Mexican laborers line the street at the north end of Vista, California hoping someone will give them a job. In 1990 I stopped my car near a group of such men, and I held up two fingers. Max and his amigo ran to my car, and I drove them to a remote canyon ten miles east of Vista near Valley Center. For twenty years the steep ten acre lot had been a place where I visited occasionally. When I purchased it, the ground was covered with ten inches of ashes from a fire. The many live-oak and other trees growing by the stream looked dead from the recent brush fire. Now, the thick poison oak and lush trees were green and healthy.
We got out of my car above the property because the dirt road leading down to the stream was overgrown with new bushes and trees. A boulder three feet in diameter blocked the road. The two young workers used picks and shovels and worked their way down the steep, narrow road cleaning away the brush as they went. I drove home and returned after seven hours. They had cleared the heavy brush for more than two hundred yards. They had stopped work a quarter mile above the stream. My property was located several hundred yards upstream. The next day they cleared the road most of the way down, and the third day only Max was waiting for me to take him to work. His friend had taken an easier job for better pay.
Max was in strong physical condition. Standing five feet two inches he moved and worked very fast. He held his head high almost leaning backwards, and he walked with determination and quickness. His thick straight blue-black hair would probably never turn gray, and there was no hair on his limbs. His brown square face framed large black wide set eyes, and his large teeth gave him a flashing smile. He did not grow enough facial hair for a good beard, but his mustache was visible. At age twenty six he had been working since he was five. He had been on his own living in San Diego county for three years. His first language was Mestico, his second language Spanish, and he hoped to learn English. For the first few days, I paid him a fifth above minimum wage at the end of each day. For two weeks I dropped him off at the ten acres with tools and food and picked him up in the evenings. It was amazing to me how fast he was able to get things done. After he fixed about a half mile of steep dirt roadway, I asked him to make a walking trail by the stream. It took Max only three days with a machete to clear a trail three hundred yards through the heavy brush.
He cleared larger areas under the shade of giant live-oaks leaving wild ferns and flowers. He called the areas parks. He named the place El Rancho and said he enjoyed working there alone with nature. We saw deer tracks. Once we stood quietly watching as a coyote drank his fill from the stream about forty yards from us. It reminded him of his childhood. He spoke in Spanish, "I am an orphan now. I was born in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico near Etla in the pueblo of Santiago known as Tlasollaltepe. We spoke the language known as Mestico. The language is very old and hardly anyone knows it now, but it is my language, the one I think with. The early Spaniards may have used our language, Mestico, to name Mexico. They must have had difficulty saying the old words of my people, and when they tried to say Mestico, it came out Mexico. They gave everyone Spanish names, but we have never spoken Spanish in my village. Even now they speak only Mestico."
"My father was Sebastian Morales. He was not tall like my slender but sturdy mother. Nor was he as brave as my mother Tomasa Lopez. But my father was a hard worker who moved fast and was not lazy. But he was not fierce like his seven brothers who always carried guns and rode horses. My mother told me two of my uncles had used their rifles to kill other men in a family matter. My father was known as a gentle man but not my mother. They named me Maximino. I am called Maximino Morales Lopez after both my parents as is the custom. My father had twenty acres of beautiful mountain country much like your ten acres here. We raised maiz [corn], frijoles [beans], calabasa [squash], and other food crops. If we had more than enough food we sold or traded it. My father died when I was two years old. At age five I learned to use a hoe in the fields and was the family shepherd caring for about twenty five borregos [sheep]. I like sheep and I like being alone where it is quiet. I know how to live outside, and food tastes better cooked with the hot ashes of wood."
"I went to school for six months when I was six. I did not learn much because the profesor [teacher] did not speak my language. He taught me to read and write Spanish but not enough to speak in Spanish."
"I had no schooling after age six because we were too poor and my mother needed my help with the sheep. I was needed to care for the sheep."
"When I was six I lost my first tooth. We believed strong new teeth came from the rat. The rat is able to bite through very tough wood and leather. We believed that the rat needed discarded baby teeth from boys and girls in order to replace his worn-out teeth."
"My mother Tomasa Lopez was tall, strong, and beautiful. She wore a long black dress and covered her long black hair with a black reposa. She told me to give my tooth to a rat who lived under a rock in the forest close by our home. She told me to dig a hole in the earth under the rock and bury my tooth. Then she asked me to talk to the rat and ask him to help me grow a strong tooth to replace my lost tooth. I talked to the rat as I was told to do. But I did not see or hear the rat and could not understand how a rat could hear me. There was no hole or cave. But I believed my mother, and later a new tooth came into my mouth to replace the old one. I do not believe the story about the rat anymore."
"It was shortly before I lost my first tooth that my mother's home was invaded by two forty year old bad men. One pointed a rifle at my mother and told her they intended to take the ranch and all the goods mother owned. Without fear and with great speed and force my mother leaped forward and grabbed the rifle away from the man. As she turned the gun to the men, they ran away and never returned to molest us. I was frightened, and I cried for a long time."
"After that time we were often visited by five of my mother's primos (cousins). They rode horses and carried guns and were very strong in the pueblo of seven hundred Indians. They were not rich, but they owned property and had no fear of other men. Some people thought of them as bad men, but folks knew my cousins protected their own friends and family. But my mother had no fear. Once a man threatened her with a machete, and she attacked him and took his machete. I will never be as brave as my mother."
"My mother raised four children. My three older sisters left home and married when I was a young boy. When I was twelve my thirty year old sister and I went to work picking algodon [cotton] in the state of Chiapas next to Guatamala in south Mexico. There I learned Spanish. The state of Chiapas, Mexico is more than ten times as large as El Salvador. When I picked cotton my hands and fingers bled from the thorns on the cotton plants. After two years, when I was fourteen, I went with my cunado [brother-in-law] to pick cotton in La Paz at the tip of Baja [Lower California]. My cunado was twenty years older than me. My cunado, mi hermana (my sister) and I worked from dawn to dusk. It was hard work."
"I saved money and at age eighteen returned home. I gave my mother new clothes and money. She smiled at me and said I looked like my father. I bought a burro and a horse for myself. I worked on the same little farm where I grew up in Oaxaca located eight hours south-east of Mexico city by auto-bus. I worked hard in the fields and Mother became sick and skinny and she died within a year. I had a year of sadness staying home alone living with hunger and poverty. I spent my nineteenth year near Mexicali, in Baja California with my sister picking algodon and irrigating the endless fields of cotton."
"One of my sisters who stayed in Oaxaca is a smart business woman, even smarter than her husband. When she was twenty eight she saw others who owned oxen. An ox is a big bull that serves as a tractor. You need two oxen to pull a plow. My sister and her husband lived on a large ranch where they earned their keep and very little money. My sister stayed awake at night planning. She hoped someday to have a pair of oxen to rent out as a means of earning extra money. She bought a few sheep and had them bred to a very fine ram. She fed and cared for the young sheep until they grew large and strong. They were fine sheep and she was able to sell seven of the lambs for enough money to buy a baby bull ox. Every morning my sister told her husband to get out of bed early to gather food for the ox. She fed him hand cut grasses, alfalfa, and enough grain to make him grow. She stayed awake at night wondering how she might get two fine oxen. Within eighteen months the ox was big and healthy. She sold him and some of her lambs for enough money to buy two young bull oxen. Now she goaded her husband every morning so he would gather enough food to feed the two calves. At first they were sick and skinny, but my sister nursed them well, and they grew strong and healthy. Before they were full grown she sold more lambs to buy a third calf. Then my sister began thinking again and dreaming of having her own land and a house. She rented out her oxen and saved some money but not enough to buy land. Finally, she sold her team of oxen to get enough dinero (money) to buy two acres of land."
"I went to live with my sister and we built a wooden house on her land. I helped pay for the material. After the house was built my sister slept better, and she bore and raised eight children."
"I worked my twentieth and twenty first years near Ensenada with a man and his wife who were caretakers of a ranch. We lived in a nice new house, and the ranch owner lived in town. We took care of the fields of vegetables, milked the cows, and raised about eighty calves. The calves grew up to be fighting bulls. They were sold for fighting the toreros. At age twenty three I was earning less than a dollar a day."
"I needed more adventure, so I came to the United States and worked near Encinitas above San Diego on the Pacific coast. I had many jobs picking tomates [tomatoes], fresas [strawberries], and doing labor for construction, and I had many adventures. I learned to protect myself with a machete. The long knife is also used to hack away brush and tree branches. Using it as a weapon I am not afraid to fight off three or four bandits at a time. I still carry a machete and keep it close to me when I sleep. I do not need a gun. Recently two of my friends were playing with a gun here in Vista. They were high on drogas (drugs). One pointed the pistol at his friend. The friend said, 'Go ahead and shoot me. I don't care. I dare you.' My friend shot and killed our buddy. Then he ran away and went back to Mexico."
"When I was younger I learned to drink many bottles of beer and sometimes to smoke the marijuana and sniff the white powder we call coka. I have already been taken by the immigration forty or fifty times."
"The imigres have green cars or trucks. If you run away, they run after you and catch you. If you don't run, they ask to see your papers and social security card. When you do not have these papers they take you to a holding jail in San Clemente, Temecula, San Marcos, El Cajon, or the one in Chula Vista close to Tijuana. Later they take you all in a big bus close to the border and release you to walk into Tijuana. They are not bad and they make jokes with us."
"Sometimes it takes many days to get back into the United States. If you walk back at night the bandits try to rob and beat you. Sometimes the banditos are Gringos [Americans]. It is not even safe in Tiajuana because the young cholos [hooligans] will beat and mug you. You can get very skinny trying to get back to the north of the border. Also you can get very sleepy because there is nowhere to sleep without money. Many times I have slept in the street."
"Some of my friends are crazy. They drink too much beer and take drogas. They do not have any identification papers. When they are arrested for being drunk and driving a stolen car they are put in jail overnight. Since they have not given their name and have no identity or money, the police let them out the next day. They are not afraid of the police."
I interrupted Max, "You speak very well senor. I have enjoyed your stories. You are also a very good worker. I will be back to take you to your home later. Adios."
Max grinned, "Adios, Don Juan."
Once in a while I need help by a hard working laborer, and Max comes to help me out. Recently he told me of the change taking place in his neighborhood. He said, "The last two years we have had black city people move into the apartments near where I live. I get along with the African Americans, but many of my Mexican friends are upset with them. Some of the Mexican women complain of being pushed off sidewalks by black girls or being sexually harassed by the men. African Americans are forming gangs, carrying guns, getting government assisted living arrangements, and they are selling drugs. The little sleepy town of Vista is growing into a tough city."
"I am saving up money to buy land and live in Mexico. God is helping me. Sometimes I cry to God. Many times I have cried. I cross my hands on my chest or I make prayer signs as I speak to Him. As time goes by He answers more of my prayers, and I feel happy. He has helped me stop drinking beer or using tobacco. HE HAS GIVEN ME WORK AND MANY FRIENDS."