A beachhead in the valley
Hispanics see a better life here
"Here I can earn in one day what I would earn in 15 to 20 days in
Mexico. When I was working in Mexico, I could barely afford to buy diapers."
Oswaldo Medina, Mexican immigrant
By GREG MOORE
Express Staff Writer
Half a block off Main Street in Bellevue, in a building that was once a
motel, 22-year-old Oswaldo Medina shares a one-bedroom apartment with five friends. All
have come from Mexico to work in Idaho and make as much money as they can.
The spartan quarters serve as a base to gain an economic foothold in the
Wood River Valley—or, at the least, to make enough cash to send back home to their
families.
Medina said he and his roommate, Antonio Medina (no relation) work
weekdays from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in construction. From 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., they work at
a ranch, painting. On weekends, they’re prep cooks at the Roosevelt Tavern and Grille
in Ketchum. Thursday evenings they have off.
A Mountain Express reporter dropped by the old Bellevue motel about
5 p.m. on a recent Thursday. It’s behind the Donut Emporium on Main Street. At that
time of day, the place was quiet. The only signs of habitation that afternoon were a
child’s tricycle and a couple of pickup trucks parked in the dirt yard.
The apartment livened up as people came home from work. Someone turned on
a stereo and played mariachi music. Three men stood around a pickup truck, drinking beers
and chatting softly in Spanish.
Oswaldo Medina answered his door and said, "sure, come on in."
Though he’s obviously tired, he talked enthusiastically about his
life, and how he got to Idaho and why he’s here. And, yes, he agreed, it would be
good for Anglo people to know about these things.
Medina said he has a wife and a 1-year-old son, still in Mexico City. He
came to the United States with plans to earn enough money to return to Mexico and open a
small grocery store and taxi service. Most of each paycheck, he said, he sends back to his
wife.
"Here I can earn in one day what I would earn in 15 to 20 days in
Mexico," Medina said. "When I was working in Mexico, I could barely afford to
buy diapers."
When Medina first crossed the border, he said, he lived in Los Angeles.
Then he went to work for Best Western motels, and moved to Atlanta, then Memphis. But he
heard wages were better in Idaho, and came to Bellevue about a year ago.
As Medina talked, other roommates filtered in. It was dinnertime, and
Medina got up to fry pork and salsa and chiles in the unit’s tiny kitchen.
Though in most circumstances an apartment shared by a group of
20-something guys might be expected to take on a frat-house atmosphere, this bunch seemed
too tired to do much more than sit and talk quietly and rest up for tomorrow.
One of the new arrivals, Alex, was a little older than Medina, and seemed
more jaded about his current lifestyle. Unlike Medina’s friendly hospitality,
Alex’s voice had an aggressive edge.
"We feel like burros," said Alex, who asked that his last name
not be used.
And yet, Alex and the other men agreed they’re treated well here.
They said they don’t feel discrimination or hostility.
"The majority are good people," Alex said of local residents.
When asked what they do for fun, the men said they don’t have much
time for fun. When they do, they swim in the Big Wood River, fish at Magic Reservoir or
shop in Twin Falls.
These roommates view their cramped living conditions as temporary. But
three doors down, a family of seven shared a similar one-bedroom apartment. For them, this
is home. They allowed two reporters inside, but showed little enthusiasm for talking.
The father supported his family through landscape work. The mother said
she doesn’t get out much.
The reporters moved on with lots of unanswered questions.
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Like Medina, Humberto Ruiz, 24, is from Mexico City. Unlike Medina, he
doesn’t plan to go back.
Instead, Ruiz has settled in Shoshone with his wife and 3-year-old son. In
his seven years in the United states, he’s progressed from landscape work to
graduation from College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls with a degree in hotel management
to his current job as a teller supervisor at Bank of America in Ketchum.
"Everywhere I’ve started working, I’ve started at the
bottom," Ruiz said. "I want to learn everything about the bank. I want to get to
as high a position as I can."
Ruiz said his ultimate goal is to manage a hotel.
It’s taken some time for Ruiz to feel at home in Idaho. He moved
here, he said, to be with his father, who was working as maintenance chief at Elkhorn. But
at 17 years old, with few friends here and no knowledge of English, he was bored. Being
from Mexico City, he said, he wasn’t even plugged in to the Michuacan-centered
Hispanic groups.
The key, he said, was learning English; that and marriage—to a woman
who was from Mexico, but had spent most of her life in the United States.
"Once I got married, this was my home," Ruiz said.
Now, he said, he enjoys the quiet life in Shoshone. He said he appreciates
the fact that he can live in a small town and still hold a good job.
"Mexico City is so dangerous," he said. "But if you go
anywhere else in Mexico that is not a city, you can’t see any way of going forward in
your life."
Ruiz said that when he moved to Shoshone in 1995, there were only three
other Hispanic families living there. Now, he said, he’s lost count.
On weekends, Ruiz said, he spends time with his family, often relaxing at
the Shoshone park. Sometimes, he said, he meets high school or college friends in Twin
Falls. He said that once he crossed the language barrier, he’s had no problem mixing
with both Hispanics and Anglos.
Though Ruiz emphasized the importance of learning English, he’s just
as adamant that his son have the advantages of knowing both languages.
"I’m trying to teach him as much Spanish as I can," Ruiz
said. "He’s going to pre-school now, and after just two and a half weeks there,
he just comes home and speaks English words."
Ruiz also expresses concern that Hispanic youths stay in school. He said
that particularly when they first move to the United States, many Hispanics view the wages
they’re getting doing landscaping or other outdoor labor as a lot of money, and
can’t imagine why they would need more.
"They need to realize that they need to educate themselves so they
can get different types of jobs," he said.
Ruiz said he has given a couple of talks on that subject to Hispanic
students at Shoshone High School. He said it’s tough to convince them to go on to
college, but "for some of them, once they see someone who has done it, they follow on
up."
