Umatilla and John Day: Changing Community, Increasing Diversity
It was amazing because they got here and a
week after, they got a job. Full time jobs. It was nice. Double pay,
double the amount they were earning. . . [My uncles] would come just
during the harvest time, and then about this time, just as soon as the
potato season was over, harvest was over, they'd go back to Mexico,
and then come back in late spring and start planting.
Guadalupe
Escobedo, Umatilla resident since 1979
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| Left. Jose Rodriguez and children. Right. Maria Rodriguez and family. The
Rodriguez family came to the Hermiston area in 1956 to work in the hop
fields. Jose came to the United States with his father as an infant,
just after the Mexican Revolution. Maria was born in Texas. Photos courtesy of Jose and Maria Rodriguez | |
Since the 1970s, Farm expansion and food processing plants required more workers, attracting increasing numbers of Latinos to Umatilla. Today, approximately 20-25% of the general county population is Latino, reflecting the pull of jobs and the ability of some Mexican Americans to relocate permanently in the Columbia Basin. Many of the migrant workers who come to work in the fields of Umatilla County annually return to Mexico or Texas. They often face difficult circumstances, moving, poor housing conditions, finding alternate work while crops mature, educational and cultural barriers.
The street names of McNary, Mexican stores, and public documents and signs in both Spanish and English reflect the Latino influence in Umatilla. Among the first Mexican Americans at Umatilla High, Guadalupe Escobedo recalls that her father came to the U.S. as part of the WWII Bracero program in which Mexican men were recruited to work in U.S. fields. Like other braceros, her father found hope for a better life in the U.S. When the program ended he continued to migrate illegally, eventually gaining residency and moving to San Francisco where Guadalupe was born. The family came to Umatilla to work in the Simplot food processing plant in the 1970s. As a teen, Guadalupe worked weekends and summers in the fields, partly financing her college education through working at a corporate farm, Agri-Northwest. Guadalupe Escobedo now teaches first grade in Hermiston. Over half her students are Latino, and many come from homes where Spanish is the primary language.
The Bracero Program - Public Law 45
Population Statistics Umatilla and Morrow Counties, 1940-1993
Guadalupe Escobedo discusses working in the fields
Federico Ramos describes tree pruning in Umatilla County
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