Working
before sunrise
Riza
Falk
Before
the sun begins to peek over the horizon, burlap bags are laid out between the rows
in the onion field southwest of Eaton.
More
wait, stacked atop vans, in the beds of pickups and in the trunks of cars.
Scissors are sharpened; big white buckets are
brought
out. Gloves are put on.
As
soon as there is enough light to see, a sea of backs are bent over, parallel to
the ground. About 10 to 15 men and women,
young
and old, work to move the bulbs.
Grab,
pull, chop, drop.
Ground
to bucket, bucket to bag.
Repeat.
Juan
Guevara, 25, and his brother Mauricio, 21, together can usually pack between
200 and 300 bags per day, depending on
how
many hours they spend in the field.
They
have been coming to Colorado from their home in Phoenix every summer for the
past five years to work in the fields of
Weld
County.
The
brothers harvest in all kinds of weather, hot sun or falling rain. They spend
most of the day on their feet, bent over the
onions.
Sometimes they shift position and work on their knees. Juan says that at the
end of the day his back hurts the most.
In
different parts of the field, music pours from car radios. Jokes and stories
are shared between rows, but few words pass
between
the Guevaras. They concentrate on packing their bags as fast as possible.
At
11:40 a.m., Juan rests on a bag of onions while Mauricio sits in the back of
their pickup, his legs dangling over the side.
The
10 or so minutes they take now to eat their lunch will probably be their
longest break of the day.
They
are paid by the bag, 75 cents, so although they can take breaks whenever they
choose, time resting is money lost.
"Working
with the onions is very hard," says Juan. "You work a lot and they
don't pay very much. You have to work all day
to
make money."
Much
of the money they earn is sent back to help their parents and siblings in
Guanajuato, Mexico, live a better life. There are
many
jobs in Mexico, Juan says, but they pay very little.
Right
now, the Guevaras are working seven days a week.
"We
get up, make lunch," Juan says. Then "go to work and pack bags (of
onions) ... later we eat and then work all day. In the
afternoon
we come home, shower, make food and go to sleep so that the next day we can go
to work again."
"I
dream of not working so hard," he adds later. "To make money, but not
work so hard."
When
the harvest season ends at the close of September, the brothers will return to
Phoenix and continue field work, exchanging
the
pungent odor of onions for that of lemons and oranges. There they will stay and
work in Arizona until next summer, when
they
again make the trip to Weld.
Although
he has lived in the United States for eight years, Juan wants to return to
Mexico. He plans to go back to the country
he
considers his home and, someday, work on land he calls his own.
(Greeley
Tribune, September 16, 2007)
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