An Emotional Tug of War for Mexicans in U.S.

Abel Chavez and two friends are being pulled in different directions by family ties and a love of country in the wake of the debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement. They are thinking of going home to Mexico after more than 20 years of living here. They like the prospect that the free trade agreement may spark thousands of new jobs back home, creating a job market that didn’t exist when they left for Los Angeles.

Chavez, Juan Rocha and Diego Martinez are torn because they’d face a certain resentment if they returned. During their years here, they’ve forcefully discouraged other extended family members south of the border from joining them, arguing that life in L.A. is too tough and jobs too scarce.

They’re torn because they know it would be difficult to pull up stakes and leave their jobs in a small shop in Maywood that pay them each about $30,000 a year, far more than they could expect to earn back home.

And they’re torn because they don’t know how their Mexican-born wives and U.S.-born children would react to moving. “They gotten used to life in this country,” Chavez says.

It’s a gut-wrenching choice many Mexicans living in L.A. may face if NAFTA, passed by Congress to eliminate trade barriers, creates an economic boom for Mexico.

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Chavez, a man in his 50s who grew up in Mazatlan, said his father, Manuel Chavez, had been against his five sons coming to the United States for work.

“A man needs a skill to find good work,” the father had said. “ Burros can do any kind of work and I don’t want you to be donkeys. Be proud of being Mexican and work here to help your country.”

The father spoke out of experience, having come to L.A. himself for work in 1937. He found odd jobs in the garment industry, but was never able to find one that lived up to his aspirations. Friends here often heard him grumbling about donkeys getting all the menial labor and quickly dubbed him “ el burro. “ The nickname stuck with him long after he returned to Mexico, a disgruntled day laborer, in 1953.

“It hurt my father to have that name,” Abel Chavez said.

Abel and his brothers heeded the advice until after their father died in 1969. Then Abel, unable to find steady work in Mazatlan and determined to do better than his dad, came north. He arrived in late 1973. Life in L.A. was difficult. He missed home. He didn’t speak English. Good work was hard to come by. He fell into menial jobs in restaurants and gas stations.

He met Rocha and Martinez, Mexicans who were apprentices in a tool-and-die plant near Vernon. They encouraged him to try for an apprentice’s job where they worked. The three became close friends as they grew into middle age, sharing joys of their growing families, baseball and ranchera music.

But they still missed Mexico.

Relatives back home heard of the pay the three machinists earned, and sought their help to come here. But each time the three refused, telling stories from their own experiences, or recalling the advice given by Abel Chavez’s father.

“Don’t be a donkey,” Martinez once told a young cousin, “stay there in Mexico.”

Most took the hint. But the three men giving the advice gradually began to question their own wisdom as their homesickness grew.

The ambivalence was pricked again when one of Rocha’s cousins showed up here unexpectedly a few years ago and soon wound up in jail for fighting.

“I told him off when I saw (him) in jail,” Rocha recalled. “I told him to go home when he got out. He did, but I’m feeling guilty about it now. My parents think I’m selfish and won’t talk to me. I think I am selfish, but I do so for my wife and kids.”

Then came the NAFTA debate, and the talk of a bonanza of jobs in Mexico, and the calls from the relatives, and the inevitable question: “You coming home?”

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Chavez, who lives in South Gate, and Rocha and Martinez, who live in Bell, invited me to join them for a beer and help them wrestle with their dilemma. I didn’t want to get involved. I thought only those involved could make the decision.

I was framing my next question when Abel Chavez caught me off guard.

“Mr. Ramos,” he asked, “what would you do? Stay or go home?”

I couldn’t answer. I’d expected them to ask, but I stuck to my pledge of not giving advice. Besides, what could a professional bachelor with no children tell these men?

They seemed genuinely interested in returning home, but the relative prosperity garnered during 20 years of living in L.A. is hard to give up. And no one knows for sure how things will turn out in Mexico.

We ordered another round. What, I asked Abel Chavez, would his father have said about the men’s choice, had he been sitting with us?

“Come home,” the son said.