← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · confederate_commando
Thread ID: 12810 | Posts: 13 | Started: 2004-03-20
2004-03-20 10:37 | User Profile
:angry:
[url]http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/breaking_news/8204187.htm[/url]
NEW POPULATION: Juan Reyes and his family have taken up permanent residence in Lyons, Ga. CHARLES TRAINOR JR./HERALD STAFF | More photos...
UP FRONT | MIGRATION
Hispanics settling into the south
Hispanic immigrants are increasing their numbers all over the United States, but nowhere as rapidly as in the South.
BY AUDRA D.S. BURCH
[email]aburch@herald.com[/email]
LYONS, Ga. - Juan Reyes spends his days in the dusty trenches of the vegetable fields that populate this tiny southeastern Georgia town. He spends his nights in the commercially seductive aisles of the local Wal-Mart.
After plowing row after row of onions, cucumbers or tomatoes, Reyes goes shopping at the megastore -- window shopping, really, absorbing all the pieces of Americana stacked up and waiting to be taken home.
It has been just two years since Reyes moved to Lyons from Oaxaca, Mexico, with his girlfriend and their four children. The job in the field offered hard hours but a decent dollar, enough to pay for bills and a ticket back home.
But once winter came, and the crops and the field work were no more, Reyes didn't go back to Mexico last year. Instead, he stayed in Lyons for good.
''There is always work to do here, and it's a good place to raise my children,'' Reyes said through a translator. ``I love this country. I love Wal-Mart.''
Stories like Reyes' -- simple but telling -- are unfolding all over the South, changing the economic and social landscape as they do. Every day, driven by the New American dream, Central American and Mexican immigrants -- some legal, some not -- are unpacking their bags for good. They are retiring from nomadic existences, leading a different, lasting wave of immigration, the making of house into home.
Unlike some other regions, the South is rich with agricultural and industrial jobs, and migrant workers and other Hispanic immigrants are increasingly taking them. They are headed for decent-paying jobs at poultry processing plants in Shelbyville, Tenn.; carpet mills in Dalton, Ga.; sock factories in Fort Payne, Ala.
''Jobs, jobs, jobs. That is the story of migration in the South, plain and simple,'' said Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Southern Politics, Media and Public Life at the University of North Carolina. ``The South has grown by leaps and bounds economically, and many of those jobs are held by immigrants.''
TRANSFORMATION
The New South, once rigidly defined in black and white, is changing in cultural, political and economic ways. Census figures tracked an 87 percent increase in the Southern Hispanic population from 1990 to 2002. And unlike places such as South Florida or California, where Hispanic roots extend through three generations or more, Deep South states are new to this kind of diversity -- and the language issue that it raises.
In the 1980s, two million immigrants entered the South. Four million came in the 1990s, swelling the total number to 8.6 million -- or about 9 percent of the population. Almost two-thirds are from Latin America.
The South is now home to one-third of U.S. Hispanics, second only to the West and more than the Northeast and the Midwest combined.
North Carolina, Arkansas, Georgia and Tennessee have the fastest-growing Hispanic populations in the nation, with four- to six-fold increases since 1990. Hispanic populations have tripled in Alabama, South Carolina and Kentucky.
'A GOOD LIVING'
''The word got out. People were telling their friends back home that there were jobs, a good living to be made,'' said Doug Bachtel, a University of Georgia demographer who has studied immigration for 20 years. ``So often what you have is people who are working at jobs that others would not take -- such as in the areas of agriculture, poultry processing, construction and landscaping.''
The change is being felt on the front lines of public health, social services and educational and cultural institutions.
In Lawrenceville, Tenn., police and other city employees are taking crash courses in survival Spanish. In Lexington, Ky., police take five weeks of Spanish, then head for Michoacán, Mexico, for immersion courses. And in Raleigh, N.C., the diocese has hired a Hispanic priest to serve God in Spanish.
In Reyes' new home of tiny Toombs County, Ga., and nearby Vidalia, the signs of this new life are everywhere -- a Spanish-language newspaper, radio programs, dance clubs and dozens of restaurants and grocery stores, the things that turn strangers into communities.
''Stuff like that makes you feel like you have a little bit of home here,'' Reyes said.
TACO EMPORIUM
At the Taco King in Lyons, a vibrant Mexican tapestry hangs in the window. It's huge, so huge that it blocks the view out of a diner crowded with Hispanics who are ordering in their native language from their native menu.
At the tiny Teaming Corp Migrant Workers, an employment and training agency, the walls are covered with notes in Spanish. Some are for English-speaking workers to learn the language; others are for Spanish speakers learning to navigate the office.
Most days, the waiting room is filled with Hispanic families looking to stay. Folks in the industry call it ''settling out,'' and this nondescript office is ground zero.
''The people coming here are looking for help getting placed in employment so they can settle here outside the traditional migrant work,'' said Gloria Shaw, a caseworker at this employment and training agency.
RANGE OF SERVICES
Shaw's office provides a range of services, mostly to get workers ready for life out of the fields. Among them: English-as-a-second-language, GED studies, lessons in social skills and job readiness.
Frances Gutierrez, who settled out of the migrant system several years ago, has since earned a GED and now works for a community organization. She did it for her children, two boys who want to play football.
''Working field to field, it's too hard on the family,'' Gutierrez said. ``Kids need someplace to go home to.''
Same story across town in the rural stretches of Lyons.
For years, Rogerio Hinojosa, a field crew leader, worked the migrant circuit -- by the crop, by the month, by the seasons of nature. It began with oranges in the fall, then onions in the spring and pickles and tobacco in the summer. With a wife and three children, Hinojosa decided he needed to plant his own roots. Not necessarily settling out as much as settling in -- still working the migrant fields but building a home in Lyons.
It was a move that allowed his children to know the meaning of community.
''I am never leaving here,'' Rogerio Jr. said between bounces of his basketball. ``This is home.''
Herald staff writer Tim Henderson contributed to this report.
2004-03-21 03:17 | User Profile
Yep, Shecky is turning up the heat in the pot too fast. It's gettin' might uncomfortable in here, and I'm about to jump out and save myself. Shecky is scared of Southern whites, especially in rural areas. Therefore, he works through intermediaries down here. After all, Shecky's folks that came down here and opened up the dry goods place up on the square made a bit of money, but they had no influence on us. Instead, our culture influenced his children until, for all practical purposes, they no longer are really part of the Tribe. They are now one of us. We are the only culture that has been able to tame Shecky like that. As a result, we are at the top of Shecky's hate list.
But Shecky is making a big mistake. He is jaming the mud people too fast, and as a result, many of us have now felt the heat. His hateful zeal to destroy the Southron has blinded him into making some soon to be realized major tactical blunders. Hate and hubris always does in Shecky in the end. Ditto for the descendants of the murderous Cromwell's Roundheads to the north of us. More frogs are getting uncomfortable around here than I've ever seen. It used to be "the Niggers are getting everything" was THE buzz pharse around here, but it was all just idle chatter. Now there is that confusion and fear in the voice, and I wouldn't call it chatter either. Yea, Billy Bob may not know exactly what is happening to him, but he is very aware that something most certainly is. He knows enough because the attendance at gun shows sure do seem to be going up.
2004-03-21 06:47 | User Profile
Mexicans and/or Latinos in the South?? Waaay c-c-c-c-c-cool! Isn't divers-wity wonderful?? I'm gonna dye my hair black just to feel more Mexi-can.
Tex, I'll have a burrito, 3 tacos, an enchilada, some tortilla chips w/salsa......aaannndddd.......a tamale. No, I'll eat it here......[munch, munch]....mmmmmm....yummy! Hasta la....hasta la......hasta la......uhhmmmm.....what comes next?
2004-03-22 12:25 | User Profile
I live in East Tennessee. Our community has only 58.000 of that in the past ten years 18% are Hispanic. The Hispanics now out number black that have been here 300 years. What next will they out number use?
2004-03-24 22:02 | User Profile
It is no real consolation that the Tan Man will speak mexican, not ebonics...
:saddam:
2004-03-24 22:49 | User Profile
That article is a load of ****.
First, Lyons isn't "tiny." Lowes and Wal-Mart don't locate at dusty crossroads.
Second, the Taco Emporium is out of business, and has been for a while. A typical m.o. of the mestizo is to rent a building his presence has rendered unsuitable for use by civilization. He then proceeds to operate an un-economic past-time, and blows-out after a few months without paying any rent, but leaving the structure much worse for wear.
Third, if that mestizo spoke english in the manner quoted, I'll eat my shoe.
Fourth, the reason he's stayed is because he can get welfare (ie, the white taxpayers support him and his brood).
Fifth ( and most importantly), the reason this bandito is hanging his sombrero in South Georgia is because the onion farmers of Toombs county want him there to pick their produce. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the man whose wife will be killed and daughter raped by good, hard workin', trying to "better himself" Juan has facilitated this scourge on himself and his community. And to top it off, this charming fellow, with the pretty house and pleasant family might even have a Confederate flag in his yard. He'll be happy to tell you that it's "Heritage not Hate" (or some other pandering non-sense).
Whether it's textile mills in Dalton, construction companies in Atlanta, landscaping services in Savannah, or truck farmers in Vidalia, the common denominator behind mestizo congregation is greed--by a group of businessmen totally bereft of concern for their communities and even their own families. It's as if they don't even fathom what lies ahead. But, I suppose since their parents and grandparents kept their mouths shut during the federal ban on free association for whites, they don't figure there's any harm. After all, they're doing OK, and it's been 40 years since forced integration. Why not put the "spanish" to work? Even the church has opened its doors and pocketbook to these good folks!
Guess what race these businessmen are. No, it's not the same as those who run Georgia's newspapers!
Welcome to the "New South." It's a lot like the old one, only dumber--and devoid of the group cohesion that formerly stayed the tidal wave.
2004-03-24 23:30 | User Profile
You're right--scalawags and carpetbaggers are the ones who've been doing this to us, our own kind! And unlike the Planters of days gone by, these NewSouthers don't stick up for White Folks and keep the coloreds in line like days gone by...The Amerikan Dream!
2004-03-24 23:30 | User Profile
Excellent post IK. The landscapers around here think they're real big shots by having some messican labor.
2004-03-25 02:44 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Franco]Mexicans and/or Latinos in the South?? Waaay c-c-c-c-c-cool! Isn't divers-wity wonderful?? I'm gonna dye my hair black just to feel more Mexi-can.
Tex, I'll have a burrito, 3 tacos, an enchilada, some tortilla chips w/salsa......aaannndddd.......a tamale. No, I'll eat it here......[munch, munch]....mmmmmm....yummy! Hasta la....hasta la......hasta la......uhhmmmm.....what comes next?
----[/QUOTE]
Hey Franco, mi amigo,,,,,,, it looks to me like you are very familiar with the mexican food,,,,, are you sure you don't have a señorita hiding away somewhere? ,,,,,, you guys keep this up and I'll have my Mexican amigos name me King Ponce of THE USXICO, LOL .
Like I keep telling you guys, don't blame the Illegals for wanting the so called American dream, blame those in Washington DC that are doing nothing about those people....... a mis amigos de mexico, los quiero como hermanos.
2004-03-25 03:24 | User Profile
a mis amigos de mexico, los quiero como hermanos.
Being the polite, tolerant person that I am, I won't say anything...
2004-03-25 03:28 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Franco]Being the polite, tolerant person that I am, I won't say anything...
----[/QUOTE]
Hahahahahahaaha Franco, that's why I like,,,,,,,,,, it means, "to my friends from Mexico, I love you like brothers"
2004-03-25 08:22 | User Profile
Hell it is not just the South the "Wetbacks" are overrunning every part of the USA from the Southwest to Georgia to Kansas to upstate New York for God's sake they seem to be everywhere. Western Kansas is getting as bad as Kaliforia and the White Americans are fleeing to the eastern part of the state. Parts of Georgia and Arkasas are just bad. They are destroying America! :angry: :sad: :wallbash: :yucky:
2004-03-25 14:21 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Welcome to the "New South." It's a lot like the old one, only dumber--and devoid of the group cohesion that formerly stayed the tidal wave.[/QUOTE]
Excellent post, Thornwell. This statement and the rest of your post sum up why blacks were tolerated and controlled in the Old South and why blacks and Mexicans are tolerated and not controlled in the New South. The elite want a servant class and will do what it takes to get one and who cares what the rank and file commoners want.