FRIENDS IN NEED : Immigrants Rely on Hope and Each Other to Survive Harsh Life

Along the dusty back roads of this tiny village just 30 minutes northwest of the bustling San Fernando Valley, life is a daily struggle to survive.

Although a sprawling city is nearby, many of the immigrant residents of Val Verde have almost no resources to call upon other than themselves. Even when compared to the struggles of their urban counterparts, life in Val Verde is particularly harsh.

There is only one sparsely stocked general store in town. The small county health clinic is forever overrun with patients. Few immigrants own cars or telephones, and mass transportation runs every 1 1/2 hours.

Because of that, dozens of the Mexican immigrant families who live here have built a communal network where swapping information and sharing rides to the precious few sources of income have enabled them to make the most of the little they have.

With as many as 12 people sharing some two-bedroom houses--several of which have trailers in the backyard housing other families--mutual dependence becomes a way of life. Residents have come to rely on one another or siblings for everything.

Sometimes, sharing is as simple as when 77-year-old Augustina Ramirez wants someone to talk to besides the statues to which she prays in her tiny metal trailer. Or when Yesenia Elias, 14, translates letters and bills for her 42-year-old neighbor who does not speak or read English.

“Sometimes we say we’d like to go back to Mexico, but we stay here for the little work and because we have help from my sister and from other people we’ve met here,” said Ramon Gutierrez, 25.

Gutierrez and his wife--like other immigrant families in Val Verde--left behind the high unemployment and desperate poverty of their home states of Michoacan, Jalisco, Oaxaca and other places south of the border for a shot at a better life in the United States.

According to the 1990 census, 53% of Val Verde’s 1,689 residents are Latino, and the majority of those are immigrants who’ve arrived within the past decade. Most do not speak English, are undocumented and work as day laborers, maids or housekeepers.

Their salaries average $150 a week if work is steady, and meals typically consist of tortillas, beans, rice and eggs. Fruits, vegetables, meat and chicken are rare and often provided by churches or food banks.

A very small number have health insurance, and hardly any receive government assistance. Those who do primarily receive money from the federal Women, Infant, Children (WIC) program that gives them enough money to buy formula for their babies.

Gutierrez and his wife, Carmen, 24, lived with his sister, Estella Gutierrez, and 10 other people in a two-bedroom house for a year before moving into a one-room apartment with their 4-year-old son, Leonardo Daniel Gutierrez, who they call Daniel.

Estella encouraged the young couple to move to California three years ago, and she also found Carmen work as a maid at a nearby Valencia hotel. For months, Carmen got rides to her job each day from another resident whom she paid with occasional dinners.

Ramon has worked off and on at jobs that his brother-in-law and other men, like Estefan Guzman, have helped him find at stables and farms. In January, when strawberry season began, Guzman--who is plugged into much of the farm work in the region--helped Ramon and some other day laborers get work picking berries for a few months.

But by April the job was over and Ramon has been out of work since. In the meantime, his wife, Carmen, has been forced to give up her $160-a-week job, which had helped the couple make ends meet, due to problems with her second pregnancy.

Because of a minimal diet mainly consisting of beans and rice, Carmen suffered fainting spells at work and spent two weeks in the hospital after being diagnosed with anemia. In early May, she gave birth prematurely to a girl. Now Carmen sits at home with her baby, worried, weak and depressed, with no money and months behind on rent.

“I don’t know what we can do,” Carmen said in Spanish. “I am scared if we cannot pay rent and then will have no place to live.”

The couple pay $250 a month to live in a one-room dilapidated apartment they share with Daniel, and now with their daughter. In the past they have gone weeks without electricity after falling behind on bills, and they fear that may happen again.

Ramon’s sister, Estella, assures that a spare couch is ready at her house in case Ramon and Carmen need to move out of their tiny home.

Neighbors donated an old couch and lounge chair that the couple push together each night so they can sleep with their son.

“The people here, they don’t have much themselves, but they look out for one another. They help each other out in any way they can if they are able,” said Erica Aguilar, a Santa Clarita resident who has become a good Samaritan to residents here.

Each week for the past two years, Aguilar has brought food, clothes, blankets and other items donated by members of her church to the immigrant families in Val Verde.

She has amassed a list of nearly 40 families needing help in some form. Every two months she holds large clothes giveaways for the families. Aguilar has supplied many with all of the clothes and furniture they have. But she said it is the generosity among the families that should be applauded.

“There are families who are struggling, but will go out of their way to help each other,” Aguilar said. She pointed out Estella and Carmen Gutierrez, both of whom fed two different men who lived in cars near their homes.

“We have to share so that things can be cheaper for us,” said Cirilo Mondragon, a day laborer who gets occasional work at a factory in Lancaster.

“Everyone here knows each other and they’re friendly,” said Mondragon’s wife, Olga, 28. “We all know that we don’t have much money. That is what we have in common. We are all working hard to make enough money to live and maybe to save.”

Mondragon, 30, has no car and usually catches a ride to work in Palmdale--when work is available--with his brother, Juan, who encouraged him to move to Val Verde from Michoacan, Mexico.

Mondragon, his wife and their two daughters live in a ramshackle trailer in the backyard of a small, deteriorating house. There is one small bedroom where the couple and their 7-month-old baby sleep during the winter. Their oldest daughter, Sandy, 7, sleeps curled up in the baby’s crib because there is only one bed. There is minimal furniture and no heating system in the trailer, which leaks profusely during rainstorms.

The family lives on $160 a week. It’s barely enough to pay the $300 in rent, buy some food and maybe pay one bill. Each week, Cirilo calls either the phone company or the trash collection agency to ask for time. To save money, Olga washes all the clothes by hand. Most often she baby-sits her friend’s son while the mother cleans houses in nearby Valencia.

“There are times when I don’t have any work for the week, and because I don’t have a car I can’t go out and look for work. Places are too far,” Cirilo Mondragon said.

“I go and I work and try to make money for my family, but it’s just not enough. I’m worried because we really have nothing.”

With no other relatives in the Los Angeles area, Mondragon has come to rely heavily on his brother. Aside from rides to work, the elder brother has supplied food for Mondragon’s family when they only had enough money to buy baby formula. And he has often taken him to San Fernando where Mondragon sells bags filled with recyclable bottles and cans he and his wife have collected at Val Verde Park.

Mondragon said if his bills continue to spiral out of hand, he may have to move his family into his brother’s house, where five people already live.

“Even if we live in the living room, at least we have someplace to stay,” Cirilo Mondragon said. “Even though we have been here for years, things are still new and we still need help. We can’t expect Erica [Aguilar] to always help us and the work is not steady. The only people we can rely on are our family and the few friends we have made.”