Jorge Ocejo – now in his early 60s, remembers when he was in elementary school and his parents used to send him along with other kids in the neighborhood to pick cotton with a local contractor.
Ocejo and his brother would be trundled off with a sack lunch of two tacos and a straw hat and the trucker would pick them up near dawn at a house at the corner of their street.
"It was early in the morning when we would be picked up and late in the evening when we would finally be brought back to the same corner," he recalls. "We passed the entire day picking cotton."In those days the cotton fields were to the southeast of Brownsville, near Sabal Palm Elementary. He recalls they would fill the canvas sacks with the soft, light cotton. He remembers that they would get paid anywhere from $2.50 to $3 per100 pounds.
"It was hard work," he recalls. "It would take forever for the sacks we were dragging through the rows to get filled. There were some kids who were real good at it. I wasn't. I just got tired and hot in the dusty rows."
Ocejo said he and his friends were sent to the fields by their parents to earn money for school shoes and some clothes. With earnings per week between $12 and $15, it was their contributions to the family budget. If they had asked for a soda or candy on credit from the trucker, that would be discounted before they go their pay.
"Remember that a bag of Lay's potato chips cost a nickel back then," he said. "With a quarter you could watch two features in air conditioning at the Capitol Theater and have cash left over for a popcorn and a soda."
The Texas State Historical Association states that the growth of agriculture in South Texas was linked directly to cotton production.
"In 1949 Cameron County farmers grew 214,536 bales of cotton, making the area one of the leading cotton-producing regions in the state. Production of other crops such as grapefruit, oranges, and sugarcane also increased impressively, and by the early 1960s Cameron County had established itself as one of the state's most productive agricultural areas."
The National Cotton Council now estimates that in 1985, Cameron County farmers produced 170,200 bales of cotton worth some $ 42.51 million.
But while the cotton crop in the early 1960s was picked by hand, the advent of mechanized cotton harvesting closed that source of labor for local residents and Mexican workers. Instead of having 50 pickers walking down rows picking the soft crop, one man on a machine covered four or five rows in a fraction of the time it would take them to get through one row.
Picking along with Ocejo and his friends were Mexican hands that they picked up at the old Valley Transit bus station near Lopez Supermarket on Adams and 13th streets. They would wait there to jump aboard a truck that would offer them work. The Border Patrol, which today patrols the streets looking for anyone who looks Mexican, would turn a blind eye to the workers.
But while the cotton crop in the early 1960s was picked by hand, the advent of mechanized cotton harvesting closed that source of labor for local residents and Mexican workers. Instead of having 50 pickers walking down rows picking the soft crop, one man on a machine covered four or five rows in a fraction of the time it would take them to get through one row.
Picking along with Ocejo and his friends were Mexican hands that they picked up at the old Valley Transit bus station near Lopez Supermarket on Adams and 13th streets. They would wait there to jump aboard a truck that would offer them work. The Border Patrol, which today patrols the streets looking for anyone who looks Mexican, would turn a blind eye to the workers.
"In those days there was plenty of need for farm labor and the migra would just stand by watching," he said. "It's nothing like it is today."
Unlike the 1960s when agriculture was the area's biggest employer, service and government jobs now predominate. Agriculture has left the southeast part of the county, some say because of the growing salinity there as a result of lower water volumes reaching the Gulf of Mexico and persistent drought.
But for people like Ocejo, the days when families of pickers and field labor would congregate in downtown Brownsville on weekends to do their shopping for the coming week is still a cherished memory.
"Downtown would be filled with people going to the movies, women shopping for fabric and domestic goods, kids running gawking at the store windows and the men listening to los musicos drinking beer," he recalled. "All that is gone and nothing has replaced it. We live in different times now, but no one seems to know where we're heading."
Unlike the 1960s when agriculture was the area's biggest employer, service and government jobs now predominate. Agriculture has left the southeast part of the county, some say because of the growing salinity there as a result of lower water volumes reaching the Gulf of Mexico and persistent drought.
But for people like Ocejo, the days when families of pickers and field labor would congregate in downtown Brownsville on weekends to do their shopping for the coming week is still a cherished memory.
"Downtown would be filled with people going to the movies, women shopping for fabric and domestic goods, kids running gawking at the store windows and the men listening to los musicos drinking beer," he recalled. "All that is gone and nothing has replaced it. We live in different times now, but no one seems to know where we're heading."
3 comments:
"When cotton was king" means it is in the past, like most farming in Cameron County. Instead of promoting agriculture or industry, Cameron County promotes welfare and corruption. Is there anyone at the Cameron County Courthouse who is not corrupt???? This county lacks job skills, has terrible education and is turning farmland into colonias or cheap sub-divisions compliments of the Kardenas Klan. The only cotton that is "king" in Cameron County is probably the tampon.
end of an era and economy takes a beating too
juan this reminded me about times we used to go to el norte to work the fields years ago,great memories, hard work but it helped us to appreciate what we have today, get an education, better jobs etc.
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