A Tale of Two Cities
TEXAS DE MORELOS, Mexico -- In many ways, Jose Luis Lopez is a typical teenager from this rural village in southeastern Mexico.
The 15-year-old is in his final year at the local school. In his spare time he likes to hang out with friends and feed the pet pig he keeps in his grandmother's yard. And someday soon he hopes to make the journey north to the fabled city of Petaluma, California, as so many of his fellow villagers have done before him.
Some 1,300 people live in Lopez' village today and at least as many have settled thousands of miles away in southern Sonoma County.
Texanos represent about one in seven members of Petaluma's Latino community, acc-ording to U.S. Census figures and estimates by the town's mayor Leon-iso Carreno Martinez.
The exodus from deep in the countryside of Oaxaca state to the former egg basket of Northern California began with one man's odyssey nearly 30 years ago.
Local legend has it that Armando Ortiz Arango ended up in Petaluma by chance.
Ortiz Arango says it was divine intervention.
In 1977 he left Texas (pronounced Tay-hass) and headed north in search of a way to support his growing family. Somewhere near the U.S.-Mexican border he heard about Petaluma. When he arrived there, he found a job on a chicken ranch, built a life for himself and stayed.
Since then more than half of his town's population, including his family, has followed him, making the costly and often dangerous trip north in a similar quest for work and opportunity.
As young Jose Luis Lopez puts it, "Petaluma is rich, there's lots of dollars there."
Fugitives from an unstable economy and a land where the crops dwindle with the rain each passing year, the migration north from this village reflects both the deep relations between two communities and a widespread trend across the Mexican nation.
'Bienvenidos a Texas de Morelos'
From the bustling city of Oaxaca it's a two-hour journey, partially down a bumpy, one-lane dirt road, to Texas.
Named after a hacienda of the same name, Texas was founded around 1920, in the years following the Mexican revolution when land was redistributed across the country on a large scale.
Situated in a low-lying valley, the village is surrounded by sloping hills and vast fields of crops such as corn and sugar cane.
Many of the rural communities in Oaxaca state are famed for their traditional crafts and lure thousands of visitors each year. Yet Texas is far from this tourist route and offers little in the way of souvenirs, attractions or modern comforts.
There is no hotel here, no restaurant for grabbing a quick bite, and no post office to send a letter home. No one in Texas is connected to the Internet.
In some ways it's as if time has stopped.
Old men in straw hats with faces weathered from years spent toiling beneath the sun occasionally roll by in donkey-drawn carts.
Dogs and chickens wander freely in the dusty, unpaved streets.
"We're poor people, but good people," says resident Selina Carreno Lopez.
Though she's never been to the United States, like everyone in Texas, Carreno Lopez has strong links to Petaluma. Her sister Guadalupe was the first woman from the village to emigrate there some 20 years ago.
Petaluma is a place familiar to everyone in Texas and mention of it always evokes a reaction.
Among the old the response is often a wistful smile and ensuing talk about long-departed relatives and friends.
"My three children are there," says Remidos Ortiz, as she explains how she just returned from a long visit where part of her time was spent learning English at Casa Grande High School.
For the young, Petaluma symbolizes dreams of the future.
"I want to go to work and so I'll know how it is there," said Feliz Castellera Amador, 15, whose father, brothers and uncles all live and work up north.
Connections between the two communities on both sides of the border run deep, both emotionally and economically, in spite of the fact that many who leave often don't return for years.
"One leaves not knowing when they'll ever come back," Carreno Lopez explains.
Her sister has only returned once in her two decades away. The border has gotten tighter, making coming and going more difficult, she says.
Those who have legal status in the U.S. are free to come and go, often returning home for end-of-the-year festivities, she adds.
In a move to circumvent immigration difficulties and long absences, village elders such as Carreno Lopez's 82-year-old grandmother, Carmen Diaz Trujillo, sometimes make the trip north for extended stays.
At the age of 76, Diaz Trujillo flew from Oaxaca to Tijuana, where she paid a coyote, or human trafficker, about $2,500 to smuggle her over the border along with 12 others in the back of a black van.
"I went illegally to visit my family," states Diaz Trujillo, whose face is a testament to her 82 years and the sorrow of having outlived seven of her 12 children.
Three of her remaining offspring live in Petaluma as do about half of her 42 grandchildren, Diaz Trujillo estimates.
Her year in Northern California was not to her liking, the old woman says, mainly because of the weather.
"It rained a lot and was too cold," she says as she sits in her favorite spot in her kitchen and gazes out on her yard. "But it's a better life, there's more products there."
Keeping Texas Alive
The mass migration from a small Mexican village to the same community thousands of miles away is not a phenomenon unique to Texas but an increasingly common pattern across Mexico, according to Dr. Mario Ortiz Gabriel, a sociologist who specializes in immigration issues at Benito Juarez University in Oaxaca.
"People usually have pre-established routes to pre-established places," Ortiz Gabriel explains.
In the last five years all the states in southeast Mexico, including Oaxaca, Chiapas and the Yucatan, have seen an increase in immigration, often among the poorest segments of society, according to the state Coordination for the Oaxacan Migrant (CEAMO), a government agency based in the city of Oaxaca.
"The earth isn't as productive as before and we don't have the capacity to absorb the manpower," explains Rene Ruiz Quiroz, director of the CEAMO.
Ruiz Quiroz estimates that some 1.5 million workers from the state of Oaxaca alone are living and working in the United States.
The money sent back home by these workers, remittances or remesas as they are called in Spanish, permits the survival of those left behind.
Recent figures released by the Bank of Mexico revealed that the remittances sent home by Mexican workers living abroad was greater than the federal participation in the local economies of 11 Mexican states, including Oaxaca, for the first three quarters of 2004.
Without money sent home from Petaluma, Texas couldn't survive, says its mayor, Carreno Martinez. Life in the fields pays poorly, about $10 a day, and is greatly impacted by changing weather patterns. "When it doesn't rain there's no harvest and there's less and less rain," he says.
Those who have stayed behind are mainly old people, young children and women. About 80 percent of the town's population is female, the mayor estimates.
Looking forward
Of the 14 students in Jose Luis Lopez's high school class, all raise their hands when asked if they plan to head north after finishing their studies.
Why Petaluma?
"Because there's work and our families are there," says one girl who doesn't want to give her name.
Most of the students say they would prefer to stay in Texas, if there was a way they could support themselves.
Schooling in the village ends at age 15. Out of last year's class of 15 students, only three went on to continue their studies in the neighboring town of Ocotlan, says the teacher. The rest, she says, went to Petaluma.
Somewhere between 30 to 50 people a year make the journey, the village's mayor estimates.
This continuous outflow of youth, both male and female, from Texas and villages across the country, will have drastic ramifications for Mexico, warns Ortiz Gabriel, the sociologist.
"We're losing generations. What will happen in the countryside? Who will grow the food and continue the cultural traditions?" he asks.
Through the mid-1980s there was more coming and going, he says. Now communities are organizing their fiestas in their new settlements in the United States.
In Petaluma, members of the Texas diaspora have been holding their "Holy Cross" celebration twice annually at St. Vincent de Paul Church for the past five years.
The ceremony involves a special mass and procession inside the church. Afterward, the community gathers around outdoors to feast on homemade ice cream, bread and tamales, says Abraham Solar, a pastoral associate at St. Vincent's.
Stemming the outflow of immigration falls under the responsibility of the Mexican government, says Ortiz Gabriel. "There need to be policies so that people find what they need here."
Meanwhile, Texas' young continue to look north to the future.
As Ortiz Gabriel explains, "the new generation doesn't want to wear huaraches (traditional Mexican sandals), they want to wear tennis shoes."
Horacio Lopez, 21, left Texas with his parents when he was 6 and has only been back three times since then.
A graduate of Petaluma High School, Lopez lives in Santa Rosa. Even though he now has a girlfriend in his native village, he can't imagine returning to Texas for good.
"It's kind of boring here," he says during his latest visit. "I cannot picture myself going into the fields and working with animals."
As for the leader of the exodus, Ortiz Arango, he feels happy that so many members of his community have followed him to Petaluma.
"The only thing I don't like," he says, "is that the village is sitting there all alone, with so few people -- before, everyone was there."