From Empty to Full in Five Generations, A Farm Worker Family in Delano

Marisol (center) with her mother (right), sisters, and her sister Delta's children

Last night I went to visit the Rodarte family in Delano, CA., for dinner and conversation about Mexico, farm working, immigration, and the merits of struggle as a motivational force. Mrs Rodarte served enchiladas and Agua de Jamaica, while five of her seven children bustled through the large, bright house. Although they are all adults now, some with children of their own, they still live close enough to drop by for a family meal.

The first of the Rodartes began arriving from Mexico in the 1930s, working in the agricultural industry during the peak season and returning to Mexico in winter. By the establishment of the Bracero Program in 1942, allowing Mexican nationals to temporarily work in the United States, the Rodarte roots were firmly grounded in Californian fields. But the 1960s brought an end to legal farm working for Mexican immigrants, and the next generation of Rodartes traversed miles of dry desert to cross the border for work. Mr Rodarte, the father of the Delano Rodartes, was one of those who made such a journey. He and his wife traveled back and forth from their ranch in Mexico, picking fruit in the fields of California to earn a humble living. The couple had their first child, then a second, and a third. Even when Mrs Rodarte was in the later stages of pregnancy, she recalls, she continued to work 12-hour shifts out in the fields, where temperatures often peaked above 100 degrees.

Marisol Rodarte, the middle child of seven siblings, was a self-described “anchor child.” Her mother crossed the border seven months pregnant and, three months later, Marisol became the first Rodarte to be born on American soil. Immigration laws at the time allowed the entire family to become legalized residents after Marisol’s birth, and the family took up residence in a small apartment in Glendale, Los Angeles, which they shared with other families. Delta Duran Rodarte remembers there being at least 20 people inside the cramped space. But soon enough, the Rodarte parents had saved enough money to afford a home: they chose to move into California’s farm belt, to the small town of Earlimart, where work was available and the cost of living was cheap. The children say that they were just glad to have a yard to play in.

Marisol helps her mother serve dinner, explaining that she learned to cook from observing as a child. Although her parents were gone before 4am every day, Marisol says that her mother would leave burritos, tacos and banana milkshakes ready for breakfast. At night, her mother and father would come home hot and tired, and spend 45 minutes in the shower cooling down before preparing for bed and another long day.

In the summer, the elder sisters too worked in the fields. They dealt with the heat and accepted the long hours, but, as Delta explains, it was the level of disrespect from superiors that was hardest to stomach. Delta says that is was then and there she decided to steer clear of a life in farm working. The oldest sister, Leticia, says that she told the field manager one day that she would never be coming back. He told her, she recalls, that “everyone says that,” and that she would, indeed, return, “as they all do.” But neither Leticia, nor any of her six siblings, followed their parents’ footsteps into the fields. Instead, they finished high school, continued on to junior colleges and four-year universities, and pursued professional careers in education and health care.

An Old Picture of the Rodarte Family

Both Marisol and Delta are teachers at local high schools in Delano, and interact daily with the children of farm workers experiencing some of the same struggles that defined their own past. As Delta points out, unlike the children of immigrants in the city, the children of Delano’s farm working community have little to distract them from the traditional cultural values that have been partially preserved over the past 70 years. As Marisol explained, the Rodartes were raised with the belief that family comes first, and every individual has an obligation to better the community. However, trying to teach the merits of humble beginnings to their children, Delta says, will be difficult. Delta admits that she wants to give them everything she never had, and at the same time instill the principle that there is no shame in having nothing.

Mrs Rodarte says that the hard work was worth it; After five generations of field toil, long hours, low wages and maltreatment, now, her and Mr Rodarte own a beautiful, large house at the wealthier end of Delano, beside the fields. Above the king-sized leather couches and marble coffee table in the second living room hangs Marisol’s degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara. There was a time, Delta reminds her sisters as they sit together on the couch, when they would gather dry cow manure to use as kindling at the ranch in Mexico. There was a time when they owned just one pair of shoes, for school. There was a time when their father, a monolingual Mexican, encouraged his daughters to practice English at home by trying to form a few phrases himself.

Marisol sends me home with a bag of freshly plucked grapes from the day’s harvest, the rest of the enchiladas, sliced watermelon and papaya, and a cup of Hibiscus tea, full to the brim.

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Tags: California, children, Delano, farm, farm worker, Immigrant, labor, social mobility, success