Última Correspondencia de Delia Rodriguez

Mi estimada colega Jessie:

por última vez, mucho gusto y te mando muchos saludos de mi parte y para tu familia.

I'm sorry that I cut you off so early the last time, but there was really no other choice. A lady was coming by to drop of a dress she needed hemmed, and she left me an invitation for a social event.

If you remember the last time I wrote to you, I told you that I received 15,000 from IBP because of the injury I received on the job. I convinced my husband to move back to Texas so that we could be close to family and friends there.

We currently live about an hour north of Houston, in East Texas where it is full of trees. Although my husband preferred Nebraska because they paid better, I remember a few horrible nights during the tornado seasons, and i do not regret moving to Texas at all.

So I bet you're wondering what I did with the money? We rented a little house, and my husband began working at a poultry plant nearby called Pilgrim's Pride. Jessie, I hav to tell you that the treatment of people at that plant had to have been worse than even the stories I heard about México. With the money we had left over, we saved it and only my husband worked while I would stay home and take care of my three boys.(The youngest was born in Iowa). I would take up small jobs while they were in school, like custodial and housekeeping at local business offices. Nothing too big, after all, I was coming off from an injury at work and i still had some money in the bank.

But in a couple of years time, the money was gone and I needed to start working. I applied and started working in the same plant my husband did. That has been the hardest most labor-intensive work I've ever seen and done. Chicken pieces move by very fast, and my husbands department was the 'filet', where he would slice out the breasts of the chicken. I was working in the same department, and the most difficult part was carrying the 130 lbs pallets and stacking them on top of each other.

I hated that place. It was a nightmare. Almost all of the workers there were illegals, and they were so vulgar. It was like people just started working there so they could shack up with each other. I hated it. In 1995, two years after I started working there, my husband herniated a disc in his back. He was going to have back surgery done on himself the following year, but have being told about the possibility of paralysis he declined just before the doctor applied the anesthesia.

He still kept working there because they let him work with restrictions and he was afraid that no other place would hire him if he need to have work restrictions on what he could do. I quit working there and started working somewhere else--a cell-phone assembly plant. The work was easy, it was low-skill assembly and there were a lot of women there working with me. We all got the job through a temporary hiring agency, and I thought it was surprising that there were very few men.

In 2002, my husband hurt the same disc again, this time it fractured. He couldn't work anymore and now receives social security disability payments. (we both became US citizens in '97, under Reagan we were given amnesty for being illegals). My husband now stays at home and I work. I have to say that sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't have been better for me to stay in México?

My husband and I both were only a couple of years away from getting our 'licenciaturas', now it's a daily struggle just to decide what we can afford to eat. The only thing I am thankful for are my three boys. They are almost all grown now, and unlike so many young Mexicans like the one's whose parents I know here in town, my boys are all going to college and they've always been recognized in school for being good students.

They were the reason we came here to the United States, but I suppose I expected to have a little more success for myself. Recently, I started working for a meat processing plant, and there was so much blatant mistreatment of myself and other co-workers, I couldn't stand it anymore, and I reported it to the EEOC.

I hate to fill your mind with a lot of negative history, Jessie, but there also a lot of nice things about being here in the United States. Security and a better quality of life are among them, but as for better jobs? I'll say that the pay is certainly better, but the treatment, in my case has been worse here than in México.

I spend a lot of my time reading about human rights and equality and so on thanks to the internet. There's no way I would have access to it in México. I found out about a neat little conference about Tamaulipas about six months ago. I've gone to their meetings twice. Such an interesting topic and good people, a lot from Rio Bravo! I'll be going tonight, it's a good little social gathering to have.

Well, I'll write to you again, soon, Jessie, and keep in touch as well.

Yours eternally,

Delia Rodriguez Guerrero