These families lead double lives across the U.S.-Mexico border
Following the crop cycles in California and Mexico, generations of Mexican farmworkers have migrated back and forth to provide for their families.
Ramblas Chico, Mexico — Luz Nallely Cano, 26, sits on the concrete floor outside her brother’s house surrounded by her three young boys, ages 9, 6, and 4. She flips through her youngest son’s American passport contemplating the family’s future. She’s been back in her Mexican hometown in the western state of Jalisco for nearly six months and doesn’t have the money to return to the United States.
Like so many others in Ramblas Chico, Cano’s life is comprised of two forms of existence.
She is among the residents who have been migrating for generations—defying U.S. immigration policy or shaping their lives around it. Cano started splitting her time between the agricultural fields in Williams, California, and the agave fields where she grew up, after her oldest son, Gerardo, was born. In her family, her two great-grandfathers were first to migrate in search of work in agricultural fields in northern Mexico. Then both sets of grandparents did the same, this time crossing the border for a few months of fieldwork in California and back to Ramblas Chico, about 2,050 miles away.
For decades, many others from Ramblas Chico—mostly men—also crossed the border without documentation, following the growth cycles of California’s grapes, almonds, watermelon, and tomatoes. The dollars they brought with them transformed this town of nearly 700 from mostly adobe houses to those made with cement and bricks. Each year, the population increases slightly when the norteños—northerners—return from the U.S. from November to April.
But as American authorities tightened immigration policies and increased security on the border over the years, some who migrated every season legalized their status and had their families from Mexico join them in the U.S. Others remained in the shadows as undocumented immigrants. Those who were deported or returned on their own to Ramblas Chico now have children who dream of—or hash out plans for—getting across the border as a way to escape increasing poverty in rural Mexico.
Separating to make a living
Mexico’s rural population is shrinking, from 57 percent in 1950 to 21 percent in 2020, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography. In Jalisco alone, only 12 percent of the population lives in rural areas like Ramblas Chico. The poverty rate of Tototlán, the municipality where Ramblas Chico is located, is 41 percent compared to 13 percent in Colusa County, California, to where many in Ramblas Chico migrate.
The lack of employment opportunities is one of the reasons people leave. It’s why Cano’s maternal grandfather, Octavio Gutiérrez, migrated in the 1970s and irrevocably changed his family’s trajectory.
Cano’s mother, Eduviges Gutiérrez, 51, grew up watching her father leave for months at a time. Remittances paid for the construction of a bigger and stronger home in Ramblas Chico but her father’s absence also meant that Eduviges had to help take care of her younger brother and tend to the family’s corn crop. “Life is better over there,” Eduviges says. “People say that it’s better to be poor there than to be poor here. People earn more there than they do here, and are better fed there than they are here.”
Octavio Gutiérrez was able to obtain U.S. permanent residency following the enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986, which granted amnesty to about three million undocumented immigrants. His wife, Teresa, joined him shortly after. By that time, all of her children, except Eduviges, were living in the U.S.; some documented, others not. Teresa has lived in Arbuckle, California, for almost 30 years, where she also worked in the fields for a short period of time. At 84, she now lives off pension funds inherited from her husband, who died in 2015, and social security payments. The income and her husband’s gravesite are the two main reasons Teresa still lives in Arbuckle.
Now her grandchildren are the ones making a life for themselves in the U.S. Her daughter Eduviges’ husband, Ignacio, 57, began crossing the border when he was 18 to work in the California fields but returned permanently to Ramblas Chico when he was deported in 2008. Three of the couple’s eight children, including Cano, live and work in California. Cano, her husband, and oldest son were born in Ramblas but have obtained permanent residence in the U.S. Her two youngest children were both born in California.
Temporary housing
When the Cano family returns to California, they stay at the campito. That is what the people from Ramblas Chico call the subsidized housing in Colusa County provided for migrant farmworker families during the agricultural season, between April and October.
Once the season ends, the campito shuts down and residents have to move out entirely. Finding affordable housing nearby is difficult and Cano can’t afford those that are available. So once the camp closes for the season, some families move within California following the crops or they go to other states such as Oregon and Washington. Some take their children with them but many leave school-aged children with relatives so they don’t disrupt their education. There are few opportunities available to earn an income outside of agricultural work.
The dynamic of going back and forth works for Cano because her family’s time in Mexico allows them to save up on rent, utilities, and other expenses.
It’s also a survival strategy, says Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, director at the University of California’s Center for Mexican Studies: “It’s like having the best of both worlds, earning dollars and living in Mexico.”
Despite the scores of families in her community who alternate between the two countries, this kind of cyclical migration is no longer as common. The revolving door movement between Mexico and the U.S. ended in the early 2000s. Since IRCA’s passage more than three decades ago, there has been a growing exodus of migrant farmworkers retreating from the fields to find year-round jobs in other industries in big cities, says Rivera-Salgado. The children of first-generation migrant farmworkers who graduate from high school and college also are opting out of field work.
This is exactly what Cano wants for her children and what a few of her family members have managed to make happen.
The annual return to Mexico
When the leaves change color and start to fall, that’s when Cano’s three boys start asking her with desperation if it’s time to visit Mamá Viges, as they call their grandmother in Ramblas Chico.
“Life in the countryside is beautiful,” Cano says. “My kids like it here very much.”
In Williams, things are starkly different. When the older kids get home from school, they stay indoors the rest of the day. The migrant camp where the kids have grown up doesn’t have a backyard and Cano is alone taking care of all three. Cano plans to start working when her four-year-old is a bit older. She wants to learn English, become an American citizen, and look for a job in one of her boys’ schools. Cano has wanted to become a nurse since she had to drop out of school after ninth grade and still hopes to do that.
Cano doesn’t have to pay school tuition in Williams and qualifies for the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance and Medicaid programs. Neither of those benefits are available in Ramblas. She oscillates between preferring one place over the other, faithful to her migratory patterns.
“School is better there, life is better there,” she says of Williams. “We get used to it, going from here to there. It’s two very different lives but we go back and forth.”
In Ramblas, the children are free to roam in the ranch unsupervised, for the most part. They play in the fields and along the town’s unpaved roads. They visit their friends who live just a few houses away, climb trees, chase chickens, dig in the dirt, and ride on the four-wheelers.
Despite the apparent carefree lifestyle, Cano doesn’t see a viable future in Ramblas Chico. Apart from growing agave for tequila distilleries and the few jobs that sprout from the agriculture industry, there is little more to do in her hometown. It’s either living off remittances or migrating to neighboring towns and cities. Cano’s family has done both. Her oldest sister, Yuliana, 31, began her own beauty salon business in the neighboring town of Capilla de Milpillas. Her brother Carlos, 29, takes care of the land their uncle in Williams bought. He also makes money renting out a warehouse —built with family remittances—for parties.
Ultimately, however, the family also moves out of necessity: “Since we don’t have a house [in Williams], we can’t stay,” Cano says. “It would be nice to stay one day.”
An end to the cyclical migration could arrive sooner than later. Already, Cano’s siblings in the U.S. and many of her cousins have opted not to build houses in Ramblas Chico like their parents and grandparents before them did.
The norteños
In Ramblas Chico, Cano’s husband built a house with money earned in the U.S., and her parents help raise the children. The town reactivates when the norteños are back from the U.S. Its economy, like that of many other towns in rural Mexico, is tied to the flow of remittances.
The stipends from migrants in the U.S. reached an historic high of $51.6 billion in 2021, according to a study carried out by BBVA Research. Jalisco was one of the top recipients of remittances that year with migrants in California accounting for one-third of the funds sent.
When the norteños leave, Ramblas Chico empties out. The streets become quiet and the rumble of four-wheelers dies down. The corner store loses the Cano children as candy customers.
Farmworker families like the Canos choose to live frugally when they are in Williams so they can enjoy the comforts they can afford in Ramblas Chico and build homes they could never dream of in California. While annual income earned from temporary field work in the United States is “below the poverty line,” according to Rivera-Salgado, for those in Ramblas Chico, it is much more than they would be earning in Mexico. The minimum wage in California is $15 an hour while the day salary in Ramblas Chico is $10.
“With what we save [from earnings] there we can live here, or rather survive here,” says Cano. “We survive here more easily.”
