DB: And that's 19 men?
SH: No. That was four families. Yep. Each bedroom had one or two families. The living room had three people. And then I, ironically, had the closet. They wanted me to sleep in the living room, too, because there was more room for an actual mattress. But, growing up the way I grew up, with my own bedroom, in semi-suburban Washington state where I grew up, living in a living room with kids running around and waking up in the morning sounded horrible. I needed to be able to close the door. So I slept in the closet and had to kind of sleep corner to corner. So my feet would fit and my head would fit in opposite corners.
DB: And you began to develop this trust, and at what point did you decide -- I really need to go and do this -- put your life on the line, really, to do it?
SH: Well, a lot of the people I worked with were from the indigenous group known as the Triqui people from Oaxaca. A lot of them spoke of "sufrimiento," suffering as a major metaphor for what happens for them in the process of migration. They talked about the back pain, and the hip pain, picking, but one of the main sites that they talked about earlier relating to sufrimiento was crossing the border.
A lot of people had stories of going with a coyote whom they didn't know, who mistreated them and pushed them into a chemical tank and closed them on the train until they got to the U.S. Or other people who were told by someone "Oh, I work for your coyote, come with me." And then were kidnapped, all the way to one man who was told ... actually told by a border patrol agent "I'll take you to border patrol jail unless you let me have sex with you, in which case, I'll let you go free." So there were a lot of stories of the trouble with the border, and the violence on the border.
And I felt like if I was going to have an understanding of health and suffering related to this group of people, and the work they do, and the lives they lived, then I needed to understand the border.
DB: So, you built trust in this country and then how did you make arrangements? I imagine going over the border, it was even more difficult to establish trust and to create a situation where people didn't think you were dangerous for one reason or another, an undercover agent, whatever.
SH: It's interesting that you bring that up. There were a few stories, rumors, that were told around the labor camps among the Mexican workers, while I was there. One was that I was a spy for the border patrol or the police, trying to figure out who was documented and who wasn't, and there was another rumor that I was a drug smuggler looking for a good cover. And it took a while, it took several months of me being with them for them to see me more as an anthropologist trying to understand what's going on in the world in terms of agriculture and immigration.
So I talked with many of the farm workers I knew about -- should I cross the border or not? How important is this to understand? If I do cross, how should I do it, whom should I do it with? And I got a lot of advice from people. People told me how dangerous it was, but people also told me how important it was to understand and to write about.
The first chapter of the book, the opening chapter, tells the story with relatively raw field notes of the border crossing. The border crossing happened after spending a season picking berries in Washington state, spending winter in California, pruning vineyards when we had any work, and then moving down to their home village in the mountains of Oaxaca, and helping with whatever I could do while there.
I was supposed to go with one group to cross the border; I showed up at that person's hut in the village at the appropriate time, and no one was there. The hut was locked, and the family that I was staying with, who was the extended family of one of the families up in Madera, California, and Washington told me that they must have been scared that I was some kind of spy and so they told me a time that was after they actually left.
DB: They didn't just say "No." Because that would have given away their own suspicions.
SH: Right, right. So then I ended up being introduced by one of the people who had been living next door to me in Washington State, in the labor camp, introduced to a friend of his who was a coyote, and introduced to the other people he was going to cross with.
DB: A coyote is the guide, who is the one who is responsible, if you will, for bringing you across the border, not always the most trustworthy folks. Tell us about the multiple struggles in terms of that 49-hour ride from Oaxaca. Because ... you learned a lot there.
SH: Yep. Well, Dennis, first I want to respond to what you said about coyotes, and then I'll answer that question, if that's okay with you?
DB: Sure.
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