Description

Over the last century hundreds of thousands of Mexicans have migrated to the United States in search for a living wage, but working for the rich they became the 'new poor'.

Transcript

Life of Mexican Immigrants in California Narrator: Over the last century, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans have migrated to the United States in search of a living wage. Working for the rich, they became America's new poor. While their families lived off the dollars sent home, rural Mexicans also paid a price of community and cultural disintegration. Lillian: Here we are in Beverley Hills. I have a business “La Troca" serving lunch. It's like a travelling restaurants. A lot of people come who work here: gardeners, construction workers, cleaning women, Mexicans, Salvadorians, Guatemalans. This is an area of people with money so they use the services of these people. Male: My town is called Jaltiangius Santa Maria de Jaltiangius in Oaxaca. Everybody works the land, that's the only way we can survive there. Well, here there are more opportunities, because here of course you earn more. Narrator: The 1980s saw an influx of rural Mexicans to California. Thousands of indigenous people made the 3,000-mile trip from the southern state of Oaxaca, many illegally crossing the border, to find work in Los Angeles. Gaspar Rivera was one of them. Today, he is a professor at the University of Southern California. Gaspar Rivera: In the early 1980s, Mexico went through the worst crisis of recent history in Mexico. There was the peso devaluation, the economy was in a tailspin, and the heaviest negative impact was on the countryside. The president at the time came up with an economic plan for Mexico; the economic plan that would take advantage of Mexico as a third world country with cheap labor to get inserted into the global economy. However, rural Mexico did not have a place within this new economic model. Narrator: Today, the Guelaguetza restaurant chain has become the centre of the Oaxacan community in Los Angeles. People meet here to organize projects in their villages and send money back home. Fernando Lopez Mateos: After we suffered all the problems of the crisis in Mexico, I personally had to sell my things to begin a new adventure here in Los Angeles without knowing what to do, without knowing where to go. Fortunately, I had a sister who had been living here for 12 years and between her and I, we started a business, which is this restaurant of Oaxacan food. All Oaxacans care about supporting our communities because we see the standard of living there and we want to help it change a little bit. To support the economy of our homeland we organize dances, raffles, and fêtes to collect funds and send money to our hometowns. We are collecting funds to set up a maguey plant nursery, that's a project we have at the moment. Male: The amount of migration worries me. We leave our villages and we see other ways of life. We worry about the breakdown of our families. We want the wives and children to stay with us in our community. There are people here friends who haven't seen their wives or children for eight or ten years and that's not fair, that's not right. We Latinos are the backbone of the economy in California; we are the second highest percentage of the population. Without workers like us, the economy would not function. Juan Manuel: I come from Oaxaca. I've been here for one year and two months. We come for a reason, many of us come to improve our way of life, to offer something better to our families and I think that's my goal, more than anything. I'm never going to forget my journey here. I suffered a lot like everyone else suffers when they cross. I walked a lot that was the only difficult moment that I had, walking a long time over the mountains thirsty and hungry. Narrator: Every month Juan Manuel sends $400.00 through the restaurant money wire service to his father in the Oaxacan village of Zimatlan.