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April 1, 2008
Many of area's children have farmworker ties
By Michael Manekin, STAFF WRITER
HALF MOON BAY – After school, they hunched their backs, dropped to the
dirt and worked the land — something many of
their parents do every day.
At the Alvin S. Hatch Elementary School in Half Moon Bay, where half of
the kids grow up speaking Spanish — in homes where the food on their
tables is bought with sweat — planting a backyard garden in honor of
Cesar Chavez becomes something significant.
For many of the students at this elementary school, the Mexican-American
labor leader and civil rights activist for Latino farmworkers is a hero
— someone who helped their moms and dads make a better living, one with
dignity and respect.
That's something many of the students at Hatch understand directly, said
Mayra Rodriguez, an employee with the Coastside Children's Program,
which runs Hatch's after-school program.
The majority of native Spanish speakers at the school have parents who
plant and harvest for one of the Coastside's many ranches and farms,
Rodriguez said.
That's why every Cesar Chavez Day, the children of recent migrants at
Hatch hear the story of Chavez and his struggle to lift the wages and
lives of farmworkers — and most of them think of their parents.
"They'll say, 'I don't want to work that hard. I want to go to school
and get a job,'" Rodriguez said. "Their parents want the same thing.
They want them to work con la cabeza — with their heads — that's what my
dad used to tell me."
Farming was the first chapter in her American dream, and so it is with
many of her students, whose parents are planting the seeds of their
future. One generation works with its hands so that one day their
children can work with their minds — not as farmers but as teachers,
businessmen and other middle-class professions.
Rodriguez, 29, grew up on the Coast, the child of migrant workers who
planted and picked flowers at one of Half Moon Bay's many nurseries.
Now, Rodriguez, a college graduate, works as a teacher at the Coastside
Children's Program, where she began volunteering at age 16.
The program caters to some 200 children, with a preschool in downtown
Half Moon Bay and after-school care in the city's three elementary
schools. Focusing on the children of Latino agricultural workers in
particular, the program provides kids with resources they lack at home:
help with English, homework assistance and a productive way to spend
after-school hours while their parents are working.
"All of us (children of farm workers) who grew up here would have loved
to have something like this — it's like a second home for the kids,"
Rodriguez said.
On Cesar Chavez Day, which the Coastside celebrates at Hatch every year
with special activities sponsored by Americorps, the children are
presented with story books about the Mexican-American labor leader and
encouraged to reflect on how his life has affected more recent
generations of migrant workers.
"Before, the farmers didn't get respected and they didn't have enough
money to live," said Juan Carlos Penaloza, 10, whose mom plants flowers
for a local nursery. "If Cesar Chavez didn't do what he did, the farm
workers wouldn't have enough money to get a home or food for their
families."
Some of the older kids in the program feel personally indebted to
Chavez.
"If it weren't for (Chavez), it would be harder to live," said Jesus
Patino, 9. "We wouldn't have that much money, we'd be living in a little
house. He inspires me to help other people."
As for the first-graders — who planted seeds of lettuce, cilantro,
pumpkins and other plants to celebrate the leader's birthday on Monday —
"they might not fully understand what Cesar Chavez was all about,"
Rodriguez said.
"But one day they'll remember planting those seeds and the book they
were read today about this man Cesar Chavez," said Rodriguez. "And
they'll look at this person with the same skin color and same
background, because seeds of a better future will be planted in their
minds."
For Rodriguez, the seeds of Chavez's struggle have already been
harvested in Half Moon Bay, where she says conditions for Latino
agricultural workers and their children have vastly improved since her
parents first arrived in the 1970s, she said.
Once upon a time, her parents tell her, most coastal farm- workers lived
hidden, shacking up most of the week on the ranches where they worked
and emerging in town only on weekends, when the men and women did their
shopping, washed their clothes and returned to plant the seeds and reap
the harvests for other dinner tables.
Now, Rodriguez says, there are more public services for the work force
that helps sustain the coastal economy. The community, she says, is more
integrated.
"We all realize that you may look a little different, speak a different
language, but we all have the same dream. We all want to be happy and
provide a safe place for our kids."
Much has changed since the days of virtual segregation for Latino
farmworkers — "but it's probably not enough," Rodriguez said.
"It's like my dad used to say ... it's never really equal when you don't
start in the same place as everybody else," he said.
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