Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:02:30] Ximena Natera is a photojournalist at Berkeleyside. She reported this story with Berkeleyside reporter Vanessa Arredondo.
Ximena Natera [00:02:41] People are able to see mostly men standing along a couple of streets on Hearst Avenue in West Berkeley. It’s a seven street corridor where the city of Berkeley put up signs a few years ago that designates places where people can stand and wait for work and where clients can stop by and park their car and talk to the people. The scene is mostly younger men wearing like a backpack and they’re just like waiting either by small groups or they’re scattered around the corners along this first corridor.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:03:28] And I have seen groups of day laborers in Vallejo, actually, where I live, and in other cities in the Bay Area. But I understand there’s a particular concentration of them in Berkeley. Why is that?
Ximena Natera [00:03:43] I think you can find jornaleros everywhere in the Bay. But Berkeley has its very particular group of people. I think it’s smaller. For many workers, they feel like it’s a good place because there’s less competition in contrast to Oakland, for example. A lot of people who go and hire jornaleros it’s like for garden keeping and bush keeping in big houses in the hills. So you know, people feel that it’s like a good area to go work.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:04:17] This group of day laborers, are they mostly immigrants? Like who are we talking about is doing this work?
Ximena Natera [00:04:24] Many of the jornaleros may lack a legal authorization, but there is a mix of reasons. There’s people who are going through asylum cases and people who are on TPS, temporary protection status. There are even some, you know, like residents and citizens. Either people who recently arrived who have a language barrier or people who don’t have full work permits or who are in a little bit of a limbo in their immigration status. But it’s mostly for young men who are able to work many different things from landscaping to building houses.
Ángel [00:05:11] Well, I am from the city of Perote, Veracruz
Ximena Natera [00:05:15] We met Ángel who is a Mexican migrant. He’s I think 51. He is from El Perote, Veracruz. We decided to just identify the workers and the volunteers just by their first name as a way to ensure their safety. He has been in the U.S. I think a little bit over a year and a half and he is, you know, a jornalero through and through. He does landscaping, he does roof building, he does everything that he can with his hands.
Ángel [00:05:48] We do gardening, construction, whatever they give us, we will do it.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:05:56] What exactly is his sort of day-to-day like and how much does he get paid for this work?
Ximena Natera [00:06:05] Ángel lives in Oakland. He shares a studio apartment with a few friends. They are all day laborers. He tries to arrive to Berkeley by 8 a.m. And then after that he finds a place that he is comfortable and then he just waits. 8 a .m. until 4 p.m., hopefully somebody will come and stop and ask him for like his rate and offer him a job. And if he does get a job, he will go with this person, go somewhere and like do the work and then get home and he goes to bed and then he goes, like he does the same thing the next day, six days a week. People can get to earn up to $600 a week, if it’s a good week.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:54] Can you tell me a little bit about why he came to the US and what that has meant for his life?
Ximena Natera [00:07:04] Ángel came to the U.S. over a decade ago. He spent a brief time here working. He had like a young family back in Mexico. He wanted to support them and decided to go back because his family was there and he did not want to leave his family behind. So he went back and with whatever savings he had from his work here, he opened a business. He worked there, his family grew a little bit. And two years ago, his business was burned down by criminals.
Ángel [00:07:34] My motivation was because I had a business in Mexico and they burned it.
Ximena Natera [00:07:40] And a few months after that, he was assaulted, robbed, and stabbed. And he just thought that there was nothing else for him. He had lost every single backup plan that he had, and he still had to support his family. He has a young daughter, so he decided to come back.
Ángel [00:07:59] I was robbed and attacked, I was stabbed three times, so I decided to come here.
Ximena Natera [00:08:04] And Angel is in his fifties. Being a jornalero in your fifties, is pretty hard on the body, but he thought that it was one of the few things he was able to do, so he decided to come back.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:08:20] It’s precarious, I imagine. It’s a precarious immigration status. And he’s also very visible outside in the same locations every single day. I guess how often are day laborers like him worrying about things like deportation?
Ximena Natera [00:08:40] I think there are a lot of stressors for jornaleros.
Ángel [00:08:43] Yes, it gives us fear, right? Because you say, well, if I go out and they get me, what am I going to do? They are going to deport me.
Ximena Natera [00:08:53] He was saying that, you know, in the past few years with this rise of anti-immigration rhetoric, he feels more afraid that somebody will do something to him just because of the way he looks. A few months ago, he was waiting with a group of friends and a couple of kids driving by shoot them with a BB gun.
Ángel [00:09:14] They shot us with plastic bullets. You get used to it, you can’t say anything, but you get use to it sometimes.
Ximena Natera [00:09:26] Definitely the mood was down for a lot of day laborers because while they’re not paying attention to exactly everything that is coming from the federal government, they can hear what their neighbors are saying, what people are saying on Facebook, and the worry is pretty high.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:09:44] Has anything, I guess, changed for Angel since President Donald Trump entered office then? I mean, does he not show up to work as often or is life pretty much the same?
Ximena Natera [00:09:59] Life is technically pretty much the same just the fear is higher. That’s something that a lot of people told us like yes we are very worried but like we have to go out, we have to out and work we need to be outside we cannot just like not show up.
Ángel [00:10:14] But I have to go out because the bills are running, you have to pay rent, you have to call, you send some money to your relatives and you can’t be locked up all day. What would you do?
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:10:32] Besides the fear of deportation, day laborers are also vulnerable to potential abuse at work, like wage theft, not getting breaks, and even threats. And many workers don’t want to speak up for fear of retaliation or deportation. But another reason why there’s such a concentration of day laborers in Berkeley is the presence of a nonprofit there that supports day laborers, providing a sort of home base.
Ximena Natera [00:11:05] The Multicultural Institute is a nonprofit that is trying to be a little bit of a safe space for jornaleros in that area. They also have work in Oakland and in different places of the Alameda County. In Oakland, they have one space. It’s a house where people can go in the morning there and have coffee. People can go and charge their phones. They can use the bathroom. And this is something that is very useful for people who have most of their work is being outside waiting for people to come by. but they also bring some legal support, and also if somebody is not being paid on time or well, they can intervene. It’s a little bit of a backup to people in a safe space.
Juana [00:11:53] On Wednesdays, I helped with food distribution.
Ximena Natera [00:11:57] We talked to one volunteer, her name is Juana, she is 30 years old and she lives in Berkeley. She is from Mexico, but she is a resident in the U.S. She told us that she suffers from anxiety all the time. And one of the ways that she found that she can calm her anxiety is helping others.
Juana [00:12:25] I like to help people, I always like to help people.
Ximena Natera [00:12:28] And they also have helped people connect with health services. So Angel had a stroke last year, and the Multicultural Institute helped him get into Medicaid and help cover some of the big bills. And he was in a rush to be able to, like to heal, to be to go back into work. Because not being able to work for a few weeks or a month is like a crushing feeling for him.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:13:01] I do want to come back to Angel, despite all the fear, despite the anxiety of this particular moment, what does he tell you about why it’s still so important for him to be out there?
Ximena Natera [00:13:16] He has a young daughter that for him every time, every year that he gets to work here will get her daughter closer to be able to go to college. I asked him, like, how would you compare the anxiety that you feel about being detained by ICE and migration compared to the anxiety of being persecuted by a narcotraffic criminal? He was like, I can’t compare them because when I go out here, I’m afraid that I’m going to be detained and deported. And when I’m in Mexico and I had to go out to work, I was afraid that was going to be killed or disappeared or murdered.
Ángel [00:13:56] The cartels are the same, maybe there is more fear there because you go out and they can rob you in any corner and here there is a little more security, that’s the difference.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:14:12] And I understand that it was really important for you to ask some of these folks who are doing really difficult work every day, what do you like to do for fun? What did Angel tell you about that?
Ximena Natera [00:14:27] You know, I was trying to understand what his day-to-day looks like, how does his relationship with his roommates works. And he was like, well, we’re all usually very tired. We all just go to work and then go to bed. And that’s it. And then sometimes we cook and sometimes we buy some food and that’s. I was asking him, so what do you like to do? Like, can he mention that he really likes football? And I said, well the Bay is very famous for having pick-up leagues for football, you know, like, it’s very easy to find a team. And he was like, no, yeah. And I actually, I was a football player when I was younger and I’m pretty good. And I was like well, there you go. Why don’t you go play some football? And he’s like, well, I’m 50. What if I tore something, a muscle, or what if I twist my ankle? He’s like I can’t work. And if I can work, there’s nothing I can do.
Ángel [00:15:21] You don’t have insurance, who’s going to help you pay your rent?
Ximena Natera [00:15:27] You know, like this idea that he has to work and he has no backup is it like defines most of his life. I think we think of migration as this mass movement, people, faceless, and I think that it is very important for people to understand that these are our neighbors, that these people have their own lives and put like a face to these stories. These are singular stories. Everybody has a life and motivations. It’s very particular. So we wanted to put a lot of attention into personal stories and how these big fears impact people.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:16:18] Well, Ximena, thank you so much for sharing your reporting with us. I appreciate it.
Ximena Natera [00:16:23] Thank you so much.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:16:31] That was Ximena Natera, a photojournalist at Berkeleyside. Ximena reported this story with Berkeleyside’s Vanessa Arredondo. I’ll leave you a link to their story with Ximena’s photos in our show notes. This 30 minute conversation with Ximena was cut down and edited by senior editor, Alan Montecillo. It was produced and scored by Jessica Kariisa. The tape was translated by our intern, Mel Velasquez. Music courtesy of Audio Network, Blue Dot Sessions, and NPR. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. I’m Erika Cruz Guevarra, thanks so much for listening. Talk to you next time.
