OUR FATHERS WORKED HARD SO WE’D HAVE OPPORTUNITY
As a coincidence of life and the immigration policies of the Mexican and U.S. governments, our parents settled their families in Tijuana during the 1960s and it was there that the story of our family began.
Back then, the city was very different. Only a few of the city’s streets were paved, and, during the rainy season, the rest was chaos. The Tijuana River did not have a canal, so the city was split in two and the streets became muddy.
Tijuana was still a young city. That’s where we met and married and where our children were born. They knew they were the grandchildren of migrants, because in their grandparents’ houses there was always talk of the towns we had left behind, and, at the same time, those houses served as shelters for the new generations of migrants coming from our places of origin.
Suddenly, the maquiladoras were installed near our community and our world changed. The border region was experiencing high rates of pediatric cancer, largely due to pollution and low environmental standards. One of our children was diagnosed with lymphoma, a type of cancer that affected several children in the region. At the time, Tijuana lacked the public infrastructure to care for his illness, so our family was displaced to the United States in search of a medical treatment that saved his life.
It would not be the first time our family was forced to migrate.
Don Diego Carrillo, Lupita’s father, was a miner in Fresnillo, Zacatecas. Even though he was very young and with several children to support, he sought better luck in the north, as a bracero. The Bracero Program was an agreement between the U.S. government and Mexico that authorized 4.5 million young Mexicans to enter the U.S. to work, mainly in agriculture. The program began during World War II in 1942 and ended in 1964.
As the oldest of seven siblings, Lupita was designated to receive her father’s letters and read them to her grandmother. She was 9 years old at the time and among her memories are the U.S. postage stamps and the dollars that arrived.
For 10 years, her father was a bracero, until the program ended. Then he was expelled from the United States. To reunite the family, Lupita, her siblings and her mother made the journey from Fresnillo to Tijuana. Once in Tijuana, Diego was a union leader and leader of the ex-braceros movement.
For many years, in Teniente Guerrero Park in Downtown Tijuana, many former bracero workers gathered every Sunday to demand the return of part of the salary that Wells Fargo and the Mexican government had stolen from them during their time as braceros.
Lupita says her father never received the money he was owed. Few received justice.
José Manuel’s father was Don Manuel, the blacksmith of San Martin de Hidalgo, an ancestral town, founded many centuries before the arrival of the Spanish. Don Manuel became a bracero before José Manuel was 10 so he grew up in the late 1950s without his father.
Several times, in the streets of the town, he would run to hug his dad from behind, but when he turned around, it wasn’t his dad, it was someone else.
The elder Manuel spoke of the mistreatment workers faced, such as when they arrived at the recruiting centers for braceros in Empalme, Sonora, where they were stripped naked and sprayed with pesticides from head to toe. He worked in the fields in Yuma, Ariz., where he felt the inclement weather and human cruelty. The heat was oppressive and the bosses limited food and water given to the workers.
Once he left the bracero program and with the money he had saved, he also chose Tijuana as the destination to reunite his family.
Over the years, he used to say the phrase, “Ay, qué calor de Yuma” (“Oh, the heat in Yuma”) to denote hot weather or an unfair situation.
The braceros fed the United States during the war conflicts of the mid-20th century. It was an abominable program, full of injustice and exploitation.
It was in the struggle of the ex-braceros, where Diego was a leader, that our children learned that social struggles are not just about victories. A social struggle is, at the end of the day, about never giving up, and about leaving the next generations a point of reference.
Our parents never stopped working, never stopped demanding justice, and never stopped making the corrupt officials and thieving bankers who defrauded them feel uncomfortable.
That generation set an example for us with their struggle and with the great sacrifice of their families, who had to endure so much. Our grandchildren today have many more opportunities thanks to their great-grandparents who sacrificed everything to give us a better opportunity. They are our heroes.
is a public accountant and is an executive in a cosmetics company. They have been married for 48 years and live in Ocean View Hills.