Economy
|
||
| California’s Political Economy |
||
|
|
||
Over the past century California has evolved from a sparsely populated frontier state to the most populous state in the nation. The state’s size, strong economy, cultural influence, and diversity have propelled it to becoming a dominant player in national affairs. California’s manufacturing base has long been critical to the nation’s military, and its lead in aerospace and high technology has positioned the state for continued growth throughout the twenty-first century. In addition, California’s entertainment industries—film, music, and television—have served to export a cultural self-image that, while somewhat artificial, has served to foster the evolution of popular culture throughout the nation.
California’s status as an economic powerhouse is due in part to its capacity to exploit its location, encouraging open economic borders, open markets, and an open labor pool. Based on gross domestic product alone, California would be one of the world’s largest economies—ranking seventh behind such giants as Japan, Germany, and the United States itself, as Table 5.1 illustrates. The state’s attractiveness as a global production center is linked not only to a highly developed, culturally diverse internal labor and consumer market but also to the state’s position as a springboard to the Pacific Rim and Latin American external markets. Its improved competitiveness is linked to the state’s focus on investment, its role as a gateway for diffusing technology, and its bolstering of the export and import markets.
California leads the nation in several sectors of the national economy. It remains a leader in the computer, film and animation, multimedia, biotechnology, semiconductor, and aerospace industries, and it has been incubating a new manufacturing base in the apparel and furniture-making industries. Over the past several years, the state has further diversified its economy, making it more resistant to fluctuations in the global market. The growing service industry accounts for approximately one-third of the state’s workforce (see Table 5.2). The rapid growth in this sector, with its low to moderate wage scale, has raised some concerns about how the economy will make the adjustment from one dominated by a shrinking manufacturing sector, which traditionally employed moderate-to high-wage workers.
TABLE 5.1 COMPARATIVE GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT
| 2005 | GDP (IN BILLIONS) |
| United States | $12,397.9 |
| Japan | 4,549.2 |
| Germany | 2,786.9 |
| United Kingdom | 2,229.2 |
| France | 2,136.4 |
| Italy | 1,769.7 |
| California | 1,622.1 |
| Canada | 1,131.8 |
| Spain | 1,126.0 |
| Korea | 791.4 |
| Mexico | 768.0 |
Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Annual National Accounts Database,2007, www.oecd.org.Shown in 2005 dollar equivalent exchange rate.
California’s economy thrived for many years in part because of Cold War defense policies. Federal largesse had subsidized the Golden State in the form of military bases, defense contracts, and other defense-related industries that created high-paying jobs. With the end of the Cold War, however, California was targeted for more base closures than any other state. After two earlier rounds of base closings in 1989 and 1991, a devastating third round in 1993 shut down eight major military installations statewide. Six of these facilities were located in the San Francisco Bay area, and the region lost more than 30,000 jobs as a direct result of the shutdowns.1 In Southern California, major base closings in the early 1990s included the San Diego Naval Training Center, the El Toro Marine Air Station, and the Long Beach Naval Hospital and Shipyard. Thousands of indirectly related service jobs were expected to evaporate due to the closures.
The defense cuts jolted California’s economy beyond base closings. The reduction in federal defense contracts meant heavy losses in aerospace and high-tech civilian jobs. In Los Angeles County alone, employment in these two sectors dropped by more than half between 1988 and 1995.2 During this period, nearly every defense contractor in the state downsized. Many of those laid off were middle-aged, working to support families, and highly paid—aerospace workers made an average salary of $18 per hour.3 These workers have largely been unable to find work at the same level of skill and pay. But, devastating as they were, federal budget cuts were not the only shock to the flagging economy of the early 1990s.
TABLE 5.2 WAGE AND SALARY WORKERS IN NONAGRICULTURAL ESTABLISHMENTS BY MAJOR INDUSTRY,CALIFORNIA, 1939 TO 2002 (IN THOUSANDS)
a The historical data based on the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system is provided for research purposes only. These data will not be updated. The NAICS and SIC data are not comparable.
b Excludes employers, own-account workers, unpaid family workers, domestic servants, and agricultural workers.
c Detail may not add to totals due to rounding.
d Includes employees of construction contractors and operative builders; does not include force-account and government construction workers.
e Includes civilian employees of federal, state, and local governments, regardless of activity in which engaged.
f Includes repair and maintenance, personal and laundry services, and religious and civic organizations.
Source: Employment Development Department, Labor Market Information Division (www.labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov).
The Golden State had lost much of its luster by the early 1990s, as national economic growth slowed, post-Cold War defense cuts, and a series of natural and social disasters plunged the region deeper into recession. The recession of 1991–1994 was preceded by a prolonged drought and the deadly 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The Los Angeles riots of 1992, which were precipitated by the acquittal of the four Los Angeles police officers who beat Rodney King, resulted in 55 deaths and more than 1,000 injuries and cost the state approximately $1 billion.4 Floods, fires, and the 1994 Northridge earthquake put further stress on the state’s infrastructure.
The recession, federal budget cuts, and natural disasters exacerbated an ongoing fiscal crisis in California. Accelerated emigration and a shrinking tax base were enough to push the state into a recession in the early 1990s. The migration from California reached an all-time high in 1992, with 580,000 people moving away from the state.5 The ongoing recession brought an unprecedented crash on tax revenues, causing California’s worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression. By July 1992, the state was out of funds, leading the state controller to issue IOU warrants. Many banks honored the warrants for only the first month. Both Democrats and Republicans used the fiscal crisis as a vehicle to push their favored agendas. Democrats, who at the time controlled both the senate and the assembly, pushed for a tax increase to protect the state’s social safety net. Governor Wilson and his Republican colleagues in the legislature sought deep spending cuts. The deadlock persisted for 63 days, as the state limped along without a budget. Ultimately, a $57.4 billion budget was passed. While the governor received most of his demands, the legislators minimized the damage to their favored programs.
The struggle to balance the budget occurred against the backdrop of a sluggish economy, the taxing and spending restrictions of Proposition 13, and the abolition of such revenue sources as the state inheritance tax and business inventory tax. Thus, from fiscal years 1991–1992 through 1994–1995, the total budget shortfall was $38 billion, which was met by revenue increases of $10.4 billion and expenditure reductions of $27.6 billion. The state’s population grew 10 percent during those four years. Purchasing power for persons receiving state subsistence during those years fell by 10 percent. Californians on disability took a 20 percent cut in their monthly state disbursements. To help balance the budget, University of California students paid 134 percent higher tuition fees, and California State University students paid 103 percent higher fees. The 1994–1995 state budget in real dollars was 17 percent less than the 1990–1991 budget.
The cumulative impacts of the recession and budget crisis of the 1990s were most visible at the county level. The Tax Revolt of the 1970s restricted the ability of the counties to raise new revenues to meet the growing demands for services by their own residents, as well as the services required by the state. For more than a decade after Proposition 13 went into effect in 1978, the counties managed to avoid the full impact of its taxing and spending limitations. The same year, a sympathetic legislature in Sacramento provided relief in the form of AB 8, a comprehensive finance law that stabilized funding to school districts, cities, counties, and special districts in the wake of Proposition 13. This approach succeeded until the 1990s, when the state began experiencing a perennial budget crisis of its own. Governor Wilson and the legislature compensated by passing a series of temporary half-cent sales tax increases. This forced a shift in the way local government was financed, from property taxes to sales taxes. Anticipating some of the unintended consequences of this shift, Democratic State Senator Mike Thomson of Napa dubbed the 1993 budget the “Factory Outlet Act of 1993.”6
Because Proposition 13 reduced property tax revenues by as much as 60 percent, several California counties were in financial distress by the early 1990s. Rural counties were hurt the most because of their dependence on property taxes and the lack of alternative revenue sources. Butte County avoided becoming the first county in the nation to file for bankruptcy, thanks to three consecutive state bailouts.7 Rural counties from Siskiyou in the north to Imperial in the southeast found themselves strapped for cash, unable to raise the necessary revenue to meet their expenses. These fiscal crises were not limited to rural counties, however. In 1995, Los Angeles County was teetering on the edge of insolvency when President Clinton came to its aid with a federal bailout.
In stark contrast to Los Angeles County, with its urban problems, and Northern California, with its budgetary woes, suburban Orange County was perhaps the one place most insulated from these fiscal pressures. Orange County is known as the home of Disneyland, aerospace and high-tech industries, good school districts, and a stronghold of conservative politics. Just days after the 1994 election ushered in a Republican congress on a platform of fiscal restraint, the county reluctantly announced that it had lost more than $1.6 billion in risky investments. When its lender banks began to seize Orange County securities as collateral, the county filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy.8
The pages and airwaves of the national news media were filled with explanations of mismanagement by Orange County Treasurer Bob Citron. Citron borrowed twice as much money as he had on deposit, nearly tripling the size of the county’s investment pool, to purchase high-risk, high-yield securities. When the Federal Reserve raised interest rates in 1994, however, the value of these investments crashed. When the county filed for protection from its creditors in December, the Orange County fiasco became the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. The county was in real danger of defaulting on a $1 billion debt, a sum far greater than the total debt of all 362 municipal bankruptcies since 1937.9
Even though Citron received the lion’s share of the blame for the disaster, the conditions that made it possible were in place well before the people of Orange County elected him to office. Three factors made the fiscal crisis possible: political fragmentation, voter distrust, and state austerity.10 Political fragmentation (that is, the capacity of multiple government entities to pursue competing goals simultaneously) is a common characteristic of the growing suburbs. There is a lack of accountability as political power is diffused between a large number of small cities and county supervisors, who tend to focus on their own districts. In Orange County, this arrangement left Citron to act as a relatively autonomous figure, without much oversight.
A second factor, voter distrust, has been especially intense in suburbs such as Orange County. Voters have become more likely to view government as costly, inefficient, and they have begun to demand increasingly high levels of service with low taxes. Middle-class suburbs have tended to elect government officials who share the same small-government, anti-tax views. Ever since the Tax Revolt of the 1970s, elected officials have been reluctant to make the case for tax increases. The refusal of a majority of the county’s voters to approve a modest tax increase after the bankruptcy was interpreted as an expression of their lack of confidence in government to use the money wisely. In 1996, even after the effects of the bankruptcy were publicized, the county’s voters overwhelmingly voted for Proposition 218, reaffirming and extending the limitations of Proposition 13. Affluent suburbanites want their cake.
The third factor leading to the crisis was the state’s fiscal austerity. The state revenue shortfalls of the early 1990s reduced the aid coming in from Sacramento. The state reduced the local governments’ share of property tax revenues, increasing pressure on the county treasurer to make up for the lost income with investments. Furthermore, the state’s dire fiscal condition also precluded the possibility of a bailout.
The bankruptcy lasted 18 months, but its effects will be felt for a long time to come. The county was forced to lay off nearly 600 employees and slash some administrative budgets by as much as 30 percent.11 Public health and services for the poor sustained the deepest cuts. Despite the threat of deep cuts to their school budgets and other public services, Orange County voters shocked observers elsewhere in the nation by defeating Measure R, a half-cent sales tax increase designed to bail the county out. With neither the state, the federal government, nor the voters willing to come to their aid, county leaders adopted a strategy of “suing their way out” of the predicament. Twenty-seven lawsuits were filed against Wall Street brokers that had advised Citron in his risky investments. By 1998, settlements of many of these cases helped the county recover $639 million, about 39 percent of the $1.6 billion lost.12
High-tech industries powered an economic turnaround in the late 1990s, and for a while, deficits became a thing of the past. Governor Davis began his term in 1999 with proposals to invest the state’s new wealth in education and infrastructure projects. However, the collapse of technology stocks, an energy crisis, and a nationwide post-9/11 recession brought these lofty visions back down to earth. By 2003, the state faced a record deficit, and Davis was recalled by the voters that October.
Governor Schwarzenegger arrived in Sacramento, promising to be a consensus builder. In his first months in office, he was praised by members of both parties for his ability to make deals with leaders of interest groups and Democratic leaders to pass legislation. Many such accords were brokered personally in his personal smoking tent on the capitol lawn. Schwarzenegger’s first true test came midway through 2004, when he failed to meet his promise to deliver the state budget on time. As the July 1 deadline approached, there appeared to be agreement on the $103 billion budget, until Republicans in the legislature made their votes conditional upon Schwarzenegger’s support for a proposed bill making it harder for workers to sue their employers and another one opening the way for public schools to contract for school bus drivers and cafeteria workers.13 Budget talks stalled as Schwarzenegger assumed a more confrontational stance. He campaigned for the bills around the state and appropriated movie and television cliches, calling the leaders of the legislature “girlie men” and threatening to “terminate” them. The tough talk did nothing to prevent a new generation of long, hot summers in Sacramento. The stalemates continued, and in 2008 Governor Schwarzenegger approved a state budget that was a record 85 days overdue.
| Rancho de Los Arcos | Jocelyn Lippert |
He is used to getting up early, but this morning it is all he can do to drag himself out of bed. He picks up the jeans and jacket he had laid out the night before. They bulge out in odd places because of the wads of money stitched into the seams: under his belt, in his collar, around the cuffs of his pants and shirt. He stuffs some more into the toes of his boots before putting them on. Twelve hundred dollars makes a lot of bills, even in American money.
He usually eats a simple breakfast of milk and honey wafers, but this morning, March 3, 2001, his wife is up to cook him something substantial. She knows this will be his last meal for two days. His five children are subdued as they congregate in the kitchen. His son sits down at his place beside his father. Even though he is only 16 years old, he will be the head of the family for the next nine months, taking care of the 100 pigs on the family’s farm, as well as working on a larger 10,000 hog farm nearby to earn extra money.
Diego Velez has dark hair and blue eyes that crinkle up at the corners when he laughs. This morning, however, there is no laughter in the Velez house. Velez gets up from the table and bends down to say goodbye to his children. His daughter puts her arm around her daddy’s neck and kisses him on the cheek. Velez takes his worn black sombrero off the hook by the door, leaving the leather one he saves for special occasions to await his return in nine long months.
Velez is leaving home to meet his coyote, the wily guide who will lead him across the mountains and desert to California. Velez has made this journey many times since he first crossed the border in January 1986. By now he knows the system. He knows he must eat a lot before he leaves because he will have to go without food or water for the next two days and nights. He knows he must rest before the trip because the walk is exhausting. He knows to tell the coyote that he has an aunt in California who will pay the $1200 for his fee so that the coyote won’t think that he has cash on his person. And he knows he must sew the real money into the seams of his clothes to prevent robbers, other crossers, and the coyotes from stealing it along the way.
Unlike Velez, most Mexicans cross the border without knowing where they will work when they get to the United States. Many find jobs once they get to the US through family members or friends.
The owner of one organic farm in Southern California says she picked up her team of Mexican workers off the street. “They’re not educated at all,” she says. “They don’t even have basic hygiene.”
She calls her operation a “model farm.” She says she treats her workers well and starts their wages at $7.00 an hour, 25 cents above California’s minimum wage. All of her workers cross the border illegally. None of them have papers or authorization to work.
“They die crossing that border,” she says. “Usually once [my workers] find me, they stay. I’m kind of like the pot at the end of the rainbow.” And yet, she says, because they don’t have housing, two of her seven workers are now living in bushes.
Diego Velez is one of the luckier ones this time around. He has a job and a room waiting for him in California, at an organic farm called XYZ Organics*.
XYZ Organics farm uses only natural methods of pesticide and weed control. The farm workers spray garlic and fish mixtures on the plants to deter insects, and pull out the weeds by hand. The crops, which range from tomatoes to peaches to asparagus to carrots, are planted in alternating rows to discourage bugs, which tend to thrive in industrial mono-cropping farms. XYZ limits its use of gasoline-powered machinery because of the air pollution caused by burning fuel. The farm takes pride in what it views as a moral commitment to chemical-free, sustainable farming. It sells its produce at nearby farmers’ markets and from a roadside stand on the property, as well as to restaurants around California. The owners of these restaurants express their gratitude for the quality and flavor of the fruits and vegetables with glowing praise and free meals for the farm managers.
XYZ Organics employs eight Mexican field workers. Each man has a resident alien card. Three of the cards are authentic. Five are not. The false cards cost anywhere from $40 to $100 to purchase, about the same price college students pay for fake IDs they use to get into clubs or to buy liquor. Velez and the other four unauthorized workers have fake social security cards as well, with fake social security numbers.
Jim McCann*, the farm’s personnel manager, checks the workers’ cards and papers each year, as required by law. “But,” says the farm’s long-time manager, Peter Collins*, “we know or sense that there are a few of our crew members where documentation is not real or has been purchased.”
Collins says there is a false perception that, unlike conventional farms, organic farms don’t hire illegal Mexican migrants.
“In the organic movement,” Collins says, “it’s a dirty little secret.”
But Sam Hammond*, XYZ’s current market manager, says the secrecy extends well beyond the borders of organic farming.
“[Labor] is a taboo topic,” Hammond says. “It’s like the unspoken issue in farming that no one wants to talk about.”
The National Agricultural Workers Survey is the most comprehensive survey on matters of migrant farm labor. The most recent NAWS, published in 2000, reported that 52 percent of farm workers interviewed nationwide were unauthorized, or “illegal.” Howard Rosenberg, a specialist in agricultural labor issues at the University of California at Berkeley, says the number has only continued to increase since that time. Rosenberg says the hiring of ineligible farm workers was once thought limited to border states, but that in the past 10–15 years the phenomenon has been evident throughout the nation. “We used to think this was a little secret in places like California and Texas,” Rosenberg says. “But the national survey showed that we exceeded 50 percent ineligible in the farm workforce all around the country.”
Americans enjoy some of the cheapest food in the world, due in part to the inexpensive labor Mexican workers provide. Mexican-born workers, both legal and undocumented, made up 91 percent of the California agricultural work force, and 77 percent of all US agricultural workers, according to the 2000 NAWS and the Department of Labor. “The cost of food is a reflection of how much can be paid to the workers,” says Sam Hammond from XYZ Organics.
Jocelyn Sherman, a spokeswoman for the United Farm Workers union, says the agricultural system in the US is just plain unfair. “These [workers] are the people who put food on our table,” Sherman says, “and many cannot feed their own children.”
In a report entitled “Living at the Edge: Mexican Origin Farm Workers in Rural California,” Don Villarejo, Ph.D., writes, “Foreign-born workers are now recognized to be the secret ingredient of one of the most perplexing puzzles of the unprecedented US economic boom of the last decade.”
…
It is 5:00 A.M. on Monday, May 30, 2001. The fog that rolls in from the Pacific Ocean at night still hangs over the fields in the pre-dawn haze. Pedro Montano* comes out of his trailer room to put on his shoes. Montano, a jolly man from Oaxaca with a jovial laugh and a thick salt and pepper mustache, is one of the five undocumented men on the XYZ crew. He has been working on farms in California for over 20 years, returning to Mexico every year or two and making the trek back over the mountains with a coyote in the springtime.
Slowly the other workers emerge from their trailers. On Mondays and Thursdays, the men get up before dawn to begin harvesting string beans. They head to the field, quiet in the pre-dawn stillness and still sleepy until the sun climbs into the eastern sky. They each take a row in the front field of the farm, or “rancho.” For the next four hours their bodies bend over the knee-high plants in human arches—“arcos,” they call themselves—as they pick the beans, and place each handful in their white plastic buckets. They joke that the farm should be called not XYZ, but “Rancho de Los Arcos.”
Eight Mexican men, two women, and three children live at XYZ in the cluster of trailers between the avocado orchard and the asparagus fields.
The kitchen trailer in the workers’ quarters is used by five of the men. The men at XYZ each pay the farm $80 a month for utilities in the trailers. There is no bathroom. All thirteen people share one outhouse near the road at the other end of the farm. The outhouse is cleaned once a week. A bathhouse, which was begun last year, is still under construction. There is no heat in any of the structures, despite the fact that winter temperatures can drop to the low forties.
Wages at XYZ start at California’s minimum wage of $6.75, which was raised from $6.25 in California in January 2002. Working 50-hour weeks for nine months of the year at minimum wage, the men at XYZ would make about $12,150 a year. Velez wires $300 a month back to his family in Mexico. The other men whose wives and families live in Mexico do the same. Taxes and social security are deducted from the wages pre-paycheck. Because their numbers are false, those who are unauthorized will probably never receive their social security benefits.
Collins says he feels that farmers like himself are caught in a vise. He says he cares about his workers and wants to make their experience working on his farm as positive as possible. He believes the Mexican migrants who work on farms in California and around the country should be treated as members of the community who are doing valuable work. But, he says, it is often a struggle to make ends meet at the farm.
“That place survives on a miracle every month. You try to make the situation as good as you can within the constraints of the resources you have.”
Collins says that as far as he is concerned, it is impossible to get his workers legal papers. “Essentially, as a nation we guard the borders to keep out the very people whose hands grow our food.”
Sam Hammond, XYZ’s marketing manager, says he feels that in both the environmental and labor aspects of the farm, XYZ makes compromises.
“Like many other farms, we are operating on a shoestring, and it’s pretty tricky to pull it off and pay people a living wage.” He adds that farms like XYZ struggle to compete with larger agri-business operations. “In terms of why XYZ hasn’t made leaps and bounds in terms of labor issues, it comes down to the fact that we’re competing with farms that aren’t making any leaps or bounds.”
California agriculture brought in $27 billion in revenue in 2000. If California were an independent nation, it would be the world’s sixth largest economic power. Yet many of the men and women who work on California farms toil for minimum wage—and sometimes less. Dean Fryer of the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement in California says as far as his office is concerned, it doesn’t matter if a worker is documented or not. “If you work here, you’ve got to get paid according to the law,” Fryer said. “It doesn’t matter where you’re from, what papers you’ve got.” But, Fryer says, a lot of workers are being paid less than the $6.75 required by California state law.
In addition, agricultural workers are exempt from the federal law requiring overtime pay after 8 hours of work in a day or 40 hours a week. In California, field workers are allowed to work 10 hours a day and 60 hours a week before being paid for overtime.
…
Juanita Martinez* had been bleeding for twelve days. Martinez, a beautiful woman with long silky hair, lives on the farm with Emilio and Antonio’s nephew, Pablo Diaz*. Martinez, who is 16, gave birth to Pablo Diaz’s son Daniel when she was 14 years old.
On the thirteenth day, Martinez went to take her shower. The shower on the farm is part of the shed, separated from the tool room by a shingled partition. A fluorescent outdoor patio light attached to one of the rafters sheds a dull pallor over the dank space. Martinez undressed Daniel and washed him and then herself, noticing that the bleeding had still not stopped.
When Martinez saw that Anna Morello*, Sam Hammond’s girlfriend who worked at a health care clinic, had come to the farm to drop off Hammond, Martinez approached her and quietly explained her problem. Morello referred Martinez to a clinic nearby and told her how to get there by bus.
Martinez and Diaz, like most Mexican farm worker families, do not have health insurance. Martinez, who came across the border in the line with false papers, is an illegal resident, as is Diaz. There is an option in Diaz’s wage plan with xYz to deduct a monthly amount for medical insurance but, like most farm workers, Diaz chose to wave his insurance option. Collins, XYZ’s board president and longtime farm manager, says he has tried to encourage his workers to utilize the health insurance option.
“Originally we had two people, Jorge and Pablo, but they didn’t stay with it because the reality is they don’t feel comfortable … taking part in any formal system,” Collins said.
The clinic where Anna Morello worked has a large number of Mexican migrant worker patients. Morello says there were people coming in all the time without insurance. The health care fees are often extremely burdensome for people making little more than minimum wage. “The [fee] without insurance to just get seen is $50 to $80,” Morello says. “If they then have to go to a pharmacy for medication, who knows how much that could be.”
Jorge Ines*, a 58-year-old unauthorized worker who lives with Diego Velez, was diagnosed with diabetes two years ago. Because he is afraid a paper trail might lead to his deportation, he does not have health insurance and spends $400 a month on medication.
The doctors, Morello explained, do their best to help their patients. Some dispense doses of sample medications they get from pharmaceutical companies for free. The workers hear through word of mouth about the clinics where the doctors and nurses speak Spanish and won’t ask questions. Morello says she could often tell when the papers and identifications were false. “It happens a lot,” Morello explains. “But you learn to treat everyone as an individual and take what they say as the truth. You’re there to help them with their health care needs and that’s your only job.”
…
In about the middle of June, Diego Velez begins counting down the days. Each passing week is a week closer to his “tres meses en el cielo”—three months in heaven—that he spends with his family between November and March. The men at XYZ get tired of sleeping alone, tired of getting up early six days a week, tired of brushing their teeth with a bottle of water. More than anything, though, Velez just misses his family.
“At home,” Velez says, “my daughter comes up to me and puts her arm around my neck and kisses me on the cheek. ‘Papi,’ she says. And here, nothing. Nobody.”
Velez has left XYZ early a few times, returning home to Mexico before autumn comes to California. “Diego is such a sweetheart,” Collins says of his employee. “He gets very lonely. He would bail out early, and it was too bad for the farm, but we understand of course.”
Collins says he hopes some day all the families will live at XYZ in straw bale cottages. He says it’s made him happy to have the two families currently living there.
But the dreams of the workers are a little different. All of the unauthorized workers say they would like to have paperwork that enables them to cross the border legally to work. Then they would also be able to visit their families during the year. Emilio Diaz says he would like to be able to make enough money on his farm in Mexico so he doesn’t have to come to the US. Velez has already spent a cumulative $15,000 on building himself a house in Mexico. He would like to live there all year round.
This year, Velez stuck it out in California until November, returning home on the 29th with most of the XYZ crew. The day they leave California is a day full of anticipation for the men at XYZ. They pack small suitcases, leaving some of their belongings on the farm for their return next spring. They are thinking of the time they will get to spend with their loved ones back in Mexico, catching up on the year’s events in conversations that are impossible using prepaid phone cards on public telephones.
Diego Velez takes down his sombrero from the hook by the door. He is wearing his Sunday clothes, a striped black and red shirt and black jeans. He wants to look nice when he sees his family. He puts the faded black hat on his head and closes the wooden door, picks up his bag, and walks up the hill without looking back.
Source: Jocelyn Lippert, “Rancho de Los Arcos” Ameri Quests, Volume 1, No. 1, 2004.
Californians lived for many years under the myth that the state’s economy was recession-proof. It must have appeared to many people that the economic infrastructure laid down after World War II, with its unrealistic reliance on federal dollars and the defense establishment, would continue forever. That perception changed with the crisis of the early 1990s. The recession was costly in terms of ruptured human lives, jobs, and prestige. Declining confidence in government had prompted voters to pass such measures as Proposition 13, restricting the discretionary power of elected leaders to such an extent that they were unable to cope with the fiscal crisis effectively. The costs of the downturn were passed first from the national level to the state level and, ultimately, to the local level. The counties continue to cope with the twin pressures of reduced revenues and a high demand for services. And, as county governments are forced to make hard choices, it is often those constituencies who are least able to fight for their fair share who are most severely affected.
1. Mary Beth Barber, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” California Journal 25 (January 1994): 19–25.
2. Steve Scott, “The Morphing Economy,” California Journal 28 (July 1997): 14–20.
3. Mary Beth Barber, “Can You Make a Buck When Peace Breaks Out?” California Journal 25 (January 1994): 27–28.
4. Cost estimate from Rebuild L.A., quoted in “Rebuilding South Central,” California Journal 28 (July 1997): 20.
5. Lou Cannon, “The Abiding Dream,” California Journal 26 (January 1995): 7–10.
6. Mary Beth Barber, “Local Government Hits the Wall,” California Journal 24 (August 1993): 13–15.
7. A. J. Block and Claudia Buck, eds., California Political Almanac (Sacramento, CA: State Net Services & Publications, 1999), p. 80.
8. Mark Baldassare, When Government Fails: The Orange County Bankruptcy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. E. Scott Reckard and Michael Wagner, “Broker to Settle with O.C. for $439 Million,” Los Angeles Times (June 3, 1998): A1.
12. Ibid.
13. George Skelton, “It’s Time to Act Like a Winner and Terminate Budget Battle” Los Angeles Times (July 19, 2004): B6.
