Posted on 09/22/2002 3:58:55 PM PDT by Tancred
"AAYYYY! TENGO FRIO!" Orlando Flores nods to me with a toothy grin as he turns from the door, his words hanging as visible puffs of clouds in the pale darkness. It is 6:45 in the morning. I feel the gray Caribou air slip easily beneath my layers and between my bones, imagining what this northern Maine air feels like to these men, against their Honduran skin.
The eight men in Jose's house grab the food they have made for lunch, a rice and beef concoction, and slide across the cold vinyl of the Evergreen Forestry Co.'s white Suburban. Luckily, Elvin Flores, Orlando's 24-year-old son, started the car 10 minutes earlier, and the air inside is warming. "Somos listos?" We wave groggily to Jose Dionisio, the wiry Brazilian foreman, to his salt-and-pepper hair and cocked smile. "Listos." We're ready. "A la Guerra!" Orlando calls to Enoque de Castilho. "A la Guerra!" Enoque echoes back. To the War.
They speak in quiet tongues of early morning, and elbow each other with jokes they have formed over the past six months. I have been here only a week, and still am struggling to understand how these men live and work in an isolated area so far from their homes in Honduras. An area that is cold and bleak, where nearly everyone is white. They are brush cutters, migrant workers, Hondurans. They have come to work this desolate landscape because what they make here in a month is equal to what they might make in a couple of years at home. The faster they move, the more money they make.
Over the past three years, J.D. Irving Ltd., the family-owned Canadian company and oil conglomerate is, according to Maine's Land Use Regulatory Commission, the state's largest landowner. Instead of managing all the land itself, Irving subcontracts to the Evergreen Forestry Co.
For 12 years now, Evergreen has been hiring mainly Mexicans and Hondurans, with a smattering of Panamanians and Guatemalans. The men are paid to give the forest a trim, cutting the smaller trees like split ends, so that the healthier ones can grow and be harvested in about 20 years. Thirty years before, thinning was "hippie work," and the draw was the commune-like lifestyle, as many workers set up camp on their work sites. Now, as long as a company has advertised unsuccessfully for local labor, it can apply for H2B visas. This allows migrants to work in the United States under "guest worker" status.
The average cutter makes about $8 an hour. This "lost" money has gone to pay for the men's gas, machines, gloves and protective equipment, and in many cases, transportation, for the U.S. Department of Labor has mandated that the companies like Evergreen provide certain amenities.
Because the Labor Department will no longer allow on-site camping, some of the work crews must travel long distances, maybe more than two hours, to get to their sites. It is ironic, then, a twist of fate that in 1998, a van carrying a crew of Mexican brush cutters flipped over on hard terrain, killing two of the men and injuring the others. Terrain over which they would not have had to travel if the Labor Department had not required them to live off-site.
IT IS SILENT at Jose's house, as night rumbles in. The van pulls up the driveway and the front door is pushed open by the red-faced men. The eight of them stumble through the entrance in spurts and disperse throughout the small house. Almost immediately, music is blasting from the rooms upstairs, competing with the buzz of the television in the common room. The men wander around the house before they take their showers, scratching heads and rubbing bellies, relaxing their tired muscles. They are hungry.
Each of the men is assigned a day to cook, but Jesus Aguilar is the unofficial chef of the house. No one complains. Carlos "Carlitos" Izaguirre, the 24-year-old whom Jose has been training to be a foreman, pays Jesus to take over his cooking shifts. Carlitos is young, and looks like a skinny teenager thrilled to be growing a hint of facial hair above his lip. Most of the time, he appears sheepish, and he has a habit of pulling his lips into an apologetic smile after he is finished talking. Yet, after six years of working for Evergreen, he is an authority within the group. Carlitos speaks some English, too, which is a plus if he one day plans on leading his own crew. He also has his driver's license, which seems only to bring him bad luck. Carlitos has been in two accidents, one involving a moose, and the other, a tree. Once, he fell asleep at the wheel. The leg he broke in the accident still hurts him sometimes.
"Me driver, you know, work hard," he says. "Last year, me fix machine. Sometime me go too late. I go to da bed, 2, 1 o'clock in da mornin'. . . . "
In the kitchen, dinner is being served. Jesus delivers a bowl to Jose, who is sitting by the phone. There are not enough bowls, so Jesus simply eats out of the pot, slurping from the ladle. Conversation is lighthearted, and a calm glow descends over the kitchen as the men stretch their legs out under the table.
CARLITOS HAS BEEN STUDYING under Jose's wings for a couple of years. He tells me he will soon split off to command his own crew of men. Carlitos and his girlfriend, Sherry Balmain, are sitting close together on Jose's couch. Sherry interrupts him.
"You'd a' had your own group if you would have stayed just a couple more days in Mississippi. So Jose could buy the other van, right?" she says. The two laugh together. "Right?" Carlitos pokes Sherry gently in the ribs, then taps her playfully on the nose. "We mucho play," Carlitos smiles. Sherry has the face of a child, with her upturned nose, wide blue eyes, round cheeks and cloud of blond hair that falls to her shoulders in curls. The couple started dating last year. Sherry's young son, Dustin, gets along well with Carlitos, and even tries to speak a little Spanish with him.
"I think he's gonna have a hard time when he leaves. . . . I'm not ready for it," Sherry says. Carlitos is staying until the beginning of November, a couple of weeks longer than the men stay, because he cannot leave until his car gets out of the shop. Then he must travel to the South for the winter, where he will work planting trees.
Carlitos tells me about his truck, the one he bought for $6,000 and has since cost him $8,000 more. He bought it last year, the day he came to Maine. "Me see da house, da truck, me stop. Me buy quickly," he recalls with a regretful look in his eyes.
Carlitos says he couldn't sleep the first year he worked here, because he was so nervous all of the time. "Porque pensaba mucho," he explains. I thought a lot. And I only worked in the house, never going anywhere else. I couldn't find happiness. In anything.
"I not fro' here . . . I from Honduras," Carlitos says. "It's my country, you know." Carlitos's mother and brother live in Honduras, and he still dutifully sends them part of his paycheck. "But I like here. I like dis place. Dis place is where me stay more time. . . . Is not too bad. Some places, dat American . . . he no like Mexicans. He tink it's (Hondurans) da same, you know, because da color is da same. . . ."
Sherry has also encountered racism from people in the community. "No, you know how people are. Some people are, like, really racist, and - I hate that. I hate that." Her eyebrows furrow into small balls. One girl at work told her how she was wary because she lived next door to "a bunch of Mexicans." Sherry becomes livid with anger. "I said, I know these people. Most of them that live in that apartment are very religious, anyway. It just, it upset me. I flew off at her, and she never said anything to me about it since."
I ask Carlitos when he is planning on going home. "I dunno," he replies softly, almost inaudibly. Hopefully next year. The two have set a tentative wedding date for the end of July.
THE MEN ARE LEAVING tomorrow, and the Jade Palace has set up its scarlet-papered back room for the farewell dinner. It is noisy as the men discuss the intimidating list of entrees on their menus. "Que quieres? Lo mein? . . . Que es shrimp? Donde estan los camarones?"
The waitress approaches the table. She points at one of the men. "What does he want?" she asks me.
When parts of the meal start to appear, the waitress scowls at the men, slinging shrimp fried rice and teriyaki chicken, 15 bowls of hot and sour soup. Sonny Tracy, a local man who rents the apartments above his electronics shop to the workers, stands up to lead the men in prayer. Everyone is silent. A couple of people stand, and everyone's head bows simultaneously. "In the name of Jesus," Sonny starts. En el nombre de Jesus, Jose translates. The men listen patiently until the end, when they join in on the hallelujah.
Carlitos has brought Dustin, Sherry's son, to the dinner. But Dustin is upset. "I thought this dinner was going to be nicer," he says. "But the waitress is being mean to Carlitos."
He scowls back at her, and goes back to munching his fries.
Editor's Note: Hillary Berliner and Michelle Sheppard spent four weeks in 2000 researching the lives of migrant forestry workers in Maine for the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. Among the many workers they interviewed was Carlos H. Izaguirre, one of the 14 Honduran and Guatemalan workers killed when their van skidded off a bridge Sept. 12. The following is an excerpt of the story they produced for Salt.
Those seasonal summer jobs used to be filled by industrious and ambitious college students who would begin arriving in May from all across the country. It was a tough learning experience, living and working away from home for the first time in your life, but back in the '60's and '70's you discovered you could work harder than you ever thought possible, and if you were smart, save more than you ever dreamed.
In the summer of '64, I paid for my entire sophomore year at college in 6wks. My college friend in 10wks.
Today, the wages are so pathetically depressed no college students even apply. The beginning wages for Trident Seafoods on their Floating-Processors hasn't gone up since the late '80's. According to a fellow I spoke with last year, even the menu has been changed to a steady diet of either stir-fry and burritos ... no more American menu items like Fried Chicken, mashed potatoes or corn-on-the-cob.
The new Filipino and Mexican supervisors hire few Alaskans ... the crews are kept stocked with their compadres from back in the village.
We need to begin attacking these U.S.Corps/CEO's that are driving American workers out, and hiring the Illegals.
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