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Chapter 14: The cotton pickerNala, school part as Depression deepens
A.E. Araiza, The Arizona Daily Star Nala mounts the old schoolhouse steps for the first time since 1932, but the door is locked. By Carmen Duarte The Arizona Daily Star Nala cooked, cleaned and took care of her younger brothers and sisters day in and day out until she was about 16. In 1932, as the poverty of the Great Depression deepened in the Gila River Valley,, Dolores pulled her from school for good. Nala (my Mama's nickname) had completed fourth grade at the Mexican School in Duncan, trying her best to learn. She received no support from her parents and little from her teachers.
``We played most of the time,'' says Mama. ``I learned my ABCs, math and spelling. I knew a little bit. But most of the day, we played. ``There was a retired teacher who lived next door to the Mexican School. He reported that the children were playing all day. ``Otilio Reyes, (the town barber and a council member) started questioning the practices. New instructors were brought in and the others were let go. I started learning again with the new teachers, but then my mother pulled me out of school.'' The Anglo-controlled school system, purposely or not, slighted Mexican students. Their parents, most of whom spoke no English, many of them illiterate, voiced no protest, wrote no letters of complaint. The separate, unequal treatment for minority children continued for Hispanics until the Mexican School closed. My cousin Natalia Peraza, the daughter of Tía Angela, says that when she was a student at the Mexican School in the 1930s, she was taught math and spelling. ``When we went on to the American School, teachers there started complaining because we were behind in reading and writing. Our English was not up to par. ``Complaints began pouring in, and I think it was in the 1940s (actually 1951) when the Mexican School was closed.'' After she left the Mexican School in 1932, Mama never set foot there again until last July. The Duncan Public Library was then housed in the old school building, now just one story and owned by the American Legion. Mama walked quickly up the front steps and reached for the doorknob, but the building was locked. She put her head down, turned around slowly and walked away. I felt a tinge of sadness, thinking the doors were closed to her once more. In her mid-teens, Nala traded cooking and household chores for the cotton sack. Dolores wanted her daughter in the fields, pulling her weight and earning money for the family. Nala was good at picking cotton. She walked those rows with her brothers and sisters and hundreds of other Mexican-Americans and Mexican nationals. Day in and day out, the cotton was picked, weighed and dumped into large trailers that hauled it to the gins in Duncan or Safford. Some people sang rancheras, letting out the wonderful gritos while they picked. The singing. made the days go by faster. Nala picked 300 pounds of cotton on good days, beating some of the men. When her sack was full, she lifted it onto her belly and then up over her shoulder to carry it to the weigh station. This caused a hernia that has given her problems all her life. Her brother Florentino saw how she was hoisting the cotton sack from her stomach to her shoulder and taught her the correct way to lift it without further injury. ``Carnala,'' he'd say, ``look at me. You squat and get under the sack. Then you lift it with your shoulder and back muscles.'' When the crop was successful and cotton prices were high, pickers could earn up to $7.50 a day, more than some laborers in Morenci's copper mines. But through much of the '30s, workers earned less than a penny a pound. By the end of 1932, Nala's Mama, Dolores, had separated from Don Juanito. The kind man was left with Juan, Antonio, Florencia and Isidro to raise. Dolores moved to Safford with the two younger children, Lola and José. Nala did not like what her mother did and stayed on with her stepfather. Don Juanito was a good soul. He had married Dolores and cared for her five Bejarano children. As if that weren't enough, the well ran dry that same year. The family carried water in buckets from a nearby irrigation ditch. Nala helped Don Juanito, who was working in nearby Franklin, raise the family. She became mother to her younger brothers and sisters. Little Juan's hunting and fishing skills helped provide for the family. So did his quick fingers. Years later, Nala learned that he stole chickens from a neighbor to help feed the family. Nala's sisters, Angela and Gumesinda, helped when they could. They and their families continued to live in the cluster of adobe homes on the acreage Don Juanito and Dolores had bought by the Gila River, not far from the fairgrounds. Their grandmother, Nana Leonarda, took turns staying with the families. Her husband, Tata Florentino, had died in 1930 of cancer. Decades of helping support their childrens' families had exhausted the abuelos' financial resources. They had slaughtered all of their livestock for food and had lost the family farm in Virden where Nala had lived and prayed as a child. But their lives were still better than the migrants who ended up in the valley during the Depression.
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Ch. 1: Field of death
Ch. 18: The New Deal
Ch. 24: Cotton pickers and copper miners Ch. 27: The family doubles its size
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