are among the poor Mexican laborers who have flocked to the county in recent years in search of a better life.

One in four residents is now Latino, with the county’s Latino population surging by 64,000 during the 1980s, double the overall growth rate. Statewide, that tide of immigration has prompted calls for a temporary halt in legal immigration and greater restrictions on services to illegal immigrants and their American-born children.

Carranza is quick to point out that all but two of his children are citizens by birth. And the rest of the family consists of legal residents.

And he proudly proclaims that until he and his brothers were burned out of their rental house, few members of the family relied on government assistance.

“We hardly took anything from the government,” he said, noting that until the blaze, food stamps were the only government assistance he received. “But the fire changed that. In two or three minutes, we lost everything.”

There was no work the day the fire erupted, and for once that was a blessing for the Carranza clan.

Ordinarily, a day without pay was not welcome news for the 43 members of the immigrant family. Barely scratching out a living in the fields of Ventura County, they had all been forced to share their small rental house so they could pay the rent and have enough money left to buy food.

So it went for five years, until a fiery pop changed their lives forever.

The electrical system of the family’s rental gave way under the burden of three refrigerators and five television sets, sparking a fire that quickly raced through the house.

Several adults, who otherwise would have been picking strawberries had it not been for a stingy job market, were home to snatch the children from the fast-moving blaze. Although no one was hurt, the fire consumed most of their possessions.

“We had nothing left,” Bertha Carranza said. “All that we had in the world was destroyed in that fire. The children still have nightmares about it.”

Suddenly, the anonymous farm worker family was front-page news. Oxnard city officials called it the worst crowding they had ever seen. The family’s hard-luck story was splashed across newspapers and broadcast on Spanish-language television.

The kind-hearted were moved to donate money and clothing, much of which is still in use.

More importantly, Oxnard housing officials moved the family to the top of the waiting list for public housing, providing six Carranza brothers, their wives and some 30 children with six houses and apartments.

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In the two years since the flash fire, there have been many achievements for the Carranzas--farm worker families from the same poverty-choked town in northern Mexico.

More babies have been born, boosting to 47 the total number in the extended family. The brothers have held onto their housing, despite the fact that they no longer pool their money to pay the rent.

And their pursuit of the American dream continues apace, with the children progressing well in school.

But progress has a price. In many ways, the Carranzas have come to represent the plight of the American immigrant, a struggle that has been played out with the Irish in Boston, the Italians in New York and most recently Latinos in the Southwest.

While striving to gain education and affluence, many newcomers find it hard to hold onto the sense of family that once dominated their lives.

That’s how it is for the Carranzas, who say they are growing apart no matter how hard they fight against it.

“Thank God our family is very united,” said Carranza, the oldest of the six brothers. “But now that we aren’t living together, we are losing that little by little. Everything has become more distant between us.”

Javier Carranza was one of a dozen children--nine boys and three girls--born in the village of Los Cerritos, Michoacan, to farmer Jose Guadalupe Carranza, now 72.

In their village, the Carranzas worked as sharecroppers in government-owned fields. And they sometimes earned a few dollars a day working for rich property owners in the region.

Pushed by poverty, all nine boys had moved to Oxnard by about 1980.

On the Oxnard Plain, the brothers discovered that the climate was mild, and the growing season long, so they could find work virtually year-round. Stooping eight to 10 hours a day, they worked much harder and longer than they ever did in Los Cerritos.

But the money kept them going. Even stooped at the waist, they could see what the future might bring for their children.

By 1987, with rents increasing and work unsteady, five Carranza brothers decided to share a house, the three-bedroom home in south Oxnard.

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Only about 20 people lived there at first. But by early 1993, more family members had come from Mexico, a dozen more babies had been born and a sixth brother had also moved in with his wife and children.

“We were all together in one house because that was the only way we could pay the rent, pay the bills and have money left to buy food,” Javier Carranza said.

“For us,” he stated flatly, “there was no other way.”

The March, 1993, fire forced the Carranzas to find another way.

Within eight days of the blaze, the Oxnard Housing Authority had relocated all six families into public housing. Their rents are federally subsidized and represent 30% or less of the families’ income.

At the same time, the American Red Cross collected food, clothing and $3,570 in donations to cover part of the $23,000 the agency spent to give the Carranzas a fresh start.

“It was a tragic time, but it was so beautiful the way people responded,” Javier Carranza said. “We had nothing, but people gave shoes to my children and gave them clothes.”

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Of all the brothers, the transition has perhaps been hardest on Javier.

He and his wife, Bertha, remain troubled that they now live in housing paid for in part by the government. And he notes that work has been unsteady at best, saying he has been without a job for nearly a month because his employer folded up and left town.

For seven months, he earned $6.25 an hour doing stoop labor. Now he gets a $93 unemployment check each month and a few hundred dollars a month in food stamps. He said he has never received any other form of government assistance.

Rent is $292 a month, forcing him to borrow money from family and friends.

Living on such a tight budget, Bertha Carranza can only afford to serve simple meals, such as homemade tortillas, beans, rice and potatoes. Because there are so many to feed, she eats standing up over the stove, making sure that everyone’s belly is full.

After dinner late one afternoon, the children scattered to different corners of the living room to do homework. The children have been enrolled in an intensive after-school English program, but their parents say that will change next year, another sign of progress.

The younger ones continued the living room wrestling match. Bertha Carranza, devoutly religious, pulled out her well-worn Bible and started to read.

She said she tries to read to the children every night from the leather-bound book.

“I do this every day,” she explained. “And I try to teach them. It’s important that they know about God.”

Adela, a shy sophomore at Hueneme High School, went to her room and flipped on the radio.

Mexican banda music blared forth. She said usually after dinner she talks on the phone or gets together with friends. She hasn’t given her future a whole lot of thought, but knows that it isn’t in the fields.

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“Maybe I’ll go to college,” Adela said. “I’m thinking of going to Oxnard College after I graduate.”

Javier Carranza sees his children stepping out of the fields through education. Both Adela and David joined their father in the fields two summers ago, partly because the family needed the money and partly because their father wanted to show them that it was hard work.

Neither has been back in the fields since. And neither plans to return.

Through the tough times, it is the hope for a better life for his children that keeps Javier Carranza going. He said he does not intend to ever return to Mexico full time, knowing that the schools here are superior.

Anyway, he figures he has been in the United States long enough to consider it his new home. And he wants his children to take advantage of all the opportunities his new home has to offer.

“I have worked hard all of my life but my family has always stayed in the same economic position,” Carranza said. “But even though life here is hard, even though I don’t believe that I will ever be able to raise myself economically, I think my children will have the opportunity to do so.

“And that is the most important thing in the world to me.”