Tulsa World: Bordering on a problem: Tulsa as a second language

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Bordering on a problem: Tulsa as a second language

TULSA: Monica Rodriguez, 10, came from Casa Blanca with her family in June 2005. She attended a neighborhoodschool before being transferred recently to Tulsa’s Newcomer International School. She is in the third grade.

By TOM DROEGE World Staff Writer
Published: 4/16/2006 6:03 AM
Last Modified: 10/5/2009 10:29 AM

TODAY: A peculiar immigration history ties Tulsa to Casa Blanca, Mexico, and has brought thousands of immigrants -- legal and illegal -- from Casa Blanca to Tulsa.

DAY 2: Life in Casa Blanca isn't easy, and every year more people leave for Tulsa. "A lot of kids have the idea in their heads already," says one resident.

DAY 3: Casa Blanca and Tulsa often share a symbiotic relationship. But there are also problems.

ONLINE: www.tulsaworld.com/casablanca

Casa Blanca, a gritty, dust-driven town in north central Mexico, has been on the move for decades. On the move to Tulsa. Some 3,000 people from the humble farming community have traveled to Tulsa over the years -- mostly illegally. They paint Tulsa houses, landscape Tulsa yards and attend Tulsa schools.

More Casa Blanca natives live in Oklahoma today than in Casa Blanca. It is, of course, part of a greater migration. U.S. Census Bureau estimates put Tulsa's total Hispanic population at about 40,000, while unofficial estimates that include illegal immigrants say as many as 75,000 Hispanics live here.

'We're not anybody famous'

CASA BLANCA, ZACATECAS, Mexico - Casa Blanca's link to Tulsa dates back to the 1950s, when three brothers made their way here through Texas. Francisco (Pancho) Quiroz and brothers Miguel and Jesus Quiroz Becerra are

said to be among the first immigrants from Casa Blanca to arrive in Tulsa.

Miguel and Jesus were picking cotton in Texas through government-sponsored programs as early as the 1950s, by several accounts.

When the cotton harvest was over, they didn't go back to Mexico. They went to Oklahoma.

"They had always heard that going deeper into the states they could make more money," said Tulsa resident Blas Gaytán, nephew of Francisco Quiroz.

The brothers drifted north, finding jobs in Tulsa as maintenance painters at an apartment complex. Then, as the stories go, the brothers started recruiting other people from their hometown, telling them to come to Tulsa.

Blas Gaytán, who came in the 1980s and later obtained his green card, compares the movement to Anglos in the Mayflower landing at Plymouth Rock.

Fermín Quiroz Becerra, 65, is the last known living brother of the original group credited with starting the migration to Tulsa.

Preferring tranquility, he has returned to Casa Blanca. "We're not anybody famous," Fermín Becerra said one evening, sitting by his front door in Casa Blanca after a day in the fields.

Work-seeking immigrants from Casa Blanca and other poor places in Mexico are at the center of a massive public policy debate at the national and state level. The state's Hispanic population was estimated at 224,000 in 2004, according to the Census. That's about 7 percent of the total population, but it is still believed to undercount the state's illegal immigrant population.

Nationally, the Census estimates some 41.3 million Hispanics in the United States in 2004 and the number is growing by about 1.5 million people a year. An estimated 11 million illegal immigrants currently live in the country.

One of 11 million

Wearing a pair of paint-splattered cowboy boots, Manuel kicks absently at the gravel parking lot behind a warehouse in the Brady District.

The life-long farmer, 42, never wanted to leave Casa Blanca.

But farming debts were catching up with him, and there were seasons when he literally had to beg people to buy his crop, he said.

He was harvesting 50 to 60 tons of beans and still couldn't keep up with the costs of labor, water and fertilizer.

He saw friends and neighbors returning to Casa Blanca from the north for brief periods telling about all the easy money to be made in Tulsa.

"They showed up in new vehicles," he said in Spanish through an interpreter.

Those shiny trucks were all the proof he needed that work and money were more plentiful in Tulsa.

So in 2003, he paid a smuggler of humans, or "coyote," $1,500 to sneak him across the border and on to Tulsa. He is here illegally, and he told his story with the understanding that his full name not be used.

His first week here he worked 70 hours -- just because he could. He thought it might go away.

He paints for a man originally from Casa Blanca and makes $400 a week -- more than four times what he could make in Mexico.

He bought a Ford Explorer and started paying off farming debts in Mexico.

Then, in the summer of 2005, he sold his Explorer to help cover the $5,400 coyote fee to bring his wife and children north.

Now, for $340 a month, they rent an east Tulsa apartment. Many of their neighbors also come from Casa Blanca.

His neighbors wonder why he waited.

"A lot of them told me I should have come to Tulsa a long time ago," he said.

He doesn't speak any English and by living around other people from Casa Blanca, he says he doesn't have to. The same is true with the painters he works around.

On rare occasions when he is forced to communicate with English-only speakers -- like at the store or in other public places -- he can usually get by with gestures, he says.

Driving in Tulsa is also a problem. Because he's not a legal resident, he can't get an Oklahoma driver's license. But he still drives to a job site each day with nothing but an expired Mexican driver's license.

He's constantly watching out for police while on the road, and he drives extremely carefully so he won't get pulled over, he said.

All the rules he has broken, starting with crossing into the United States illegally, weigh heavily on his mind. But it's worth it, he says.

"Yeah, I felt like I was doing something wrong, but you know what, I had to eat."

Getting here

Ana Lidia Bernal, a 22-year-old woman from Casa Blanca, hired a coyote to help sneak her across the border. She was headed to Tulsa, where her husband was waiting.

Sitting on the sidewalk outside her home in Casa Blanca, she tells about how the coyote handed her an innertube and told her to take off her shoes. Talking about that day makes Ana Lidia nervous.

It started with an eight-hour ride from Casa Blanca to Nuevo Laredo on the U.S. border. There, she met a coyote. They aren't hard to find on the Mexican side of the border. They hang out on street corners and in parks.

The coyote drove Bernal, another woman and 11 men -- all strangers -- to a crossing point outside of town.

They took off their shoes and left them in the vehicle. The coyote told them the extra weight would pull them down in the river. They could have their shoes back once they got to the rendezvous point.

Barefoot, with innertubes in hand, the people made their way over slippery rocks down to the river's edge.

In the water, they formed a human chain, interlocking their arms and the innertubes while fighting the powerful current of the Rio Grande.

The water was up to their chins in some places and was too swift for one in the group. Bernal said she watched helplessly as the river swept the man to his death.

They thought they heard the radio crackle of border patrol agents above them. And it even seemed like the water was rising, although they could have imagined it, she said.

Once across, they faced a riverbank riddled with briars. Some of the thorns were three inches long, Bernal showed with her hands.

As they picked their way through the bushes without shoes, they again thought they heard the radio chatter of border patrol agents.

They started running through the brush and came to a box car sitting on a railroad track. They climbed up into the undercarriage of the car and took refuge.

A few minutes later, a border patrol dog sniffed them out.

"We would have made it if not for that dog," said Bernal, who was granted temporary access to the country by U.S. border officials after agreeing to testify against her coyote.

For six months she worked at an envelope factory in Tulsa before reporting to a court hearing in a border town where she was promptly deported because officials no longer needed her, she said.

Settling in Tulsa

When Casa Blancans make it to Tulsa, they can move in with people from their hometown who speak the same language and understand the problems of being a newcomer in an unfamiliar city.

They give the newcomers a place to live, point them toward jobs and help them adjust.

Blas Gaytán left Casa Blanca for Tulsa in 1982 at the age of 16. As a teenager, Gaytán said he never liked the idea of moving to the United States to work as a busboy in a restaurant. He had bigger plans for his life.

But while he was going to high school in Mexico, his teachers went on strike. Without school and with little work available, Tulsa looked like the best alternative.

He came to Tulsa and started earning $3.25 an hour, much more than he could ever expect south of the border.

"All my life I thought I would save up and go back to Mexico and start a business -- that never happened," he said.

Instead, Gaytán built his dream here. He obtained a green card through amnesty in 1986, and in 1997 he launched "Que Buena" KXTD (1530 AM), Tulsa's first completely Spanish-language radio station.

His other business, a profitable painting company, has earned work in upscale homes across Tulsa.

Gaytán has four children ages 4 through 18; all were born in Tulsa and are therefore citizens. The oldest, Adrian, is a senior at Union High School. He plans to major in architecture at Oklahoma State University after graduation.

Gaytán has watched as his family becomes more and more American. At the same time, Tulsa has become more and more Mexican.

"We bring our culture here. We bring everything."

Tulsa's melting pot

Pointing to a map of Mexico hanging in her classroom, third-grade teacher Karla Cox asks her students about home.

They twist in their chairs and stand on one knee to get a better look.

"Where is ZAC-A-TEC-AS," she asks, searching for the state herself in the northcentral part of Mexico.

All the students speak Spanish as their first language. Several have relatives living in Casa Blanca and other small towns in the state of Zacatecas.

"Last year, half my class was from Zacatecas," said Cox, who teaches at Newcomer International School, 10908 E. Fifth St.

Similarly, in a school nearly 1,200 miles away in Casa Blanca, hands go up across the classroom when a teacher asks his students how many have relatives living in Tulsa.

Sons go because of fathers who have already made the journey. Sisters follow brothers. Wives reconnect with husbands. Nephews go to work for uncles. And on and on. "It's like a big chain, and we're still pulling it," said Gaytán.

A network of families is the common thread weaving Casa Blanca and Tulsa together. It's the reason so many painters, construction workers and landscapers in Tulsa are from Casa Blanca.

On a Friday night at 21st Street and Garnett Road, glistening pickup trucks with Mexican family names blazed across the back blast upbeat music outside Plaza Santa Cecilia, a Hispanic mall and entertainment venue.

The number of Hispanic-owned businesses in Tulsa County surged by 41 percent between 1997 and 2002, according to a recent U.S. Census study that counted more than 1,000 businesses. Immigrant advocates say that market will continue to grow as the children of first-generation immigrants become consumers.

"I don't think the number is significant yet," said Sebastian Lantos, president of the Coalition of Hispanic Organizations. "The reason being is that a person needs documents to open a business and, as we know, many Hispanics are undocumented."

That doesn't mean Mexican-earned money is not being spent in Tulsa, he said.

"By purchasing in the local stores they also pay taxes that help pay for roads, schools and the general infrastructure of the city and county," he said.

"The vitality of these immigrants also helps in the diversity and quality of life of our city by creating speciality stores, entertainment and sharing their culture in our melting pot."

And new immigrants are coming to Tulsa constantly. Take 22-year-old Ana Lidia Bernal, as an example.

Even though she was caught at the border and eventually deported, she isn't giving up.

"I'm thinking about going back again," she said from her house in Casa Blanca.

Division of labor

CASA BLANCA, ZACATECAS, Mexico - Scores of workers hunch over in fields outside Casa Blanca, leaving in their paths dozens of bags bulging with guajillo peppers.

Many of the workers are teenage boys or older men. One boy, 12-year-old Lupíno Esparza, dropped out of fourth grade to pick peppers with his father.

During the harvest, they start picking early in the day, when fog still hangs over the fields. Around noon they take a break and sit in the field to eat lunch: a hard roll stuffed with beans. The boy is reluctant to talk, but he admits spending the day in the field is better than school.

Fransico Rosales Gaytán, 21, hired Lupíno and a truck full of other workers to pick peppers. He pays them about 130 pesos a day, the equivalent of about $13. "These people are just living day by day," said Gaytán, looking out at the fathers and sons bent over in the scrappy pepper plants. "I have a better chance than the people here. I own the land."

But even for landowners, farming is tough. As of December, no rain of any significance had fallen on Casa Blanca in six months.

About 35 wells once supplied the farmers with water to irrigate. Now about half those wells have been pumped dry, said Reyes Becerra, a longtime farmer.

Laguna Casa Blanca, once the major water source for the town, dried up long ago. Hardy guajillo peppers can survive with little water in the arid climate, but garlic, carrots, beans and corn need to be irrigated.

Becerra pays 600 pesos or about $60 a month for electricity to power a well pump that sends water to his garlic, which he'll harvest in May. He'll sell his estimated 60 tons for 6.25 pesos a kilo, giving him just enough money to pay his bills and start another crop. These meager profits are not worth it for many people born here.

Seven of Becerra's nine children gave up on Casa Blanca. They now live in Tulsa and work in the construction business.

'Tulsa's expensive'

CASA BLANCA, ZACATECAS, Mexico - Tulsa relatives send thousands of dollars to Casa Blanca through wire transfers every year.

Each household receives roughly $150 per month, said Dr. Jose Luis Navarro Olvera, a student doctor spending a year in the town through a government program.

The money buys food, clothes and farming needs. It pays for modern perks like telephones and concrete instead of adobe for construction. The money also helps meet community needs like a church steeple and tile for the bathroom floor of a school.

Some people in Tulsa pay into a Mexican government program called "3 for 1," in which migrant workers contribute 25 percent and the local, state and federal government provides the rest.

The program has paid for sewer systems and running water. It also funded a brick plaza in front of the church in Casa Blanca. But many people don't participate in it because of distrust for the government.

In 2004, about $480 million was sent from the United States to Mexico through remittances, according to the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

That may sound like a lot of money, but Casa Blanca residents say pepper crops still bring in more cash than money sent from people in Tulsa.

Plus, immigrants in Tulsa are paying Tulsa prices to live. Once rent, groceries and a vehicle are taken care of, there's not a whole lot left, even on wages of $10 to $15 an hour.

"Tulsa's expensive," Armando Gaytán said, a farmer with relatives in Tulsa.

Meet the journalists

Tulsa World staff writer Tom Droege and photographer Aníbal ''Ace'' Cuervo spent a week in Casa Blanca, Mexico, last year exploring the migration history that connects the tiny farming community to Tulsa.

Droege, 29, covers census and race issues for the World. Cuervo, 37, a native of Vera Cruz, Mexico, also acted as a translator during the project. He has been a staff photographer for the World for six years.

By TOM DROEGE World Staff Writer

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	Report Comment cristi Almader Quiroz, Tulsa (10/30/2007 11:09:41 AM) Hi there, I'd like to take a moment to say thank you. I've been reading The Tulsa World for about twelve years now and I absoulutly love it. I enjoyed this special section and I'm very appreciative that someone takes the time to recognize the connection between Casa Blanca and Tulsa. I was born in Casa Blanca and have been here since age 5. The three farmers mentioned in the begining of the article were my grandfathers brothers. since my Grandfather's era, I'm proud to say i have graduated and I am the first to attend college. I am aware that we have all become very Americanized and we all have our background and customs behind it all. once again thanks for showing that Casa Blanca somehow can relate to Tulsa. We all know were we come from. Thank you!
	Report Comment Kenny, Tulsa (11/5/2007 5:31:13 PM) Oh my gosh. I am at a loss for words because my free speech cannot begin to express the troubles I have read. What is wrong with this article? It is written to make us feel sorry for illegal activities. Yes, illegal activities. The law is the law no matter what law you break...even a speed limit. It's illegal. No illegal activity is allowed unless you are willing to pay for the consequences. Hence break the speed limit be willing to work legal overtime to pay for the ticket. Hence come here illegally be willing to get deported. No protests or sympathy here folks.
	Report Comment dario beberra, (11/24/2007 5:23:09 PM) hola mi nombre dario vivo en atlanta georgia pero soy de casa blanca navegando el internet descubri la pagina de casa blanca por acidente e leido todo. creo que es una lastima lo que esta pasando en tulsa creo que no se lo merecen los casa blanquenos somos una comunidad trabajadora y tambien gracias a toda la gente que ase posible encenar lo que es tulsa y casa blanca de verdad gracias a todos ADIOSSS ASTA PRONTO
	Report Comment DARIO BECERRA ALMADER, ATLANTA GEORGIA (12/10/2007 9:52:38 PM) HOLA COMO ESTAN SALUDOS PARA TODA LA RAZA DE CASABLANCA EN ESPECIAL PARA TODOS LOS DE CUNA DE LOBOSSSSSS DE PARTE DE SU AMIGO QUE NUNCA LOS OLVIDA EL \\\\\ BRONCO////// ADIOS
	Report Comment elTATA918, tulsa (1/15/2009 1:50:26 AM) PURO CASABLANCA,ZACATECAS

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