David Olson reports.
APIPILULCO, Mexico -- Jovita Zambrano, 74, is walking back from the outhouse of her adobe, dirt-floor home in rural Mexico when the telephone rings. On the line is her son Juan, who works as a mechanic in Chicago, calling to give instructions for picking up the $95 he's wiring to Mexico. Jovita grabs a pen and piece of paper from a table brimming with knickknacks and jots down the code number she'll need to collect the money at an electronic-goods store in a small city an hour-long bus ride away from Apipilulco. "Thank you, son," she says before hanging up. Juan Bello has lived in Chicago for twenty-five years but, like hundreds of thousands of other Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the Chicago area, he still regularly sends money home to his family. According to the Mexican consulate in Chicago, the estimated 1.1 million people of Mexican descent living in the Chicago area sent about a billion dollars last year to family members back home.
Hundreds of small towns around Mexico are heavily dependent on the remittances sent by former residents now living in Chicago and other U.S. cities. Most Mexican immigrants in Chicago come from the economically stagnant central part of the country, and about 80 percent arrived directly from rural areas like Apipilulco, where poverty and unemployment are most severe, says Dante G'mez, coordinator of community relations for the consulate.
"There are not enough resources being injected into the Mexican countryside to allow people to live in dignity and with enough money to support themselves and their families," says Liliane Loya, education coordinator for Sin Fronteras, a Mexico City-based organization that assists Mexicans and Central Americans planning to emigrate to the United States. "So people have chosen to move, some to the [comparatively wealthy] northern part of Mexico, but the majority to the United States."
Chicago's fast-growing Mexican population is now second in the United States only to that of Los Angeles. And many immigrants prefer to make the long trek to Chicago rather than settle closer to the border because "working conditions have always been better in Chicago than in other parts of the country, anti-immigrant feelings are less marked here, and undocumented workers don't suffer as many immigration raids here as they do in places like California," Gómez says. But above all, he says, rural Mexicans continue to arrive in Chicago because family members and friends are already in the city and form an immediate support network to help newly arrived immigrants find jobs, while mitigating the inevitable culture shock the newcomers experience upon moving from a quiet, close-knit, insular Mexican small town to a huge, anonymous American city where the language, customs and climate are all strikingly different.
With the heat of the afternoon sun on her back, Olegaria Zambrano -- Jovita's sister -- is walking down the main street of Apipilulco on the way to a friend's house. It's about four o'clock in the afternoon, just after the time when most people in town have finished their main meal of the day, and many residents are inside their homes relaxing, leaving the streets almost deserted. The few faces that Olegaria encounters are all familiar, and she exchanges small talk with all of them. "Good afternoon," exclaims a haggard elderly man sitting in the doorway of his sky-blue Colonial-style home. "How are you?"
"Well, each day a bit older," Olegaria, 68, replies with a smile as she walks on.
As in most other small towns in Mexico, the streets of Apipilulco are lined with one-story adobe houses that come right up to the street. There are no gates or broad lawns to keep people apart, and in a few hours, as the heat diminishes, the town will come alive with children playing in the streets and adults chatting outside their homes.
Apipilulco, a sweltering town of 840 about 75 miles north of Acapulco, seems almost idyllic at first glance, but, as in most of rural Mexico, the poverty is grinding and the opportunities for young people are few.
There is no industry here -- only a few small shops. Most residents eke out a living from the livestock and crops (most commonly, corn and beans are the most common) they tend to in the fields surrounding the town. Those who don't own their own land earn the standard wage of about $5.40 a day. Twenty-five years ago, Juan Bello announced to his mother that he was fed up with earning a pittance for the back-breaking work he did in the fields and had decided to go to the United States. Several other people from Apipilulco had already emigrated to Chicago -- the earliest immigrants from Apipilulco, who arrived in the late 1960s, had heard about Chicago from people from towns near Apipilulco who had previously settled in the city -- and sent back stories of plentiful jobs and relatively good salaries.
Juan hired one of the men in town who worked as a coyote -- someone who helps people cross the border illegally -- and made his way to Chicago. Like most Apipilulco natives living in Chicago, he found a job by networking with town residents who had arrived before him. He received his U.S. residency a few years later. Today there are about 200 people from Apipilulco living in the Chicago area, another 200 in California and a scattering in other states, says Joaquín Damián, president of the Apipilulco Citizens Association. The club organizes social events for former residents of Apipilulco living in the Chicago area, assists newly arrived immigrants, and holds raffles and dances to raise money for the town.
"The club's a good way for people to meet other people from the pueblo, and it's a way for us to maintain our ties to Apipilulco," says Damián, 38, as he watches his 6-year-old daughter play in his Humboldt Park apartment.
"This began seven years ago," he explains. "We noticed that instead of improving, the town was getting worse -- the church wasn't in good shape, and the streets were filled with mud and people had to walk through it."
The organization raised $17,000 to pave a street in town and several thousand more to help repair the church and fix the drainage system, he says. That's in addition to the large amount of money individual residents send to their families and relatives.
Jovita Zambrano says the money she receives from the United States is invaluable. She receives money and gifts not only from her son Juan Bello, but also from a daughter, Gregoria Bello, who used to live in Chicago but now lives in Iowa.
"The money helps me a lot," she says. "If I get sick, I can use the money to buy medicine. I don't know how I'd pay for it otherwise."
When Gregoria Bello visited Apipilulco last February, she brought her mother a VCR, and she's been paying for the construction of an adobe house next door to where Zambrano currently lives. Zambrano now sleeps in a small bed in the kitchen of the two-room house she shares with a granddaughter and her sister Olegaria, but she plans to move into the new house once it's finished.
"It will be good to have the extra space," she says.
Virginia Rendón, 37, says the money her husband Sylvio Mart'nez sends from Chicago "is important so I can buy food and clothes" for herself and their two children. But she worries about the effect his absence is having on her 12-year-old son.
"A son should have his father around, to teach him about respect for one's father, and to take him to the fields and teach him to work," she says.
Mart'nez is one of the few men from Apipilulco who hasn't brought his wife with him to Chicago. But, Rendón says, she has no desire to leave Apipilulco, and during the twelve years they've been married, she's gotten used to the routine of Mart'nez staying in Chicago until early winter and then coming back to Apipilulco for four months to plant corn and take care of his cattle.
"At first I felt lonely, and it was difficult because the children were very young, and I had to take care of the animals," she says. "Now I'm more or less OK."
Her husband prefers life in Apipilulco to life in Chicago, but he returns every year to the United States -- which is easy for him to do now that he has U.S. residency -- because "you can't earn a lot of money here," Rendón says. "It's difficult to make ends meet."
Alma Damián, 20, a cousin of Joaquín Damián, is still benefiting from the $200 to $300 a month her father Renaldo sent to her and her family until he died in 1997.
Renaldo first arrived in Chicago in 1970 but preferred the slower-paced life of Apipilulco and returned to Mexico in 1978. In 1992, he went back to Chicago.
"He told me he needed to earn some more money because, he said, 'My children are going to want to study and I don't have enough money to pay for that,'" recalls Mar'a Bahena, 40, Alma's mother, who stayed in Apipilulco with her four children while her husband worked in Chicago.
Part of the money Renaldo sent pays for Alma's nursing studies and for the room she rents in a boarding house near her university, which is in Chilpancingo, a city about 40 miles from Apipilulco. Alma is well aware of the economic advantages of the United States, yet she has no desire to leave Mexico.
"In Mexico, it is difficult to find a job that allows you to live your life in accordance with your needs," she says. "In that respect, the United States offers more. But I feel more comfortable here. Here I have my studies, and I'm with my family. It's quieter, there's no crime, and Mexico has so many more traditions and customs that have been preserved: the music, the folkloric dances. These are the things I was brought up with, and I prefer it to what exists in other countries."
She also likes the atmosphere that exists in a town in which everyone knows everybody else. "Here, everyone is valued and accepted," she says. "People help each other out more here." When Alma was younger, she wanted to move to the United States to live with her father. "I wanted to grow up there and learn English -- at the time, it seemed as if I could achieve more there," she recalls. "I kept asking him if I could go. But he said, 'No. If I take you there with me, yes, you'll have more opportunities, but I'll lose you. Now you respect me, you obey me, you do what I say. There, you're going to pay more attention to what your friends say than to what I say.'"
In 1997, just after her father died, Alma spent two months in Chicago, staying with a neighbor of one of her uncles. Seeing firsthand the differences between the cultures convinced her to stay in Mexico.
But her 14-year-old brother and 12-year-old sister came back from a 1998 visit to Chicago with the opposite reaction.
"They want to live there," Alma says. "They saw the material things people there have and, well, here we have less. But they can't really understand what life would be like there." Alma worries that if her brother and sister leave Apipilulco to live in the United States, they'll adopt new ways of thinking.
"Young people are more independent and libertine in the United States," she says. "They don't do what their parents say. That's how they begin to lose their customs."
Olegaria Zambrano agrees. "People start going away from their traditions once they're in the United States for awhile," she says. "But you should carry your pueblo's customs with you and abide by those customs, not adopt other customs."
Olegaria is in her dirt-floor kitchen, setting the table for lunch. Tortillas made from freshly ground corn cook on the comal -- a piece of iron for heating tortillas -- that sits above an open fire. The daily presence of smoke in the kitchen has blackened the bamboo and cardboard ceiling. She has never been to the United States, but Olegaria says she knows from what her nephew and niece tell her and from the images she sees on television that people have many more material possessions. But she knows there are also drugs, gangs and crime, things that, she says, don't exist in Apipilulco.
In the kitchen, there is a large gap between two walls where in most homes there would be a door. Olegaria says she and her sister have never thought of installing a door, even though the house could easily be entered by anyone who walks by. "Why would we need a door?" she asks.
Olegaria says she can't imagine being afraid to take a walk at night, or not knowing all the people in her neighborhood, or being bound to a strict 8pm to 5pm work schedule. Despite the hardships involved in being poor, she says she's content with her life. The intangible things, she emphasizes, are what make her life happy.
"You know, living in poverty is the most beautiful way to live," she says with a smile. "You appreciate things more, because everyone suffers together. You live happily. And you think about God more. If we had money, we wouldn't think about God. Don't you think so?"
"Yes, you're right," responds Jovita Zambrano, nodding her head.
Lorenzo Navarro wouldn't go so far as to say that poverty is "beautiful." Navarro, 65, went to Chicago in 1979 to lift his family out of economic difficulties. But, after five years of monthly remittances to Mexico accomplished that goal, he returned to Apipilulco.
"I never thought of staying in Chicago permanently," he says while relaxing at home in a wooden rocking chair on a Saturday evening, a fan blowing and a 1950s Mexican movie on the television. "I only planned to work, help out my family and then return here to live. You have more comforts there, but life is so fast-paced, and you live in isolation."
Navarro spends much of his time tending to his land and livestock. The work can be arduous, but there is more freedom because there's no fixed work schedule.
"Over there, you become a slave to your work," Navarro says. "Here, if you feel like working one day, you work. If not, you don't."
Apipilulco residents living in Chicago have no such freedom. Usually faced with both families to support in Chicago and remittances to send to family members in Mexico, most immigrants from Apipilulco work long hours, often seven days a week, says Felipe Damián, 59, Joaqu'n Damián's uncle.
Felipe has been regularly working overtime since he arrived in Chicago in 1968. On average, he works ten hours a day, six days a week in his job as a forklift operator.
The money saved from that hard work has been used in part to educate his three children, says Felipe, who lives in Berwyn. One son is an engineer, another is an electrical technician, and his daughter is currently studying computer design.
"One of my most important goals here was to have my kids study hard and have a better life and higher salary than I had," he says. "Thanks to God, I think I've accomplished that goal." Yet employers often take advantage of immigrants' indefatigable devotion to work, especially when the employee is undocumented, says Teodoro Villazana, a nephew of Felipe Damián who lives in the South Side Gage Park neighborhood.
"Mexican workers are often mistreated and abused," Teodoro, 35, says. "I've seen it myself: they don't know their rights, the laws, and if they complain and don't do what the boss says, it's, 'OK. Leave.'"
Like many other Apipilulco natives, Teodoro received his U.S. residency papers in 1982, under a federal amnesty program. But about 40 percent of the people from Apipilulco living in Chicago are undocumented, and are thus especially susceptible to workplace exploitation.
The heavy work schedule of most immigrants is one reason small-town Mexican traditions aren't always carried over to Chicago, says Felipe. With so many people working seven days a week, it's often difficult to gather a large group of former Apipilulco residents in one place at the same time. But that doesn't mean people from Apipilulco shun the customs they were brought up with. As Felipe, Joaquín and Teodoro sit chatting in Spanish in Joaquín's Humboldt Park apartment, pozole -- a traditional Mexican meat stew -- cooks on the kitchen stove. In the living room, Spanish-language Channel 44 is on the television and a poster commemorating the independence of Mexico hangs on the wall.
All three men say they strive to instill in their kids a respect for Mexican culture and traditions, even as they accept that their children are picking up some American customs. "Yes, my kids like hamburgers and hot dogs, but most of the food they eat is more or less like what is eaten in Mexico," Felipe says. "And they all speak good Spanish. Of course they're influenced by the United States, but they've been able to live lives that include elements of both cultures."
"One of my reasons for regularly going back to Mexico on trips is to maintain a close relationship with Mexico, so my children see how people there live and pick up customs from there that they like," says Teodoro, who himself arrived in Chicago at age 7 and thus spent most of his formative years in the United States.
Although immigrants from Apipilulco generally don't mind if their children adopt some American customs, many are worried about more pernicious influences of living in a large U.S. city. "I worry what's going to happen to my kids in terms of drugs and gangs," says Teodoro, who has three children, aged 3, 7 and 12.
He says that when he was growing up in Humboldt Park, he faced pressure to join gangs, but "I was able to resist. Today the pressure is worse. They harass you and sometimes beat you up [if you don't join]. You try to instill the appropriate values in your children, but there's so much pressure in the schools and streets, and you can't always be there with them."
Despite the risks involved, Teodoro has opted to raise his family in Chicago rather than return to Apipilulco, and he expects his children to remain in the United States once they become adults. There are few jobs available in Apipilulco, he says, and those that exist offer low pay and few possibilities for advancement.
"My children have more opportunities here than in Mexico," he says.
Joaquín says he also prefers that his children stay in the United States, and Felipe says none of his three grown-up children have plans to move to Mexico. But all three men and their wives -- Felipe's wife is from Apipilulco; the wives of Joaquín and Teodoro are from nearby towns -- plan to return to Mexico one day.
"When I retire, I of course want to spend some time here, to be with my children and grandchildren, but I want to live most of the year in Mexico, whether it be Apipilulco, Iguala [a nearby city] or some other place," Felipe says. "Money [earned in the United States] goes a lot further in Mexico than it does here. You can live more comfortably there."
Teodoro says he yearns for the peace and quiet of a place like Apipilulco. "Life here is so fast-paced and stressful," he says. "You can't relax."
Joaquín says that, even after twenty years living in Chicago, he often still feels homesick. Like Teodoro and Felipe, he goes back to Apipilulco every year or so for a visit, and it's always difficult for him to leave the town.
Despite all the material advantages of living in Chicago, he prefers the way of life in Apipilulco, and he has little doubt that one day he'll return there to settle down. "I like the climate, the friendly way people treat each other, the fact that everyone knows everyone else, that you can walk around at ten o'clock at night without being worried someone's going to assault you," he says. "Every time I go back there, I just love it."
copyright 1999 New City Communications, Inc.