Remaking the Heartland: Middle America since the 1950s by Robert Wuthnow

Author:Robert Wuthnow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press

SIX

The Changing Face of Agribusiness

Juana was ten the year she started first grade in southwest Kansas. She could not read or write in any language. She spoke no English and had never been to school. Her family was from a small village in central Mexico. They came on temporary work permits that had to be renewed each year. Juana attended parochial school and during the summers went to classes for migrant workers' children. After five years, her family was eligible to apply for permanent residency.

“We had to go to Kansas City and fill out all kinds of forms and get pictures taken,” Juana recalled. “They gave us a big old manila envelope and said, ‘Don't open it, take it with you. You have to go back to Mexico and wait there until the Mexican Consulate calls on you. Then you can get your permanent residency and come back to America.' But we honestly did not believe we were coming back. We said goodbye to everybody, and the whole family was crying. We headed back to Mexico, and then we spent about a month on the border because my parents had purchased a little blue station wagon and the Mexican government wouldn't let them take it past a certain point. We didn't have much money, and my dad kept trying to work and do odd jobs. I helped sell oranges and things like that.

“After about six months, my parents were able to go to Mexico City to find out what was going on. ‘Oh, you didn't have to wait for us to call you,' they were told, ‘you could have just come in.' It took several weeks and a lot of red tape, but they got everything approved. We headed back to the United States still dreading being turned away, but they let us come across. Crossing the border was just an awesome feeling!”

Juana continued her schooling, attended the local community college, and eventually earned bachelor's and master's degrees in education with an emphasis on English as a second language. She became a citizen when she was twenty-five, took an active role in the community, and later served on the city commission, including a term as mayor. Her greatest sense of accomplishment comes from working with students whose parents are migrant laborers. “I tell them the opportunities are there. You just have to work hard and never give up.”1

A local legend has it that Mrs. William D. Fulton was tending her garden one day when a stranger stopped to ask what the town was called. The railroad men were calling it Fulton, she replied, but she had decided that the permanent name should be something else. Well, the stranger said, eyeing her garden, why don't you call it Garden City? That was in 1878, nearly a century before Juana's family arrived and five years after the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad came through western Kansas. A few years earlier, the area had been the home of some three to four million buffalo.

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