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        The Cat
    Oaxaca
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    Wrapup and Action Planning
        Impressions of Mexico
       Campo Stories

On Tuesday we traveled to Pueblo, Mexico. Pueblo is the location of a major Volkswagon factory. Many people there work in maquilas, specialized factories or assembly plants where goods are produced for export. In Pueblo many of these produce clothing or car parts which are sold in the U.S. We met with representatives from the Centre de Apoyo al Trabajador, (Center for Suport of Workers) or CAT, who are involved in local workers' rights movements.

After hearing from them, we wrote stories based upon the things that we heard.

These are imaginary stories based upon real conditions.

Miranda Espinoza Calla

My name is Miranda Espinoza Calla. I work in a factory that makes clothing for rich Americans. I was eleven when I started going to the factory with my mother. I sewed on buttons. I had little fingers and I was quick and good at it. I was proud because with my wages and hers both, we had more money to buy food for the family.

Now I am 17. My mother has been sick and unable to work. I would like to have a boyfriend and start my own family, but my mother needs me. My father has gone north, but we do not know when money will come from him, and in between there is only what I earn. The pay has not gone up, and I don't know how to do anything else. Once I felt quick and proud, but now I feel slow and stupid.

A little while ago, a woman from the CAT met the workers as we left the factory. She told me about the help I could receive at the CAT to further my education. There is little time left in my day to go to the CAT, but it energizes me to go and meet with others like myself and talk about what we can accomplish together.

Sketch of a Mexican Immigrant

I am a Mexican immigrant. I reside in South Carolina, working on a farm run by gringos with cowboy hats and fat smiles that tell me and my compañeros that the pay will be late another week. I live in a shack that smells of rust and sometimes urine, when one of us it too drunk to walk enough paces away that the wind will not find his piss.

Work is hard.

White boys do not do this work. It is only compañeros on the fields, crouched down on their haunches and pulling at roots with sun-dried, earth-caked hands. Our skin is dark and our wrinkles many.

I have not heard from my family in the many months since I left. It may be because they did not get my letters, or I theirs, but I think it is because I choose to work the white man’s corn and not my people’s. My family sees no fairness in that, only sad irony. They do not know that the work is still hard, only that I would buckle down for dolares and not pesos.

I send them money.

I know I get paid less than true Americans. I work on their land but their minimum wage does not apply to compañeros. Still, I make what I can and send most of it home. That is all I can do. There are people who could help me stay on Papa’s land, who are making differences one day, one person at a time. I know my situation will change. I do not know how soon. I only work and count my multiplying wrinkles and wait. The time will come.

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