Posted on 07/24/2006 5:01:24 PM PDT by SJackson
My wife, Nettie, and I could not believe what we were seeing. Roberto, our favorite Mexican employee for four years, had sent the money he made back to Mexico to build a bakery. We had no idea he had done that.
We knew he, like most Mexican workers in the United States, sent a significant portion of his earnings home once a month. He must have sent more than the 40 percent that is typical. His family took the money and built a bakery so he would have a business to go home to in his village of Tepanzacoalco in the Sierra Madre Mountains, above Orizaba in the Mexican state of Vera Cruz.
We had arrived on Dec. 5, 2003, with a program called Puentes, Spanish for "bridges." It was the brainchild of Shaun Duvall, a high school Spanish teacher, and Carl Duley, a UW-Extension agent, from Alma. They saw a new phenomenon in Buffalo County of Mexicans working on dairy farms and only speaking Spanish. Puentes was formed to teach us farmers Spanish and to educate us about the culture of our new work force by taking us to Mexico. The program also evolved to include visits to the villages where our workers' families lived.
This was my second visit and my wife's first. When we walked into the village of Tepanzacoalco, they told us we were the first white people ever in that 5,000-year-old village of about 100 people. Next to Roberto's house stood this cement block building, in contrast to the wood structures all around it. Roberto's wife had taken the money Roberto sent home and hired a contractor from Orizaba to construct this building with a large concrete oven inside.
Roberto told us he wanted to be able to make a good living without having to travel all the way to Wisconsin. He wanted to be with his family if at all possible. I was deeply moved at what I saw. I assumed that he was working to make money to send home and when that was gone he would come back to work for us again. It also made me feel like a failure for my inability to understand this and provide him with some business training to operate his bakery successfully. It seemed that the more I began to understand, the more I needed to learn.
I have farmed for 35 years and milked cows all my life. It is in my blood. Our farm has been in the family since 1857 and has been a dairy farm since the early 1900s. My wife and I started dairying as soon as we finished college at UW-River Falls. We farmed with my parents and brother over that period and provided all the labor that was required. In 1989, our dairy barn burned in the middle of the night with half of our cows dying in the fire. We decided to continue our careers and built a new facility for 300 cows and in 1997 added another barn. Today we milk 550 cows, sell composted cow manure and no longer provide all the labor. Eighteen employees help us get the work done. Eight are Mexicans.
Hiring Mexicans was not an easy decision. We wanted to hire local people who lived like us, spoke our language and had dairying in their blood. This worked for a while, but the pool of people to employ dwindled to almost nothing by 1998 as unemployment dropped to less than 4 percent in our area. We were working 96-hour weeks for 50 weeks a year to get everything done.
Applicants for our openings were people who could not work for anyone else because of myriad problems. One day when an employee came and said he could no longer milk cows, I called a friend who was employing Mexicans. He showed me where to locate a man to work for us. His name was Manuel. He worked 54 days in a row because he did not want a day off. I thought it was too good to be true. He worked like we did. Soon I hired more Mexican workers, and my good American workers began to once again have regular hours and time for vacations.
There were names such as Roberto, Jesus, Severo, Gregorio and many others who would work three to four years and then return home. My biggest business problem, labor, became my biggest strength. We now work less than 70 hours per week and are more profitable than ever.
Iwant to be the best employer any employee could want. Thus, I need to know my employees and to satisfy their wants and needs. This means to whatever extent necessary. One employee's mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was living in New York at the time. I helped my employee bring her here for treatment at the Mayo Clinic. This was the most important thing I could do for that employee at that time.
The same needs and wants exist with my employees from Mexico. I have to be able to communicate in order to understand what those needs and wants are. An interpreter like Duvall helps a lot. She comes every Monday and teaches all of us Spanish or English for four hours. As I learn about the wants and needs of my Mexican employees, it has become obvious that what I learned in Roberto's village was where I needed to focus.
Ilinked up with Duvall and her Puentes program to go to the next level with my employees, just as I would with my American employees. This Wednesday, five of us are going to the Zongolita region to research areas of wants and needs that include a coffee cooperative, an English corps to teach the language of commerce, and a book documenting the history and culture of these people, validating and possibly empowering them.
Going to Mexico seems to me to be the right thing to do.
On whose health insurance coverage? Something tells me, we the taxpayers paid for her treatment.
I'm surprised Jim puts up with your ugliness on these threads.
You're as big a racist as there is on this forum.
"I just wish authors would make the distinction clear."
Seems to me its safe to assume they are not. First of all why would they send money back if they intended to stay. Second, the article is showing how great of a people the mexicans are and the absence of an indication on their legal status tells us the author doesn't consider it important.
"They saw a new phenomenon in Buffalo County of Mexicans working on dairy farms and only speaking Spanish. Puentes was formed to teach us farmers Spanish and to educate us about the culture of our new work force by taking us to Mexico. The program also evolved to include visits to the villages where our workers' families lived.
What to hell (believe me I am sorely tempted to use a more common expletive) is all this gibberish about?
Give me a "Cumbayah" break will you? I don't care if their "work force" was here legally or not.
Why should it be up to them (us) to learn their language, customs, cultures, mores, whatever?
This is just typical liberal drivel and it makes me sick.
Don't bother trying to make the point of their criminality with "Sinky". He believes they are perfectly law-abiding little angels who have NEVER and would NEVER, EVER do anything illegal.
It was both.
-PJ
....jeeezzzzz, since I posted that swingers list this post went dead...LOL
Doogle
Otherwise, you're just a gossip.
Thanks for the assist.
If you use google earth and word search Tepanzacoalco, Mexico you come up with Tepanzacoalco, Oaxaca, Mexico not far from Vera Cruz at Lat. 17.04 Lon. 96.43.
Zoom in and you'll see a city of a quarter of a million people. Perhaps this "village" is somewhere near there in the foothills but a close zooms of the city shows what appear to be plenty of construction work and public projects going on. Look for the airport. The baseball stadium is huge.
I think a little embelishment went into this propaganda piece.
Of course based on your past comments, you consider being from Mexico to be a crime.
From the peoples own coments, they are illegal.
Today I was cursing you while I was working on a messed up router. I had no means of pinging at the time. I confess. /jk =)
I know Mexicans.
LOL!! Yeah, I'll bet you do.
I'll bet you know black people, too.
here's a list of 36 "swingers":
Hay un total de 36 swingers en TEPANZACOALCO y en 160 kilmetros de distancia.
"There are a total of 36 swingers in TEPANZACOALCO and within 100 miles."
<sigh> There's always a catch. :-)
What I said.
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