Ramblas Chico, Mexico Luz Nallely Cano, 26, sits on the concrete pavement outside her brother’s house surrounded by her three children, aged 9, 6 and 4. She swiped her youngest son’s American passport contemplating the family’s future. She has been back in her Mexican hometown in the western state of Jalisco for nearly six months and doesn’t have the money to return to the United States.
Like many others in Ramblas Chico, Cano’s life is composed of two forms of existence.
It is among residents who have migrated for generations — defying U.S. immigration policy or shaping their lives around it. Cano began splitting his time between the farm fields in Williams, California, and the agave fields where he grew up, after his oldest son, Gerardo, was born. In his family, his two grandfathers were the first to migrate in search of work in the agricultural fields in northern Mexico. So the two sets of grandparents did the same, this time crossing the border for a few months of field work in California and back to Ramblas Chico, about 2,050 kilometers away.
(Read more National Geographic migration stories)
For decades, many others from Ramblas Chico – most of them men – also crossed the border without documentation, following the growing cycles of California grapes, almonds, watermelon and tomatoes. The dollars they brought with them transformed this town of nearly 700 from mostly adobe houses to those made with concrete and brick. Every year, the population increases slightly when northerners return from the United States from November to April.
But as US authorities tightened immigration policies and increased border security over the years, some seasonal migrants legalized their status and had their families from Mexico join them in the United States. Those who were deported or returned alone to Ramblas Chico now have children who dream – or plan – to cross the border as a way to escape the growing poverty in rural Mexico.
Separating to make a living
Mexico’s rural population is declining, from 57 percent in 1950 to 21 percent in 2020, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography. In Jalisco alone, only 12 percent of the population lives in rural areas such as Ramblas Chico. This may interest you : Preventing Sports-related Injuries This School Year – Stanford Medicine Children’s Health Blog. The poverty rate of Tototlán, the municipality where Ramblas Chico is located, is 41 percent compared to 13 percent in Colusa County, California, where many in Ramblas Chico migrate.
Lack of job opportunities is one of the reasons people leave. This is why Cano’s maternal grandfather, Octavio Gutiérrez, migrated in the 1970s and irrevocably changed the trajectory of his family.
Cano’s mother, Eduviges Gutiérrez, 51, grew up watching her father leave for months at a time. The remittances paid for the construction of a bigger and stronger house in Ramblas Chico, but the absence of his father also meant that Eduviges had to help take care of his younger brother and tend to the family’s corn. “Life is better here,” says Eduviges. “People say it is better to be poor here than to be poor here. People earn more here than here, and are better fed here than there.
Octavio Gutiérrez was able to obtain permanent residency in the United States after the enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986, which granted amnesty to approximately three million undocumented immigrants. His wife, Teresa, joined him soon after. At that time, all his children, except Eduviges, live in the United States; some documented, others not. Teresa lived in Arbuckle, California for almost 30 years, where she also worked in the fields for a short time. At 84, she now lives off the pension funds inherited from her husband, who died in 2015, and social security payments. The income and her husband’s grave are the two main reasons Teresa still lives in Arbuckle.
Now his grandchildren are the ones making a life for themselves in the United States. The husband of her daughter Eduviges, Ignacio, 57, started crossing the border when he was 18 to work in the fields of California, but returned permanently to Ramblas Chico when he was deported in 2008. Three of the couple’s eight children, including Cano, live and work in California. Cano, her husband and eldest son were born in Ramblas, but they obtained permanent residence in the United States. Their two youngest children were both born in California.
Temporary housing
When the Cano family returns to California, they stay at the campito. To see also : Marcus Rashford Book Club will give away 50,000 books this summer. That’s what the people of Ramblas Chico call the subsidized housing in Colusa County provided to migrant worker families during the agricultural season, between April and October.
Once the season ends, the campito closes and the residents have to move away entirely. Finding affordable housing nearby is difficult and Cano cannot afford those that are available. Then once the camp closes for the season, some families move to California after the crops or go to other states like Oregon and Washington. Some take their children with them, but many leave school-age children with relatives so as not to disturb their education. There are few opportunities available to earn an income outside of agricultural work.
The dynamic of going back and forth works for Cano because his family’s time in Mexico allows him to save on rent, utilities and other expenses.
It’s also a survival strategy, says Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, director of the Mexican Studies Center at the University of California: “It’s like having the best of both worlds, earning dollars and living in Mexico.”
Despite the scores of families in their community that alternate between the two countries, this type of cyclical migration is no longer as common. The revolving door movement between Mexico and the United States ended in the early 2000s. Since the passage of the IRCA more than three decades ago, there has been a growing exodus of migrant farm workers who they retire from the fields to find year-round jobs in other industries in the big cities, says Rivera-Salgado. Children of first-generation migrant farm workers graduating from high school and college are also opting for field work.
This is exactly what Cano wants for his children and what a few of his family members have been able to make happen.
The annual return to Mexico
When the leaves change color and begin to fall, that’s when the three Cano boys begin to ask in their desperation if it’s time to visit Mamá Viges, as they call their grandmother in Ramblas Chico. See the article : Food aid available for eligible children this summer.
“Life in the countryside is beautiful,” says Cano. “My kids really like it here.”
In Williams, things are very different. When the older children come home from school, they stay home the rest of the day. The migrant camp where the children grew up does not have a yard and Cano is alone in taking care of all three. Cano plans to start working when his four-year-old son is a little older. She wants to learn English, become an American citizen, and find a job at one of her boys’ schools. Cano wanted to become a nurse since she had to drop out of school after ninth grade and still hopes to do that.
Cano does not have to pay tuition at Williams and qualifies for the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance and Medicaid programs. None of these benefits are available in Ramblas. She oscillates between preferring one place to another, faithful to her migratory patterns.
“School is better here, life is better here,” he says of Williams. “We got used to it, going from here to there. It’s two very different lives, but we go back and forth.”
In Ramblas, children are free to roam the ranch unsupervised, for the most part. They play in the fields and along the unpaved streets of the city. They visit their friends who live close to home, climb trees, chase chickens, dig in the ground, and ride on four wheels.
Despite the apparent carefree lifestyle, Cano does not see a viable future in Ramblas Chico. Apart from growing agave for the tequila distilleries and the few jobs that emerge from the agricultural industry, there is little else to do in his hometown. It is either live on remittances or migrate to nearby towns and cities. Cano’s family did both. Her older sister Yuliana, 31, started her own beauty salon business in the nearby town of Capilla de Milpillas. His brother Carlos, 29, looks after the land his uncle bought in Williams. He also earns money by renting a warehouse – built with family remittances – for parties.
Ultimately, though, the family also moves out of necessity: “Since we don’t have a house [in Williams], we can’t stay,” Cano says. “It would be nice to stay one day.”
The end of the cyclical migration could arrive sooner rather than later. Already, Cano’s brothers in the United States and many of his cousins have chosen not to build houses on Ramblas Chico like their parents and grandparents before them.
The norteños
In Ramblas Chico, Cano’s husband built a house with money earned in the United States, and her parents help raise the children. The city reactivates when the norteños have returned from the United States Its economy, like that of many other cities in rural Mexico, is linked to the flow of remittances.
The stipends from migrants in the United States have reached a historic high of $51.6 billion in 2021, according to a study carried out by BBVA Research. Jalisco was one of the first recipients of remittances that year with migrants in California accounting for a third of the funds sent.
When the norteños leave, Ramblas Chico becomes empty. The streets become quiet and the noise of the four wheels subsides. The corner store loses the Cano children as sweet customers.
Farming families like the Canos choose to live frugally when they are in Williams so they can enjoy the comforts they can afford in Ramblas Chico and build homes they could never dream of in California. While the annual income earned from temporary field work in the United States is “below the poverty line,” according to Rivera-Salgado, for those in Ramblas Chico, it is much more than what they would earn in Mexico. The minimum wage in California is $15 an hour while the daily wage in Ramblas Chico is $10.
“With what we save [from the earnings] we can live here, or rather survive here,” says Cano. “We survive here more easily.”
The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, financed the work of the Lorena Ríos Treviño Explorer.
