2008 Woodie Awards
Worlds converge: Two students connect in a small Mexican village
By: Valeria Godines/The Orange County Register (KRT)
Issue date: 4/6/06 Section: News
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This is the sort of thing her mother in Irvine, Calif., worried about when Andrea told her she was going to do research in an indigenous village in Mexico.
Another pack of wild dogs growls at Maribel Pineda. The petite woman picks up a rock, ready to pitch it like a baseball. The dogs scatter, whimpering and whining.
It's a little trick the Santa Ana, Calif., woman picked up in her family's hometown of Guerrero, Mexico.
Maribel and Andrea come from different worlds and they approach the dogs differently, but they feel the same way about their two-week trip to Mexico. They're excited and eager to learn. And they're proud of their Mexican roots.
Andrea, whose great-grandfather came from Chihuahua, Mexico, to work in the copper mines in Arizona, is fourth-generation Mexican-American. Maribel, whose parents came from Guerrero to find work in the United States, is second-generation.
The Orange County women, students at UC San Diego, went to Tunkas in late January to study migration patterns as part of a project through the school's Center for Comparative Immigration Studies. Specifically, they will study how migration is evolving in an indigenous community, one that sends a lot of its people to Anaheim.
On the trip, Maribel and Andrea become close, eating meals together, attending festivals and touring ruins.
They also happen to be roommates at the hotel, and that really brings them close. They don't have a choice.
There is no bathroom door.
Andrea
As an 18-year-old freshman, she wasn't supposed to be on this trip for graduate-level students. The project director thought she was too young. But she impressed him with an outstanding essay.
She had a top-notch education at University High School in Irvine, one of the state's best high schools. She earned a 3.8 grade-point average and served on the student council.
The petite woman is the daughter of a psychologist and the CEO of Atkins Nutritionals Inc., the diet empire.
Andrea prefers that people don't know what her dad, who came from a humble background and worked hard to get ahead, does for a living.
"I don't like being the center of attention," she says. "I'm not like that. It makes me really uncomfortable. I think two of my
friends know. I wouldn't just bring it up. Ever."
Andrea has traveled to Mexico twice - to beach resorts. Now she is eager to get to know the "authentic Mexico," although her mother worried tremendously about this trip.
"My mom was totally freaking out that there weren't phones in the hotel," Andrea says.
Maribel
She dropped out of Valley High School in Santa Ana, which is among the state's worst public schools, and then went to a continuation school. Her sister got pregnant at 15. Her brother quit school after eighth grade.
"You know all the stereotypes about Mexicans? I live those stereotypes," says Maribel, 24. "I grew up in a gangster neighborhood. My best friend's brother was shot to death in front of his mom. That's real to me."
A good friend pushed Maribel to go to Santa Ana College, where she earned a 4.0 her first semester and the respect of professors.
Her dad is a butcher at a restaurant in Newport Beach. Her mom, a housewife, wasn't as worried about the trip, and that hurt Maribel's feelings.
"My mom was like, `Where did you say you were going again?'
"She doesn't understand how big this program is," Maribel says. "She doesn't understand education. She didn't have it so I don't blame her."
The Town
Tunkas is a village of 2,000 people, many of whom speak Mayan in an area that is home to the ancient civilization. It is lush, tropical and flat.
The houses, surrounded by stone walls, are made of palm fronds and rough-hewn branches held together by wire. The nicer houses are made of cinder blocks. Hammocks, which everybody sleeps in because it gets so hot, sway gently during the day.
The village has a 30-year history of sending people to Anaheim and Inglewood. That is a relatively new occurrence. Jalisco and Michoachan states have been sending its residents to the United States for at least a century.
Indigenous communities, with the exception of Oaxaca, are still a mystery to many immigration researchers, says Wayne Cornelius, the project leader and director of UCSD's Center for Comparative Immigration Studies.
It's important to study the communities "because (immigrants) are going to be your next-door neighbors. We need to know what kind of people are going to migrate and those who are going to stay home," Cornelius says.
The 31 student researchers on this trip are armed with clipboards and outfitted with T-shirts bearing the project's name. They take over the village. Marching up and down streets, knocking on doors, they try to convince residents to take the survey.
Some questions are: How much money does the migrant send home? When did the migrant leave the village? Has the town benefited from migration? Do you have contact information for the migrant in the United States?
Do you plan to cross the border?
Andrea wears camouflage pants and pearl earrings. On her left finger is a silver wedding band to ward off suitors, she explains.
She stands before a wooden fence, hesitating before calling out, "Hello. Is there anybody here?" Margarita Estrella, a wide-faced woman with dark leathery skin, appears from the back yard and answers with a big smile. Come in, come in, she says.
Plantain trees surround the one-bedroom house. The dirt-packed back yard also serves as the kitchen. A rusty bike with missing parts leans against a wall. The family goes to a neighbor's to watch television.
Andrea conducts the survey standing because the only chair in the house props up a table. The questions take about 45 minutes. Andrea discovers the woman's husband is in Anaheim.
He sends $120 every two weeks, and is in the U.S. illegally. Margarita gives Andrea the husband's phone number.
Piece of cake.
As she walks to her next interview she wonders aloud, "Do you think they know the difference? I can't imagine living like that. Do you think they know how bad it is?"
Later that day, she interviews a nervous, young woman who refuses to say where her husband is in the United States. Her knee bounces up and down as she reluctantly gives information or says she doesn't know the answers to questions.
As Andrea prepares to leave, the woman bursts into tears.
"Please don't take my husband," she pleads. "Please don't take my husband."
She thinks Andrea is with immigration services and out to deport her husband.
"First let us finish the house. He is sending money home to build a house. First, the house. That's what's important. We need our own little space," she says, sobbing.
Andrea looks stunned but she quickly tries to assure her she is not with immigration. She gently repeats it over and over again, until the woman stops crying.
Maribel goes from house to house wearing a tight tank top and blue jeans. She draws whistles and stares from the local men. She takes it in stride, looking them squarely in the eye and curtly saying, "Buenos dias."
That usually shuts them up.
She has traveled often to her mother's poor village, so she is not surprised by Tunkas' rural poverty.
The town, celebrating its annual festival, is full of returning immigrants. Young men in baggy clothes hang out in the plaza. Middle-aged men proudly wearing Angels baseball caps stroll the streets.
Maribel finally finds a man, Isidro Hoy, who is willing to do the survey, which takes two hours to finish.
His house is nicer than many houses in town. It has aqua-painted walls with matching tile floor. The matching furniture looks new. The television is brand-new.
Maribel sways in the hammock, survey perched on her legs.
The 38-year-old man crossed the border illegally three times, arriving in Gardena each time. In 1994, he earned $20 a
day. He still earns $20 a day today.
He asks Maribel whether she is an "Americana." She looks offended, insisting that she is from Guerrero.
What she doesn't say is that she was born in Santa Ana.
The Lesson
They sit on the steps in front of City Hall one afternoon, taking a break from their surveys. They grow teary-eyed as they talk about what they've learned from each other. They come from different worlds, but it's mostly the generations that separate them, not necessarily the places they come from.
Andrea believes that Maribel, as the daughter of immigrants, represents Andrea's parents, who worked hard to get ahead.
"Maribel is fighting so one day she will have a daughter who will have all the advantages that I've had," Andrea says.
Maribel, who rarely trusts anyone who grew up well-off, has let down her guard.
"I've always had this perception of people who grow up with money and are well-off. They forget where their parents come from. I really admire Andrea. She didn't forget what her mom went through and what a bunch of people went through. She cares about the community."