|
|
|
| Latino influx and influence has
long been a factor in the region's culture; it's just now getting
the attention it's due |
By Gregory Hahn
for Headwaters News |
| They make up one of the great
legends of the western United States. The men – they
were mostly men, anyway – left their families for months
or years at a time, followed the needs of the budding agriculture
industry, led seemingly solitary lives, and huddled with each
other in the country or on the outskirts of little cow towns.
These cowboys helped define what we think of as the West,
but maybe the biggest myth of all is that they're gone.
This part of the country is still fueled by the lonely labor
of thousands of people who leave their homes – not from
Missouri or Massachusetts anymore, but from all over Mexico,
and Central and South America.
For years they've followed the seasons
from Texas and California to Idaho, Wyoming and Utah. Often
alone, or with groups from their villages, the men send most
of their paychecks home – making more in one of the
lowest-paid and grueling jobs in America than they can provide
for their families at home.
When they can, they bring their families, and the children
are some of the last to slip under this country's labor laws.
When they are migrants, there's no truant officer to check
when they're in school. Sometimes, they can attend several
each year. But when it's the busy time in the fields, even
some of the youngest will work alongside their parents.
I've heard folks who grew up this way talk about the lifestyle.
About being smuggled over the border, curled up in a tight
ball on the passenger-side floorboards.
Their mothers would watch the bus routes, see where the children
were picked up, and take their own kids there to send them
off on their own. The schools were used to it.
"How old are you? Eight? Third grade? OK."
When I started out as a young reporter in Burley, Idaho, I'd
share my Sunday afternoons with some of these men. They were
quiet and serious, wearing sharply creased Wranglers and their
best shirts, donned for the services at the Catholic Church
across the street from my house. We'd all be at the Laundromat
for an hour, washing out one load of clothes for the week.
Burley is still a Mormon town, but in that part of Idaho,
along the irrigation projects that tamed the Snake River into
a wide, slow-moving canal, the culture is changing.
At the high school, the soccer fields fill with Mexican and
South American immigrants on warm weekend afternoons, and
the men play for hours in organized leagues, while the women
gather in the shade and the children practice their penalty
shots into the fences, or pick up their own short-sided games.
In nearby Rupert, the town square is peppered with Hispanic
businesses. When I lived there, a few years ago, the old movie
theater had been converted into a Hispanic cultural and social
center, along with a chapel for worship in Spanish.
It's probably not what most people think about when they imagine
the Western lifestyle. Maybe it's what they think about California
or New Mexico, but Idaho? Wyoming?
Hispanics, though, are by far the largest minority here –
about 8 percent of Idaho's and Oregon's populations, almost
7 percent of Wyoming's, 9 percent of Utah's, and a full 20
percent of Nevada's. And that was from the census four years
ago.
But these relatively low numbers are misleading. First, because
no one knows how many residents are living in the vast gray
areas between legality and illegality.
And second, the immigrants and longtime Hispanic residents
are clustered in a few agricultural areas. In Canyon County,
just west of Boise, the census shows one in five residents
are Hispanic and Latino. The same is true in the two counties
near Burley and Rupert.
But Easterners aren't the only ones who miss this view of
the West. It's not what many longtime residents think about
their own towns, in a lot of places. That Rupert Hispanic
center was always under attack from local officials. They
talked about a lot of reasons, but one of the clearest motivations
was a reluctance to see change in their town.
But those shifts have been happening for years and years,
and Idaho, at least, is just starting to respond to them.
A decade ago, there was nothing to require that farmworkers
be covered by workers' compensation insurance. In one of the
most dangerous jobs in the state, there was nothing to protect
the workers from what the feds called the second-deadliest
occupation in the country.
It took a gruesome accident on a dairy in Malta, a tiny town
along the Raft River between Burley and the Utah border. Javier
Juarez, just 23, lost both his arms and a leg to a post-hole
digger. His boss was one of the more than 11,000 farmers –
out of a total of 12,000 – who hired immigrants and
didn't pay for the insurance.
His story helped former Republican Gov. Phil Batt push through
the landmark change – after seven similar attempts by
farmworker advocates had failed tried over a quarter of a
century.
At the time, some farmers in the Legislature were indignant.
"We farmers have been dealt a real injustice,'' one said.
A few years later, the farmworkers and their advocates turned
their attention to minimum wage. Though by the end, most farmers
and farmworkers acknowledged that most workers managed to
make more by the "piece" – pipes moved, beet-rows
hoed – than the $5.15 minimum, the law passed to protect
the few that didn't.
It took years, though, and by the time Gov. Dirk Kempthorne
signed the bill amid a throng of grade-schoolers at a migrant
housing project in Wilder, it was amid signs the issue had
become a cause far beyond the Hispanic community.
A group of students from Boise State University
staged an unprecedented protest on the Senate floor, and most
of them were arrested. For a brief time, in the historically
open and unquestioning Idaho Statehouse, security guards started
checking backpacks and distrusting anyone who looked young
and rebellious.
These were middle-class white kids, most of them, college
students who drove their BMWs to Seattle to protest the World
Trade Organization meetings.
The Idaho Farm Bureau had taken a rigid stand against the
change, though not a single member of the group ever admitted
to paying below the minimum wage.
In the waning days of the debate, Kempthorne himself, and
an up-and-coming Republican leader in the Senate, convinced
the farmers to back off their opposition. But they did so
reluctantly, and perhaps that was a sign of a coming sea change
in the state. Farmers still get a lot of support in the Idaho
Legislature, but agriculture, today, makes up less than 12
percent of the state's annual product.
But like the worker's comp bill before it, it looked like
it would be
some time before the political stars aligned for the fight
for equality in Idaho.
As the state changed, Idaho's churches were the quickest to
adapt.
It's rare to find a Catholic Church without a Spanish mass
scheduled each week. Even downtown Boise's old Cathedral of
St. John the Evangelist, smack in the middle of the still-largely
white North End, is home to priests and seminarians from around
Central and South America, and a few from Idaho's Hispanic
centers.
The state's political institutions have been much slower to
adapt. A handful of Hispanics and Latinos have won election
to the Legislature. Republican Jesse Berain was among the
first, and he failed for three terms to pass the worker's
comp bill; it took his close friend, then-Gov. Phil Batt,
an onion farmer, to help usher it in.
The most successful Hispanic politicians have been Republicans,
not surprising in this Republican-controlled state. But it's
led to strange alliances and rifts in the community. One of
Idaho's most vocal critics of George Bush's plan to liberalize
"guest worker" laws is a Republican Hispanic county
commissioner in Canyon County.
In 2002, most of the support from folks worried about education
for young Hispanics sided against the Republican, and Hispanic,
candidate for state school superintendent.
The crisis, though, is in the schools.
More than half of the state's Hispanic 10th-graders failed
the Idaho Standard Achievement Test in the proposed graduation
exam's pilot year.
The census estimates that the Hispanic drop-out rate jumped
from an awful 16.1 percent in 1990 to a sickening 30.7 percent
in 2000. It got worse in a decade when we all would have thought
things were improving.
Meanwhile, the state spends just $4.5 million a year to help
nearly 20,000 Idaho students with limited English skills catch
up — that's about $239 each.
The state's budget writers don't seem concerned about it.
Republicans passed an education budget that openly overlooked
the lowest performers on the state tests. Meanwhile, the same
folks approved the plan to require that seniors pass the test
before they graduate.
And the most vocal advocates for Hispanic and Latino immigrants
have been all but shut out of the process this year.
The coalition that helped pass the minimum wage laws has turned
its sights on the driver's license debate that has strained
politics all over the West.
The proposal, to allow folks who don't have Social Security
numbers to get drivers' licenses, has tepid support from farmers,
who know they rely on these workers.
But the question is complex. Immigration attorneys know their
way around the complex levels of legality, but they're about
the only ones. Farmers certainly don't understand it all –
the "don't ask, don't tell" policy remains through
the West. Just 2 percent of the nation's farmworkers are officially
part of the guest worker laws.
Still, the hope is there, and it's clearly seen in the young
leaders and the diversity of the community.
Politically, Idaho has evolved to the point that the "Hispanic
Community" can finally be seen as a vibrant chorus of
voices, not all coming from the same background or espousing
the same ideas.
Leo Morales is in his mid 20s, and already is among the most
vocal and influential young adults in the state. He was a
key voice in the minimum wage debate, and he now works as
an organizer with one of the few advocacy groups for the truly
poor in the state.
Maria Andrade had been working in Oregon when she stood as
a legal observer while the college students protested in the
Senate. She now practices law in Boise and could run for office
one day.
Still other leaders have turned to getting out the Hispanic
vote, and to helping Hispanic families deal with banks sometimes
unwilling to loan money.
The basic questions are still as relevant as ever: How long
can the state allow a third of the Hispanic students to leave
school before
they graduate?
How long will agriculture in the West rely on a group of people
that the industry fights in just about every political battle
in the Statehouse?
And how much longer will the Hispanic community be under-represented
on their local school boards and city councils, and
in their legislatures?
These modern-day cowboys probably aren't far behind those
latter-day ones, though. Every year, families step away from
the migrant trail and make homes for themselves — homes
in Burley, Idaho, or Patterson, Calif., or Winnemucca, Nev.
And like the lingering cowboy culture we still feel here in
West, this new infusion of tradition and lifestyle will indelibly
alter what we think of and enjoy about this part of the country.
Gregory Hahn is a reporter for the
Idaho Statesman in Boise. |
Hispanic
population:
Rocky Mountain states |
| |
| Arizona |
|
|
| Total population |
5,130,632 |
|
| Hispanic or Latino |
1,295,617 |
25.3% |
Hispanics
under age 18 |
493,143 |
38.1% |
| |
| Colorado |
|
|
| Total |
4,301,261 |
|
| Hispanic |
735,601 |
17.1% |
| under 18 |
258,722 |
35.2% |
| |
| Montana |
|
|
| Total |
902,195 |
|
| Hispanic |
18,081 |
2.0% |
| under 18 |
7,350 |
40.6% |
| |
| Idaho |
|
|
| Total |
1,293,953 |
|
| Hispanic |
101,690 |
7.9% |
| under 18 |
42,902 |
42.2% |
| |
| Nevada |
|
|
| Total |
1,998,257 |
|
| Hispanic |
393,970 |
19.7% |
| under 18 |
146,234 |
37.1% |
| |
| New Mexico |
|
|
| Total |
1,819,046 |
|
| Hispanic |
765,386 |
42.1% |
| under 18 |
258,806 |
33.8% |
| |
| Utah |
|
|
| Total |
2,233,169 |
|
| Hispanic |
201,559 |
9.0% |
| under 18 |
78,195 |
38.8% |
| |
| Wyoming |
|
|
| Total |
493,782 |
|
| Hispanic |
31,669 |
6.4% |
| under 18 |
11,658 |
36.8% |
| |
| *From Kids Count -- Annie E Casey Foundation |
|
|
Latino
numbers, influence
will rise with next generation
By
Greg Lakes, editor
Headwaters News
March 17, 2004
To belabor
the not-quite-yet obvious, the Latino explosion poses some of
the West's most dramatic changes of the next few decades.
Obviously, the current waves of immigration are forcing changes
in Western schools, job markets, politics and culture.
But less obvious are the changes that will come with the potentially
explosive numbers of the next generation.
By 2020, the number of Latinos in the U.S. is expected to grow
from the current 35 million to about
60 million, according to a study by the Pew Hispanic Center.
In recent years, about 45 percent of that growth has been from
immigration, and the latest studies confirmed that Western cities
are key gateways for the influx.
The numbers of immigrants in Salt Lake City, for example, aren't
as large as for New York or Chicago, but Salt Lake's smaller
and relatively homogenous populations make
the shift more dramatic, according to the Brookings Institution.
The results across the West pepper the headlines: Idaho's Hispanic
population grew
three times faster than the state as a whole in the past
two years.
Santa Fe schools are struggling to close a persistent
learning gap between Hispanic students and their peers that
remains even when poverty and cultural factors are discounted.
Boise-area police departments are
under pressure to hire
more bilingual officers and ambulance attendants.
And on the darker side, Phoenix police have broken up a string
of high-end drop houses used to warehouse
scores of illegal immigrants, and authorities arrested more
than 400,000
people trying to sneak across the Arizona border last year
alone.
Yet, the real impact may well come with the next generation.
Birth rates tend to be higher for Hispanics than other ethnic
groups, and immigration is not expected to slow.
The data in the chart above shows Latinos constitute a large
and growing minority in many Western states, and even in those
where their numbers are lower, the proportion of all Hispanics
who are under 18 is one-third or more.
That represents another demographic wave. Already, births account
for nearly half the increase in Hispanic numbers each year.
Colorado universities are bracing
for changes when more than one
of every five high school graduates in 2008 will be Latino.
By 2020, nationwide, one in nine schoolchildren will be Latino,
as will be
one in four new workers.
And by 2020, immigrants will no longer be the dominant group
among Hispanics; their children will be.
As a group, they likely will speak English rather than Spanish,
be more blended into mainstream culture, be less religious and
more liberal in their politics than their parents, and have
better education and employment opportunities, according to
the Pew study.
But they will likely still face higher unemployment and less
pay than their Anglo counterparts, the study said. |
| |
| |
|
|
|
Send
this page to a
friend or colleague
Reader
comments
Still growing
Excellent material, and good information, keep up the good
work.
In Rupert the theater, now is again a theater; however, around
the square the business' continue to grow and they are owned
by Hispanics.
We continue to make news and to grow and be recognized.
Gladys M. Esquibel
Farmers' side missing
Greg Hahn has done a very good job of telling the migrant
workers' side of this story. But in my opinion he also shortchanged
Idaho agriculture.
You are right that we would not have minimum wage if it weren't
for Dirk Kempthorne. But agriculture's side of that argument
wasn't that farmworkers don't deserve a fair wage. The argument
was that we don't need government to decide what that wage
should be.
The minimum-wage law didn't make things better for farmworkers;
it reduced opportunities for them to find work.
Greg's column gives forth the perception that rich farmers
don't want to pay migrant workers a fair wage. The fact of
the matter is that most if not all of our skilled migrant
workers make far more than minimum wage.
Harvest time, the two months every fall when there are lots
of jobs for unskilled workers (sorting potatoes, driving trucks
etc.), is when minimum wage hurts a farm's bottom line.
A potato farm may have five full-time workers all year but
can use as many as 30 during harvest.
However, minimum wage hasn't helped the migrant workers live
any better; it has reduced the number of jobs available to
them, and that trend will continue as technology reduces the
number of hands needed to run a farm.
Regarding worker's compensation and the terrible tragedy of
Javier Juarez, the column once again paints farmers as task
masters who opposed the legislation for selfish reasons.
Only 20 percent of every dollar spent on food in this country
makes it back to the farm gate. And every time government
comes along and takes a nick out of that 20 cents, farms go
broke.
The public needs to understand clearly that American agriculture
is against the ropes, and we are nearing the first time in
our history when this country will run a trade deficit in
agricultural products.
When we become dependent on other countries for food and food
prices become unstable (like gas prices) will that be the
farmer's fault, too?
Hahn and many other reporters hammer on the fact that agriculture
has clout in the Legislature but agriculture makes up less
than 12 percent of the state's annual product.
It's a misleading statistic used to strengthen the point that
agriculture is no longer important to Idaho's economy.
Idaho exports millions of tons of commodities that take a
tremendous amount of resources to produce and create most
of the jobs in towns like Burley.
If you compare the farm gate or wholesale price of those commodities
to value-added exports like computer chips, you get skewed
numbers.
Greg, please go back to Burley, or any other town between
Boise and Ashton, take a look around and then ask yourself;
What would be here without agriculture?
That's when you will know the value of agriculture to Idaho's
economy.
John Thompson
Director of Information
Idaho Farm Bureau Federation
Author's blog:
Tribes, Hispanics join forces
During a relatively quiet weekend in Boise
this winter, 300 Idahoans made history.
Leaders in their communities, they came from farm towns such
as Rupert and Caldwell and timber towns such as Lapwai and
Plummer, but they weren't the farmers and loggers you might
imagine.
And they weren't really the Idahoans you might imagine — though
in many ways they represent the past and future of the state
far more than the rest of us.
The meeting was a summit, a chance to share ideas, compare
political goals and come up with a few action plans.
And the groups? Idaho's five Native American tribes and the
Latino leaders who represents the state's – and
the West's – fastest-growing minority.
In retrospect, it seems so obvious.
The tribes have been on the outs with a growing number of
Idaho legislators. Disagreements over gambling, tobacco sales
and tribal sovereignty have highlighted the problems between
many conservative Republicans and the five tribal governments.
And while Idaho's Hispanics had seen some in-roads in the
past few years – most notably the passage of a minimum
wage requirement for farmworkers – the state's
growing number of Latinos are still politically underrepresented.
In some ways, the two groups compliment each other well. The
tribes have the history and the potential political power
(they enjoy a government-to-government relationship with the
state, although the Legislature doesn't always sign off on
the agreements).
And they seem to have broad support on the ground; their initiative
to endorse tribal gaming won almost 58 percent of the statewide
vote in 2002.
What they don't have is numbers. A couple of the five tribes
have some influence in their legislative districts, but especially
in central and eastern Idaho, the local lawmakers sometimes
work against the interests of the local tribes.
Idaho's Latinos, though, are far more disenfranchised. A couple
of Hispanic legislators have served in the Legislature, and
one, Elmer Martinez, represents the Democratic stronghold
of Pocatello.
The only grass-roots push from farmworkers this year, to
discuss a plan to make driver's licenses available to some
immigrants who don't have Social Security numbers, didn't
even get a hearing.
But the numbers of Hispanics in Idaho grows every year, and
with groups like Latino Vote working, the electoral voice
certainly has the potential of growing louder.
The trick will be for the new coalition to sort through politics
and issues.
Democrats in the state are generally much quicker to support
both the tribes and the Latino community, but some of the
lawmakers most effective in helping the two groups have been
Republicans.
Farmworkers would not be covered by workers' comp without
former Gov. Phil Batt, and they wouldn't be guaranteed a minimum
wage without Gov. Dirk Kempthorne.
Many of the younger Hispanic activists are clearly tied more
closely to the Democrats, but the tribal leaders know where
the power is, and they don't want to give up the equal footing
they have with some Republican leaders.
So far, the players have stuck with easy issues, education
being No. 1, with some mention of public safety, health care
and economic development.
But if the coalition is going to become a political influence,
it has a long way to go. Two months after the leaders of the
summit called on lawmakers to close the gap between minorities
and other students in Idaho schools, the Legislature wrote
an education budget that knowingly shortchanged the poorest-performing
students on Idaho achievement tests.
Perhaps the next test is this November, when all 105 lawmakers
are up for re-election.
- Gregory Hahn
|
|
