Street Roots • Nov. 10-16, 2017
Page 5
News
IMMIGRATION, from page 4
She makes good money with the wreaths
- $4,000 a month - but pays a third in taxes
and goes without work in January and
February.
“It’s tough, but hope is what I lean on,”
Reyes Pacheco said in Spanish. “A lot of
families are in this kind of situation.
Everything gets resolved in time.”
She has her own plot at a community
garden that reflects her roots in a small
Mexican pueblo named San Esteban
Atatlahuca, two hours from Oaxaca, Mexico,
the place where cacao (chocolate) beans
originated.
During the latest season, she planted so
many chilies she lost track of which were
which. That’s no small matter when some
are spicy chocolate habaneros.
“I had to start tasting them to find out if
they were spicy or not,”
she recalled, laughing.
Once a week, Reyes
We h a w « t even talked
Pacheco said she takes
about the peyohologleal
her three kids to a
restaurant so they can eat
effect this Is liavlap on a
their fill. Their favorite is
whole fe neration of la tin o
Juan Colorado. Her own
children who are going to
dream is to someday start
grow up h aling America^
a Oaxacan bakery.
because !t*s separating them
The work making
from th e ir parents
coronas, is “very painful,”
Reyes Pacheco said. Now
RAMO1M R A M Í R E Z ,
P C U N P R E S ID E N T
30, she’s done it annually
since she was 18 or 19.
Smaller ones pay $1.30
each; more elaborate ones
pay $3 each. She can do 75 of the larger
ones in a day, or 105 smaller ones.
“We work from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., or
sometimes 6 a.m. to 5 p.m,” Reyes Pacheco
said. “It’s hard on the hands. Los Mexicanos
work all the time.”
This is hardly news to Rebeca Velazquez,
who leads Mujeres Luchadoras Progresistas,
a Woodburn nonprofit that supports women
with health care and self-esteem building.
Velazquez said the politics around
immigration often overlook women.
“A woman works in the fields like a man
does, and often a man is better paid,”
Velazquez said. “We’re hard-working people.
The majority of the women are working,
too. It’s not just the men who are working.”
Every year since 1992, Velazquez’s group
has made Christmas wreaths, to be sold in
to Portland, Eugene and Seattle. This year,
a portion of their 1,200 coronas will be sold
at Grand Central Bakery on Southeast
Hawthorne Boulevard in Portland.
Among the 170 women who made the
wreaths are documented and undocumented
workers, field workers, housewives,
domestic violence survivors and sexual
assault survivors, she said.
“There’s no work in the fields (in
winter),” Velazquez said, “so all we can do is
this, and this is what we do.”
magine a trip to see your father for the
first time - a man you know only through
a computer screen.
“When we went back to Mexico, Jo sé
Manuel) was a little afraid (of his dad), but
the second day, he hugged him,” Reyes
Pacheco said of her 3-year-old son. “He
knows who his dad is, but he couldn t hug
him, so in his mind, to see him, to be able
to hug him, it was a little hard for him at
first. But then he was hugging him and
I
P H O T O BY A R K A D Y B R O W N
Margarita Reyes Pacheco is a single mother of three. She is married, but her husband was deported to Mexico. She has
considered moving back to Mexico to be with her husband once her children, who are U.S. citizens, are grown.
Research suggests this relocation has
hugging him.”
PCUN’s Ramirez became emotional when become commonplace in recent years. More
Mexicans now move back to Mexico than
told of José Manuel’s daily video chats with
come to the United States.
his dad. It struck a personal chord.
Velazquez, of Mujeres Luchadoras
“In my case, that’s my son-in-law. That’s
Progresistas, said some immigrants are
the father of our grandkids,” Ramirez said.
experiencing the ending of la ilusión - the
Ramirez said ICE raids and deportations
illusion.
don’t just affect an estimated 11 million
The illusion, Velazquez said, is the belief
undocumented immigrants, but ripple out to
that our immigration problems will someday
58 million Latinos in the U.S.
end. It’s possible la ilusión grows from what
“These are kids,” he said. “We haven’t
Ronald Reagan did in 1986. The
even talked about the psychological effect
Immigration Reform and Control Act
this is having on a whole generation of
granted green cards to 2.7 million
Latino children who are going to grow up
undocumented immigrants.
hating America, because it’s separating
Now, under another Republican, the
them from their parents.”
pendulum has swung the other way.
Reyes Pacheco and José Manuel visit
“If my husband isn’t going to be able to
Alejandro as often as possible, but the trips
be with me, I don’t know,” Reyes Pacheco
are expensive. The pair are working with an
said. “I think I’m going to have to go be
attorney and the Mexican Embassy here
with him.”
“but are now thinking that he’s not eligible
to come back,” Reyes Pacheco said.
f Reyes Pacheco were to return to
Alejandro was deported in 2010 and has
Mexico, who would take care of the
considered crossing the Sonoran Desert
couple’s three children? Who would pick the
illegally to come back, Reyes Pacheco said.
cranberries or make the coronas?
Reyes Pacheco also has to pay for her
Ann Marie Moss, spokesperson for the
own documents, she said. Each new
Oregon Farm Bureau, said a “shrinking
application for legal residency, whether
labor pool” lately has affected fruit orchards,
DACA or a U visa, costs several hundred to
nurseries and greenhouses across the state.
more than a thousand dollars, not including
“A lot of farmers (in those industries) have
attorney’s fees. It’s a lot for a single mother
had a hard time finding enough labor to
of three. Alejandro doesn’t make enough
harvest everything,” Moss said.
growing avocados to contribute.
The state agency supports
If not for the health problems of her
“comprehensive” immigration reform, she
eldest child, Michael, Reyes Pacheco might
said. It has invited ICE officials to forums
still be in Mexico herself. She went back to
on fixing “America’s broken immigration
Oaxaca in 2007, she said, intending to stay.
system.”
But when Michael got sick, they went to a
The U.S. government has long been
Mexican hospital, and his situation didn’t
involved, on behalf of big agricultural
improve after two weeks, so she sent him
interests, in bringing Mexican farmworkers
back - on a plane, because Michael is a U.S.
to this country.
citizen.
In 1821, when Mexico gained
She then spent three days walking across
independence from Spain, it included all of
the Sonoran Desert because she didn’t have
California and even parts of modern-day
legal documentation. She and other
Oregon. Decades later, the bracero
migrants were robbed by masked men.
program, supported by the State
Lately, she’s started thinking about a day
Department, began busing agricultural
when her children are grown and whether
she’d move back to Mexico to be with
See IMMIGRATION, page 11
Alejandro.
I