Transcripts

ELVA TREVINO HART: There would be crew bosses that would come down from Minnesota and recruit people in South Texas to come and work in the beet fields in Minnesota. And my father was a day laborer. He'd work here one day, work there one day. And it looked like a good offer from these people to come up here and work. And my father had friends that were coming also, so he decided to bring us.

- So did the whole family go willingly?

ELVA TREVINO HART: I don't think anybody, except my father, wanted to go. The rest of us went because we had no choice. And my mother especially was reluctant to go so far with so many children, but it was what we needed to do.

- So what was it like that first summer in Minnesota?

ELVA TREVINO HART: Well, that first summer in Minnesota, as I say in the book, they left my sister and I with the nuns. I think it's called St. Joseph's in Moorhead. And it was pretty devastating for me to be separated from my family for that length of time.

- And that was just because you were so young, you could not go with them to the fields.

ELVA TREVINO HART: That's right. The roads are half a mile long. So when my parents were going to be working, they were going to be so far away from the car where I would be. And they figured it was safer for me to be with the nuns, and I agree. It was.

- So you spent-- you didn't just go there for the day. I mean, you spent weeks there at a time.

ELVA TREVINO HART: Yes, we were there about three months. And in that time, we saw my parents only two or three times.

- So your family, your other four brothers and sisters.

ELVA TREVINO HART: They were working in the fields with my parents, yes.

- We're talking, so Moorhead, beet fields, right?

ELVA TREVINO HART: Yes, beet fields, right, sugar beets.

- Now, eventually, as you got a little older, you you got to go along and watch them work, right?

ELVA TREVINO HART: Yes, I was always the observer. I never got to actually work. I think the child labor laws said you had to be 12 to work in the fields, and we quit going to Minnesota before I was 12.

- So you watched them work. What was this work like for them?

ELVA TREVINO HART: Well, it was monotonous and hard, and I watched them do it from sun up to sundown. And I was by myself a lot of the time at the edge of the field. And, sometimes, I would ask my father if I could go one turn with them, so that would be a one-mile walk.

And he really didn't like for me to do that because then I wasn't available to bring water to them. But, sometimes, he would let me. And, sometimes, I would do that just so I wouldn't feel so alone at the edge of the field because I was typically there alone all day.

- What was this like for your mother?

ELVA TREVINO HART: She was pretty exhausted all the time. She got up first, worked all day, and then went to bed last, after all the dishes were done and all the work was done. So she was exhausted most of the time.

- I know that you wrote in the book that you took every chance you could to spend a little time with your mom by yourself.

ELVA TREVINO HART: Mm-hmm.

- And I'm wondering if you might read for us a selection from the book.

ELVA TREVINO HART: I'll do it, OK. So this is about my mother and I in Minnesota. (READING) "There was only a tiny slice of the day when my mother ever had time for me, at the end after dinner was eaten and dishes were washed. It was pitch dark, and we would be in bed soon.

But for a few moments, everyone just sat and talked. By the light of the one bare bulb, Rudy taught us cat's cradles, which he had learned from other migrant kids. Luis told us adivinanzas, and we tried to figure them out. Opa told us misty-eyed, wistful stories of his childhood in Mexico.

My mother started to relax in her chair by the warm potbellied stove, and I went to her, sat on the floor, and held her hand. The ends of her fingers were soft and sensitive, even though she had four hard, calloused nubs on each of her palms from the hoe. I ran my fingers over the calluses.

All the women wore cloth work gloves, which allowed them to develop calluses, instead of blisters that popped and ran. She let me lay my head on her lap. I asked her to feel my scalp to see if I had any piojos.

I guess this was really another job for her, but I told myself that she didn't mind. We like to think that we could find all the head lice and eradicate them. I thought maybe it was only I that had them because I was the smallest.

I felt her apron against my cheek. The apron was old, soft, and always clean. She always wore an apron to cook, but she was so fastidious that it seemed she never got it dirty.

She made conversation with everyone else while she ran her fingers over my scalp, searching. When Rudy said something funny, I felt her belly laugh through her body. I loved this time with her, my mother massaging my scalp, holding my head with one hand while she ran her fingers through my scalp with the other.

I was glad when she thought she found something because that meant she would continue for yet a while longer. We tried to be clean. When she was ready for bed, she told me she couldn't find anything else and sent me to bed also. I got ready for bed with the feel of her fingers on my head and the smell of her apron in my nostrils."

- What do you think of migrant labor today?

ELVA TREVINO HART: Well, there's a lot of it. And I was just on a train with somebody from Argentina, and he said the migrant workers in Argentina are called golondrinas, swallows. So it's all over the world.

All the vegetables we eat probably came through a migrant workers' hands. I think about that when I go to the grocery store. I try to buy organic produce just because I feel like that saves a migrant worker from pesticides somehow, so I try to gravitate towards that. But I'm grateful every time I go to the restaurant or the grocery store, grateful to the people that are out there harvesting in the sun.

- Do you think they work too hard, make too little?

ELVA TREVINO HART: Yes, of course, they work too hard and make too little. And somebody has to do it, and I'm grateful that somebody does it. And I wish they were paid more and that they were more accepted into society and that things weren't so hard. So I empathize.

- Do you think in some ways the societal acceptance has not moved, has not advanced?

ELVA TREVINO HART: Yes, I think that's true, that in some ways it hasn't advanced. In Virginia, a lot of the migrants are Hispanic, and they're moving into communities that aren't used to having communities of Hispanics before. And so it's hard for both sides to accept the way the other side does things.

So I think, in a lot of ways, things haven't changed, and I hope they do. Someone said to me that human nature is immutable, that human nature just goes on doing the things it's always done. But I think, as individuals, we can change, and we can be more compassionate and more caring.