The World of Mexican Migrants by Judith Hellman

Author:Judith Hellman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2011-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

Like the great majority of Mexicans who work in restaurants and delis, Carlos found that he could move up the ladder according to the skills he could master in food preparation and the amount of English he could acquire. For a dishwasher, a spot chopping vegetables would represent a major step up. Skill in that job could lead to a place as saladero, who has to compose a salad according to some preset design, or grillman, who has to cook meat, poultry, fish, or vegetables—all of it thrown on the grill at different moments—to just the right point. If he stuck with it long enough, Carlos might hope to become the cook’s assistant, or even the cook, and possibly, one day, would rise to the level of chef.

While Carlos’s description of the hierarchy in the kitchen is the one I have heard most often, from another migrant, Angel, I get a very different take or, at least, a more complex picture of the relative status and advantages of workers involved in food preparation and delivery. Angel is the migrant whose story we picked up as he crossed the border at Juárez with his friend Martín, and was detained twice by the same INS agent at the airport in El Paso before finally taking off for Chicago on his third try. After a stint landscaping in suburban Chicago, Angel went to New York to join friends from his hometown who found him a job in a gourmet sandwich shop in lower Manhattan. Angel says:I’ve been at the sandwich shop for eight years and basically I can do every job there is: sandwichero, saladero, supero, you name it. Right now, I’m the guy who comes in at 6:00 A.M. and I open the place and get going baking the muffins and the cookies and preparing the fruit salad and the “special salad”—whatever that turns out to be on any particular day. I really like the kitchen work when it’s quiet and I’m working alone or with just a couple of other guys.

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