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Chapter 24: Cotton pickers and copper minersSouthside and new work lures more of Nala's clan
By Carmen Duarte
Cotton fields blanketed Tucson's southwest side in the 1950s. The fields spread west of the Santa Cruz River from Ajo Way south past Valencia Road all the way to Mission San Xavier del Bac.
Field hands were still in demand. Hispanic, Native-American and African-American families picked and hoed along the length of the river, from Sahuarita to Marana and north into Pinal County's Red Rock, Casa Grande, Eloy and Coolidge. Nala's nephew, little Rudy Bejarano, was among the children who accompanied her to the fields. He had been picking with his father before Nala arrived in Tucson. Nala's brother Florentino had brought Rudy back from Barstow, Calif., where the boy's mother, Hortencia, had taken him to be with her relatives when Florentino went off to war. She died in 1947. After Florentino was discharged and remarried, he went to get Rudy, who had never seen his dad. Rudy was brought into a family of strangers. He missed the warmth and love of his mother's relatives and grew up feeling alone. Rudy says portions of his childhood remain unclear. ``Maybe I have consciously closed that part of my life,'' he says from his westside home overlooking the lush desert property of Pima Community College. ``I do remember some things. I remember being maybe 4 or 5 years old, and I hated Don Jacinto Orosco's voice on the radio.'' Don Jacinto was a legendary disc jockey on a Spanish-language station who was known for his distinct, raspy voice. ``The only time I heard his voice was about 4:30 in the morning when we were on our way to Sahuarita to pick cotton on Saturday. This was in Dad's car. When my father could not go, and I was not in school, I would go with Tia Nala,'' Rudy recalls. ``When I went with her, we would go on a bus. I remember the stench. ``Hijo de su madre, como apestaba - el sudor. (Son of a bitch, how it smelled - the sweat). And this was going,'' he says, laughing. Nala was still a master of stoop labor and continued beating some of the men, picking about 300 pounds a day and earning $40 a week. While Nala worked in the fields, Tucson's southside lured more of the Bejarano and Téllez clan. Nala's sister Florencia and her husband, Manuel Herrera, left Lordsburg, N.M., to begin a life here. The couple and their children, Raúl and Irene, moved into a travel trailer parked on brother Florentino's property at South 16th Avenue and West Michigan Street. The Herreras later bought a trailer and lot on South 16th Avenue, just south of West Ajo Way, and Manuel went to work in the kitchen of the Veterans Administration Hospital. Florencia applied for a nurse's aide position at hospitals and went to work in the fields alongside Nala while she waited. Brother Florentino found a house for Mama Dolores, and she moved from Clifton into the house on West Michigan Street, near South Sixth Avenue. Nala's younger brother, Juan, came with her, finding a job at Hughes Aircraft as a painter, a trade he learned in the Army. Nala moved in with her mother and Juan. The three-bedroom home would later shelter Nala's brother Isidro (``Chilo'') and her sister Angela's grown children, Ambrosio and Natalia, who moved in with her husband, Freddy Peraza. The younger generations wanted more than cotton fields. Before moving to Tucson, Chilo, Ambrosio, Freddy and Natalia lived in Benson, where the men worked at the Apache Powder Co. Ambrosio packed nitroglycerin for $2 an hour. ``We worked in small packing houses. The houses were covered with dirt so if there was an explosion not a lot of people died - only those in the house died. Before I began working there, three Mexican men died in an explosion in the mix house where nitroglycerin was handled.'' ``If a drop of nitro fell on the floor, I would get on my knees and start cleaning it with cotton right away. The floors were made of wood or lead,'' says Ambrosio. Eventually, he and Chilo would get jobs at the mines, still handling explosives, drilling and blasting the tunnels at San Manuel. It proved a wise choice. Unions were resurgent after the war. Job conditions and pay improved. The miners did much better for themselves and their families than their relatives who picked cotton. In time, Ambrosio and Chilo moved their families to Tucson's northside. The subdivisions there were much different - nice middle-class homes in areas where Hispanic surnames were rare. It was a time when parents pushed their children to learn English and forget Spanish because they needed to be American. It was a time when some lost their roots. As the years passed, the families of the miners and the cotton pickers lost touch with each other. Some moved to San Manuel and gave their lives to the underground, retiring after decades of hard, hard labor. Last year, when San Manuel's mine shut down and the children and grandchildren of her brothers and sisters lost jobs, Mama started praying. She continues to pray to God and Santa Elena de la Cruz that all the miners find new jobs.
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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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