Interviews with Community Members
Juan Pérez from Woodburn
Mam Farmworker working to bring together his community in Oregon and Caring for Family in Guatemala.
Interview by Lynn Stephens, University of Oregon
Audio Interview with Juan
Juan’s Story
Juan grew up in a small hamlet several hours outside of San Sebastián, Huehuetenango. Juan now lives in Woodburn, Oregon and participated in the COFS survey. The hamlet Juan grew up in was about a three and a half hour walk from the main town center. He worked as a child wage laborer in the regional coffee export sector, beginning when he was 10. He and his sister were dropped off at a coffee planation in the community known as La Libertad.
Today, Juan harvests berries, hazelnuts, and other crops in Oregon along with his wife. They have two children who stay with a neighbor while both work harvesting blueberries and other berries in the summer, hazelnuts in the fall, and whatever work they can find between January and June. During the COVD-19 pandemic, they lost months of work and their children were at home.
Juan arrived in Oregon in 2013 from his community in Huehuetenango. After he was here for several years, he paid for his wife María and his youngest daughter to be brought to the U.S. after they received death threats on the phone and through notes where they were living. The death threats were connected to attempts to extort money from them. Juan’s sister Juana accompanied them to the border with Mexico in February of 2015. From there, Juan’s wife María and her infant daughter went through Mexico to Oregon where they applied for asylum. They were granted asylum in 2016. Their oldest child, who had remained in Guatemala, arrived in Oregon in 2017 after she received asylum and was able to join her parents and sister.
Both Juan and María had been working a plot of land before they arrived in the U.S. Juan also did construction work and María worked briefly in a restaurant where Juan ate. For most of their lives, however, they worked planting corn and vegetables and as agricultural laborers. When they moved to Oregon, they sought to continue that work, joining other Mam families, particularly those who are undocumented, in harvesting a variety of products in Oregon forests including salal, pinecones, and wild mushrooms.
Juan a blueberry picker from San Sebastian, Huehuetenango stated, “There are many people who do not speak [Spanish]. Most speak Mam. There is a company I know where most workers speak Mam, 50 percent who do not speak Spanish. Nobody translates. It may be that [the Mam speakers] did not understand the instructions.
Unlike many Mam farmworkers he has a green card and permission to work. Juan has served as a central organizer for a group of Mam farmworkers based in the Woodburn and Gresham areas. In our extended interview he described the work that the group does to me in an interview in March of 2021.
Juan grew up in a small hamlet several hours outside of San Sebastián, Huehuetenango. Juan now lives in Woodburn, Oregon and participated in the COFS survey. The hamlet Juan grew up in was about a three and a half hour walk from the main town center. He worked as a child wage laborer in the regional coffee export sector, beginning when he was 10. He and his sister were dropped off at a coffee planation in the community known as La Libertad.
Today, Juan harvests berries, hazelnuts, and other crops in Oregon along with his wife. They have two children who stay with a neighbor while both work harvesting blueberries and other berries in the summer, hazelnuts in the fall, and whatever work they can find between January and June. During the COVD-19 pandemic, they lost months of work and their children were at home.
Juan arrived in Oregon in 2013 from his community in Huehuetenango. After he was here for several years, he paid for his wife María and his youngest daughter to be brought to the U.S. after they received death threats on the phone and through notes where they were living. The death threats were connected to attempts to extort money from them. Juan’s sister Juana accompanied them to the border with Mexico in February of 2015. From there, Juan’s wife María and her infant daughter went through Mexico to Oregon where they applied for asylum. They were granted asylum in 2016. Their oldest child, who had remained in Guatemala, arrived in Oregon in 2017 after she received asylum and was able to join her parents and sister.
Both Juan and María had been working a plot of land before they arrived in the U.S. Juan also did construction work and María worked briefly in a restaurant where Juan ate. For most of their lives, however, they worked planting corn and vegetables and as agricultural laborers. When they moved to Oregon, they sought to continue that work, joining other Mam families, particularly those who are undocumented, in harvesting a variety of products in Oregon forests including salal, pinecones, and wild mushrooms.
Juan a blueberry picker from San Sebastian, Huehuetenango stated, “There are many people who do not speak [Spanish]. Most speak Mam. There is a company I know where most workers speak Mam, 50 percent who do not speak Spanish. Nobody translates. It may be that [the Mam speakers] did not understand the instructions.
Unlike many Mam farmworkers he has a green card and permission to work. Juan has served as a central organizer for a group of Mam farmworkers based in the Woodburn and Gresham areas. In our extended interview he described the work that the group does to me in an interview in March of 2021.
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“Well, the group that we have is a group of our people who speak Mam…. There are people in need, and who get sick, that is, more than anything they get sick, or they get injured, and they do not have families, because many people are here without family, just alone –even without brothers or cousins…. So, when they get sick, who is going to take care of them? Who is going to give them food to eat? Who is going to pay their rent and the bills? So that’s why we formed a group to support those in need, those who get sick, those who have an accident. We are not receiving any funds, we are not receiving any support, nor are we receiving any guidance from other organizations.
We want to grow this group to help more people in need, but it is difficult for us, as we do not have knowledge, and it is also difficult for us because we hardly speak 100% Spanish. For the work we do, we put the funds in ourselves, from our own pockets. We each put in a share. I will give you an example. We have a person who had an accident, so we must pay their rent. We divide the expenses among all who are in the group, we see how much each of us is going to pay. and we divide it among all the people who are in the group…. So, there is no specific amount we put in, but when someone is in need, we divide up their expenses and then we create an emergency fund from with our own money.
Right now, we have a person who just came here two months ago. He has only worked for one month and now he is ill….so he hasn’t worked. It is difficult for us, the people who work in the fields. More than anything, we feel a little abandoned. But we see that we are the only ones who are supporting this country, because work the field is very hard and very difficult.”
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Juan talked about how he and his brothers and sister who are here all work together to support their elderly parents in a small hamlet high up in the mountains. He talks regularly with his parents and two sisters who remain in San Sebastian. “We speak to each other very day. Sometimes they call me, or I call them, but always we talk every day.” Juan was sending money to them before the pandemic but when he lost work he had to stop. “When we had to quarantine, and we lost work then I stopped sending money to them. The pandemic affected us here, but also it affected them down there. We are the only ones who were supporting them. But since I have been working again, last June (of 2020) I have been able to keep helping them.” Juan works together with his sisters who remained in San Sebastian to support his parents.
“What we do is I send the money to my sisters for my parents, and they buy everything. My parents are old, and they were at risk of getting sick. They live up high, away from the main town… So my sisters buy all the food and then they send it up to where my parents live on Saturdays…we send the food up to where they live with people who have cars and go there. We pay for the transport…. We must send it up to where they live because they don’t live in town. My Mom is sick, and my father is also sick, he has respiratory problems in his lungs and my mom too. So, we didn’t want them to risk coming into town. They haven’t left since the sickness started there in town…. My sisters who live in town both got COVID, but my parents didn’t because they live up high in hamlet. But my sisters, my brother-in-law and my nieces all got COVID.”
Where is Juan from? Where did he learn Mam?
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