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Hopping the Fence
The hot sun seared his skin as Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa bent in the field to pick tomatoes. It was work few Americans would do for just $155 a week, and most of his co-workers on this 10,000-acre farm in central California were, like Quiñones, illegal Mexican immigrants. It was a grim existence: He lived in a decrepit truck camper -- without the truck -- in the middle of a field.One day the farm owner's son came by. "He looked at us like we were less than dirt," recalls Quiñones. Other workers were only too happy to be disdained by wealthy Americans who could have them deported, but not Quiñones. He carried an English dictionary in his pocket and studied it every day. He was studying to become an American.
It had been a year since Quiñones jumped the fence in Calexico. His cousin was supposed to be waiting for him on the American side. Instead he was met by the U.S. Border Patrol. Half an hour later, Quiñones was back in Mexico.
Figuring the border police would never expect the same guy to cross in the same spot on the same night, he went over the fence again. This time, his cousin was there. Quiñones hopped in his car, and the two roared off into the night toward El Centro. It was January 2, 1987, Quiñones's 19th birthday.
The oldest of Sostenes Quiñones and Flavia Hinojosa's five children, Alfredo began work at age five, pumping gas at his father's Pemex station, where the family also lived, on a dusty road 37 miles south of the border town of Mexicali. It was hard work, but Quiñones didn't mind. He also got to drive the cars now and then, perching on a stack of pillows.
By Mexican standards, the Quiñones family was almost middle-class. But in 1976 the Mexican government devalued the peso, throwing the country into turmoil. "We lost everything, just like that," Quiñones says with a snap of his fingers. "I remember going to the back of the house to find my father crying."
Sostenes turned to his brothers, who were working in the United States as migrant farmworkers. They supplied the family with sacks of potatoes and beans. Quiñones helped bring in extra money by working at a taco stand.
Still, he kept up with school. "My father kept telling me, 'You want to be like me? Just never go to school.' And I was not going to follow the same path." At age 14, Quiñones qualified for an accelerated program in Mexicali that prepared students for jobs as elementary school teachers. Each morning, he rose at 4:30 to take a bus to the school. There was no bus home in the afternoon, so he hitchhiked -- or walked -- in the blistering heat.
He graduated near the top of his class. But because his family had no political connections, he says, he was assigned a teaching job at a remote school far down the Baja peninsula. "I wasn't willing to put up with that injustice," he says.
Shortly after, he decided to leave Mexico in search of better options. He had been to America twice before, doing summer labor. So on his arrival, Quiñones headed with his cousin for the San Joaquin Valley to work in the fields. "I picked tomatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, corn, grapes."
After a year, he had saved $8,000 -- almost all of his pay. "I ate what I was picking," he says. "I wore the same pair of jeans the whole year."
When Quiñones looked up from the dirt, the best job he could see was driving the big tractors. The drivers were skilled, and they supervised crews. He was told it took ten years of fieldwork to land such a promotion, but Quiñones was soon behind the wheel of sophisticated plows and ditchdiggers. He learned how to service the engines and qualified for a temporary work permit. "I had that hunger in my gut," he says.
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