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The San Jo Lo Down is San Jose’s first podcast on working class culture, politics, and life–at work, at home, and at play. SJLD is a show about and for the incredible, diverse, talented, inspiring working people of our communities. Though we’ll have content on local music, politics, art, night life, events, and more, the podcast will feature the lives and perspectives of people like you, without whom San Jose would grind to a halt.
321. What's good, everyone? My name is Bill Armeline, and I'll be your host for the Sanjo Lowdown, a podcast about the lives, culture, and politics of working people in San Jose and Silicon Valley. This show is for and about all of you who make everyday life possible in our city, and and we hope you'll join us at home, at the job, or on the road as we bring you the stories often ignored by the mainstream media.
Speaker 2:And we were talking about the union and the difference, and then he said, you know what? I'm fine. I don't need the union. And I said, okay. So, could you please explain to me what it means to you to be fine?
Speaker 2:Is it fine for you to be sleeping, you know, in this fucking room with three people or two people sleeping on the floor, is that, you know, what you consider to be fine? And when you put people, you know, you you confront people with their reality. And, you know, then that's when people start to change their way of seeing the world, right, which is what happened to me. Right?
Speaker 1:San Jose. San Hollow down. Sorry. He's good at Spanish. Given the fucked up colonial history of the region that used to be Northern Mexico as well as native territory, San Jose and Silicon Valley has always been home to a considerable Mexican and Chicano population, and more recently to other Latin American immigrants from Central And South America.
Speaker 1:Today's episode will focus on the lives and interests of these vibrant Latin American communities that represent about a quarter of the San Jose population. To get things started, I'm very excited to introduce my cohost for today, Manel, who's had a chance to interview two guests with incredible back stories that speak to the migrant experience as well as the hustle to get by in the South Bay. Good to see you today, Manel.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Bill. Thank you very much. Yes. We're gonna talk about two guests. One is Adriana.
Speaker 3:And Adriana, I think is she's a very good sample of many of the problems in Colombia. It was very interesting to listen to Adriana explaining why she is here, for instance, why she needed to go out from her country to come here to The United States. And let me tell you, folks, it was not the economy. It was not just this American dream of a better life in The US, blah blah blah. Actually, her first choice was Spain, was not The United States, but they couldn't get there because for whatever reason, and they, decided to come here to The United States.
Speaker 3:In any case, it was not an economic need. It was security. It was to be safe from gangs and corrupt police in her case. That basically was the problem, but let's listen to Adriana.
Speaker 4:It is not a simple question, but there are many of us working on this. So it also raises red flags in one way or another. The United Nations is aware of this work. It has intervened many times. The problem is known at an international level, but we are still dying.
Speaker 4:We are still being killed. In 2023, April was a macabre month for social leaders. And I get goose bumps because in Colombia, it's as if you get used to violence. This means two social leaders murdered per week. Two social leaders killed every week, slaughtered.
Speaker 4:Then it became normal. We have marched, protesting, organized demonstrations, candlelight vigils, but we are still being killed. So this is the situation that made us take the decision to come to this country.
Speaker 3:So, yes, this is a dynamic that is very difficult to change. The context of violent and Latin war is constant in Colombia Colombian history. Hopefully, now with the first leftist government in Colombian history with Gustavo Petro as the president of the republic right now in Colombia, things may change. We don't know. And these things take time, of course.
Speaker 3:It is difficult. And even there was a peace process. There was a peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC, the leftist guerrilla, and other parliamentary groups that was signed in 2016, if I can remember well. But it's difficult to see this piece in the territory. And it looks like not many things have changed.
Speaker 3:So this is what actually happened to Adriana.
Speaker 4:In Colombia, this is very deficient. You can request help from the authorities explaining there's this situation, there's this other situation. Now this other thing is happening. And then you come to realize that these authorities, these people that should protect us, the ones who should watch over our rights are allied with organized crime and are behind the sale and trafficking of children. This is very painful.
Speaker 4:I talk to you about this, and I get goosebumps. My voice breaks. I know this subject is triggering, but this is a reality that we cannot remain silent about, nor we can blindfold our eyes and pretend it's not happening. And once you try to dismantle these crimes, you obviously begin to have conflicts with the leaders of gangs on a different note. In Colombia, there are these paramilitary groups that supposedly had a assigned peace agreement for the main urban areas.
Speaker 4:But in the territories, on paper, everything is wonderful, and we celebrate these triumphs of our government. We really know the effort behind it. But at the actual territories, the experience is different. Life is different. Some groups were dismantled.
Speaker 4:And was there a peace agreement? Yes. But on the territories, these people still exist. They still form a paramilitary group, and they still are committing crimes.
Speaker 3:This situation, of course, was not an abstract conversation about peace, violence, and politics in Colombia. You know? The situation of insecurity and corruption related to children and abuse and trafficking got real for Adriana, very real for her and for her family. Obviously, she needed to leave.
Speaker 4:Social leader for twenty years, give or take. Right now, my memory, I'm unsure. But in these twenty years, do you think this is the first time that I have received threats for doing my job? They always existed. They always left sign on doors, on walls where they threaten you saying, we're going to do something to you or we're going to kill you or you have to leave by Friday or else.
Speaker 4:This has always been the same. But one thing is that they do this to you and a very different story is when they go after your family. When they assault your husband on a bus stop at a traffic light with a gun or when they come after your daughter. I sent my daughter to live in a different city to avoid this situation and they found her regardless. It's very different when they harass your sister who is also a teacher, who is a volunteer.
Speaker 4:They are just girls. My daughter is 23, and my sister is 27. They are just volunteers. They are not professionals in these areas. They simply volunteer.
Speaker 4:When they harass them, they kidnap them. When they break into your house and break everything and throw and tear everything apart, when they arrive to places where you work and you have to leave your work. And here my voice cracks a little because this started to break me. I could no longer provide services in different entities because they threatened the people who hired me. So this became a snowball to the point of having to pull out my daughter from college, having her shelter in place, moving her back to where we were living, pulling my daughters out of their school bus route, of their skating lessons, of their swimming lessons because they were in danger.
Speaker 4:Since I work with women, the criminals found my weak spot where the little women in my family. My brother was also also threatened. Then it happened to my other brother. So they also had to leave Colombia.
Speaker 1:Perhaps one of the biggest takeaways from our guests in this episode is the role of public violence and insecurity enforcing their migration. Where Adriana describes the not so peaceful peace in Colombia, Our next guest, Yurina, describes her conditions under the threat of violence in Mexico. Let's go back to Manila to hear more about Yurina's story.
Speaker 3:Yes. Thank you, Bill. Yes. Yurina is a different, but at the same time, a similar story. She also left Mexico because of a security dilemma, because of life, death situation.
Speaker 3:She didn't want to leave because of the economy or the American dream or Disney and blah blah blah again. What she encountered in The US was not at all that picture of a world full of opportunities and so forth. At all, by the way, her story is probably very similar to hundreds of thousands of stories of those coming to Mexic from Mexico. Let's listen to her.
Speaker 4:I arrived to The United States on 09/11/2004 after a shocking event happened to me in Mexico. I had to leave Mexico any way I could and I crossed the border with my children among many others. I just wanted to save my life after what happened to me. And after stepping on United States soil, I realized what have I done? What will I find here for my children, for myself?
Speaker 4:Where do all my past accomplishments go? One week I was working as a nurse in a hospital, and the next I was picking grapes in Paso Robles. When I came here, I discovered what it was to be poor. In Mexico, I did not know what it was to be poor. I had a place to live.
Speaker 4:I had everything. Maybe it wasn't a lot, but it was mine. And I didn't fear to be outside. Here is where I started to worry about just having some change, worrying about my kids' future education.
Speaker 3:This is very interesting or this is just maybe a highlight in the news. Yurina got to know what was to be a poor person here in Silicon Valley, here in California, in wealthy California, in the so called first world, and not in Mexico, not in the so called third world or the in the developing economy, you know, in the South, here in California, here in The United States, the first world. Or I don't know if The United States is the first world at this point.
Speaker 1:You mean she didn't find the land of opportunity?
Speaker 3:I don't think so.
Speaker 1:And And I don't think many of our audience members will find that too surprising. Due to cost of living and housing crisis, Northern California has become a difficult place for anyone to survive, let alone those without documentation. For migrant workers, even those like Adrianna with a college degree, work opportunities are limited to the black market or more manual types of labor in the service sector like in restaurants or hotels, or like for more some of our other guests in this episode in the fields serving a very lucrative agricultural industry that provides fresh produce and famous California wine to the rest of the country and the world.
Speaker 4:The foremen and the companies, the corporations, Californian wine Yeah. Los Campos Napa Valley is filled with sorrow, death, and slavery on this century, on this day. Who put food on our tables during pandemic? Agricultural workers. And at that time, they should have filled their status.
Speaker 4:And as the law requires, but they didn't. Why? Because if they did there wouldn't be anyone to exploit. No one to enslave. I was there for a year, and I spent a weeping and afraid.
Speaker 4:I said to myself, I want to find myself again. Become me again. When you cross the border, you're like a broken pit, And you need to pick back the pieces and glue them together. This is how I simplify the life of the immigrant. Twenty years go by, and you still don't know who they are.
Speaker 1:For all of our guests in this episode, the experience of hyper exploitation and extreme hardship came to define their lives as immigrants to the Bay Area. For Adrianna, like so many other families, this hardship extends to the struggle for housing and to ensure a decent life for her kids.
Speaker 3:Yes. For Adriana, the situation has been very difficult since the since they arrived. First, housing, of course, impossible. And next basic things like, health care, food, education, didn't know where to buy good price food, you know, to go to a decent grocery store that is not extremely expensive. You know?
Speaker 3:They were living, I think, in a hotel for months in what just one room. Imagine a family of five in just one room for almost one year, I think.
Speaker 4:It's a hard struggle every day. In a way, you see me smiling all the time because I know how to manage difficult situations. I've been working on these issues all my life. But I have a family that do not have this skill. I try to teach them, giving them general coping skills but they struggle every day with money issues, with their studies, with their friends, with heartbreak, with the fact that their grandparents are so far away and their uncles no longer live nearby with not having their toys with them anymore.
Speaker 4:And these might seem seem like such little things. They tell me I don't have my room, mom. When will I get my room back? So this is it. The fact that you don't have a shelter for your children.
Speaker 4:Look. It moved the floor beneath their feet. They don't have stability. Psychologically speaking, this generates so much trauma in their minds and in their hearts. Also in ours as their parents, but we have a general sense of direction.
Speaker 4:And of course, we also provide them with tools so that they know, so that they understand, so that they learn. Everything is a learning process, we we say, but it becomes quite complex when you have been living in a motel nine months and you say to yourself, hey. This was a six month project. What happened? Well, everything has been falling apart because there are also health issues that come into play.
Speaker 4:And other issues, many things come into play.
Speaker 1:In addition to the housing crisis and generally high cost of living, and despite the liberal reputation of the Bay Area, Latin American immigrants to our region are forced to navigate racism and other forms of discrimination in their daily lives and in the lives of their children.
Speaker 3:Yes, Bill. In top of that, on top of all of these things, we have been covering race and power relations. What it means to be a brown skinned Mexican here in California or in Silicon Valley? Are you the intruder? And the white people are the natives, people from this country, from this land, or is it mostly the opposite?
Speaker 3:You know, talking about California, treating Mexicans as foreigners here or something like that doesn't make sense at all.
Speaker 4:My youngest son And My youngest son and the only one that was born here goes to school in Los Gatos. It's predominantly white. And sometimes they don't like him talking in Spanish. But he feels it's advantageous when they don't understand him. He's been asked to return to Mexico.
Speaker 4:He answers that he was born here even if his skin is brown. He has a wrestling scholarship and he's very good at it. Once, he won against a very white kid. And maybe because of it, he was telling him to go back to Mexico. Biner went back.
Speaker 4:And my son replied that there were the actual invaders, and they should go back to where they came from. And this is our daily life. Today might be good. Tomorrow, who knows? Maybe your neighbor will frown at you and will accuse you to ice.
Speaker 2:For our
Speaker 1:feature interview in this episode, we sat down with Salvador Chava Bustamante, a well respected elder and labor leader known by many on San Jose's East Side and South County communities. We asked him to share his own experience, relocating from Mexico as a young man, joining United Farm Workers in the middle of their most historic battles, and becoming a leader in the local labor movement. We also discussed the lives and struggles of recent Latin American immigrants to our region and how they're organizing to improve the conditions from for working class families in our city. Chava, welcome. Welcome to San Jose Lowdown.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:It's great to great to see you again as always. So we've been starting off with the first question, and and the first question is just real simple. And we ask, so what's your story?
Speaker 2:What's my story?
Speaker 1:Yeah. What's your story? So you
Speaker 2:How long do we have? I was gonna say you got a long story.
Speaker 1:So it's so you know, it's, you know, if you were if you're meeting somebody, if you're you're meeting new new folks here at at your organization or whatever, What's the kind of background you're given? What's what's
Speaker 2:your story? Is that, I'm an immigrant from Mexico. I'm 72 years old. I came to The United States back in 1968. I was out of, secondary school in Mexico.
Speaker 2:Out of the ninth grade, I wasn't doing well at school. And my mom decided to send me north with my brother who live in Mexicali and work in, in Calexico in the, in the fields in California. It was, in Migrado by then. And so I came. You know?
Speaker 2:The idea was to stay three weeks with them, go back and, you know, enroll in school again and continue my life. Three weeks turned to two and a a year and a half, I decided to stay. My brother had a white '25 '19 '50 '9 Cadillac Sedan de Ville.
Speaker 1:There you
Speaker 2:go. Fell in love with it. I said, I wanted one, and he say, you can't have one, but you need to work. And and that's how I ended up staying. It was quite an experience for me.
Speaker 2:You know? In Mexico living in Mexico City, you know, all I had to do was to get up in the morning, go to school. We were poor, but, you know, I was taken care of by my mom. Right? And so I I didn't suffer.
Speaker 2:You know? So working in the fields, you know, it was quite a an experience for me, you know, having to get up at three, four in the morning, living in the boarding camps and working, you know, at the break of dawn. Mhmm. You know, and it didn't matter if it was raining or if the wind was blowing twenty, thirty miles per hour, or if the heat was, you know, a hundred degrees. Sure.
Speaker 2:Sure. You had to work. Sure. Right? And if you didn't, then, you know, there's a door, Trevor, and you'll see if you can find something better.
Speaker 2:You know? And, you were at the, you know, it was like the Rancheros own you. Right? Mhmm. So you really didn't have the the right to even complain.
Speaker 1:As luck would have it, Chava would be part of one of the most important periods of farm labor organizing in US history. He joined the United Farm Workers Union as they were racking up a number of successful boycott campaigns for improved pay and working conditions for farm workers across the state. By 1975, these struggles led in part by figures like Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta succeeded in establishing the first ever statewide policy regulating the rights of farm workers and establishing the Agricultural Labor Relations Board in California.
Speaker 2:I work in the fields for twelve years. Nineteen seventy, I had the, good fortune of, you know, coming across the United Farm Workers. That was back in, probably April or May of nineteen seventy. By August, more than 3,000 farm workers, my brother and I and my father were on a strike for three weeks until the courts decided that, the union had, that we farm workers didn't have the right to organize and declare the, strike illegal. So we had no choice but to go back to work.
Speaker 2:That's you know, I continue to work in the fields. I was a for, twelve years. Nineteen seventy four, seventy five, the law changes and gives the farm workers the, right to organize and vote for unions. We do. And, I, you know, got involved again with the union.
Speaker 2:I became a rank and file officer, ranch committee president, at Calcoso, and, in '19 we we negotiated our first contract in 1976. By 1979, you know, we were about to negotiate the second contract, and, our demands were so high that the growers decided that, you know, we're not going to even pay attention to them. And so we went out on strike again. We stay out at Calcusto for eleven months. In May of nineteen seventy nine, I was caught by the police in the Soledad outside of Soledad, California, together with, another companero, and we were charged with, possession of, being in possession of a, incendiary device.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. So we spent three months in jail. When I crossed paths with the United Farm Workers, then, you know, I started thinking and seeing the world in a different, in a different way. Right? And so, you know, when I was put in jail in, '79, I I spent those three months reading, from Miguel Asturias.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And, you know, that created a a really profound, you know, effect on me. Mhmm. Right? Because even though the situation was different, you know, I could see that the security apparatus of the system, you know, was working in alliance with the growers to crush our efforts.
Speaker 2:And, and and I decided that, you know, I needed to do something about it. Right? And that I needed to do it in a way that, I would not give them the opportunity to put me behind bars never again.
Speaker 1:Right. Inspired by his work with UFW, Chava pursued union organizing full time and became a political director for the Service Employees International Union or SEIU, where he spent a great deal of time organizing electoral campaigns for local Democratic candidates believed to be pro labor. He would do similar work for another organization, Seoul California, for having an epiphany of sorts. What was the point in electing politicians when once in office, they had to be pressured all over again to act and vote in favor of those working class communities who elected them in the first place? After an honest conversation with his boss at the time, he was encouraged to establish a new organization, Latinos United for a New America or LUNA, that would be dedicated to grassroots organizing of recent Latin American immigrants in our neighborhoods and workplaces and build an effective political voice for those who are often otherwise ignored or overshadowed.
Speaker 1:We actually interviewed Chava in LUNA's office that's still housed in the Tropicana complex on San Jose's East Side. The Tropicana is a hotspot for Latin American and other immigrant communities where the large parking lot's usually packed, humming with traffic and activity between shops, food trucks, and local restaurants most hours of the day and evening. We asked them about who Luna represents and how they go about their work.
Speaker 2:The, recent immigrants, the undocumented population of Santa Clara County in San Jose. We're talking about, people who work in the janitorial industry, people who work in the landscaping, you know, people who work in the, fast food, the fast food industry, just, you know, recent immigrants and their children, and, people who we consider poor in terms of, you know, the level of income. Right? And how did we determine, you know, the communities? I think that's that came from my experience working with, SEIU, working and and and getting to know all these, you know, neighborhoods.
Speaker 1:Where would you say most of your folks live?
Speaker 2:Here in the, in the East Side. Santi, we're organizing in the, the Bonita neighborhood.
Speaker 1:While his own experiences radicalized him and turned him onto socialism, Cava doesn't rely on political labels in his work. And instead, Luna tries to meet their constituents where they are in their lives and their politics. Call yourself whatever you like, but,
Speaker 2:back then, you know, socialism was the way. Right? And, and, working, you know, and then becoming an activist in the community and and unionism, was for me the way to express my my politics.
Speaker 1:Why is that? So so, you know, that's a position I think we are aligning ourselves with as a show. Right? But we we wanna know why people come to the so sort of that that position that they do in the working class. Right?
Speaker 1:So, why would you say that? So so if,
Speaker 4:you
Speaker 1:know, you're talking to one of your members or whatever, and and, like, I'm not really, you know because, you know, we have, certain sensibilities to, you know, concept of socialism in The United States and and and and in Latin America as well for some other reasons. How do you broach that conversation with me?
Speaker 2:I don't I I don't I never talk about socialism or communism or anything, you know, any ideology with Sure. With the people I work with, you know. I just talk about, you know, the reality of their lives. Right? See, you know, you know, I remember this particular organizing campaign where, you know, on a Sunday, I went to talk to this guy.
Speaker 2:We were organizing a nonunion company, janitorial company. And, he lets me into the sala. It was about the size of this little room. There was a couch and, cardboards on the floor. You know, you could tell that, you know, at least three people sleep in that room.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And we were talking about the union and the difference, and then he said, you know what? I'm fine. I don't need the union. And I said, okay.
Speaker 2:So could you please explain to me what it means to you to be fine? Is it fine for you to be sleeping, you know, in this fucking room with three people or two people sleeping on the floor, is that, you know, what you consider to be fine? And when you put people, you know, you you confront people with their reality. And, you know, then that's when people start to change their way of seeing the world, right, which is what happened to me. Right?
Speaker 2:This is exactly what the union did with me. Right? They put me, you know, face to face with my reality and, and the choices that I had. Right? I could either stay the way I was or do something and try to change things.
Speaker 2:Get together with other people, use my personal power, and put it together with the power of other people, and start fighting back against the, the growers.
Speaker 1:Toward the end of our interview, we asked Chava to discuss the primary challenges confronting local Latin American immigrants and what he and his colleagues at Luna viewed as the most viable solutions.
Speaker 2:The lack of opportunities that we have to break the, cycle of poverty in which a lot of people are condemned to live for the rest of their lives. And, again, you know, that poverty cycle perpetuates itself when our kids, are not getting the opportunities that they deserve, in terms of education. For me, you know, the three things that can help people break out of poverty are, you know, a union job. Right? If you can, you know, get a junior job, do it.
Speaker 2:Right? The other is, get an education. If you can get an education, go to school. Right? And the other is, you know, get involved in politics.
Speaker 2:Right? Those are three pillars to me that, you know, if we're able to, get involved and, and and, you know, get a union job. You know, we're involved in politics. We get active in politics, and we can send our kids to school, then, you know, we will be able to break that cycle of poverty.
Speaker 1:So I'm so psyched, for this episode that we got to talk to Chava. I mean, he's such an OG in this community and and and in his neighborhoods. I mean, anyone you talk to out here in the community, pretty much everybody knows who Homeboy is or seen him before even if they don't know his name. And even if they don't know that, he's behind so many things that they've been involved with without even knowing it. So I wanna thank Chava.
Speaker 1:I wanna thank all of our guests for today, Yurina, Adrianna. I wanna thank, Sofia who dubbed, Adrianna and and and Yurina for us. And, really, I wanna thank everybody in our communities, in our Latin American communities, in our Chicano neighborhoods out there who might be checking out this episode and checking out the show. Lastly, to I I think it's dope that we're doing this now, like, right as we're having these really difficult conversations around policy and around some of these quote, unquote crises at the border. We had, folks sent down to El Paso just recently this week to try and handle, you know, in surge of folks trying to get over the border there.
Speaker 1:And I think what comes out of our episode is that, you know, these folks are really caught in trap, trying to really just live a better life and survive somehow, and then they end up in our communities, and oftentimes end up, you know, somewhat voiceless.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Totally voiceless, and we're trying to give them a voice. And I'm, you know, very thankful about the peep for the people.
Speaker 3:You know? And for these two, special, you know, individuals that we're talking, where we are having conversations with, Jorina and Adriana. And I think what we need to have is this experience of connection with people, actually, and to know these stories bearers. Because something that I discovered in this episode was that, you know, the security thing, you know, this aspect of, you know, I need to leave my country because something really bad is going to happen to me. And the people that are coming here to United States is not because they want to invade, they want to get jobs, they want to span or whatever.
Speaker 3:It's because, you know, there's no other option for them, and we need to help them. And they are like us. There's something there's another thing that I'm getting from this episode. We are us, all of us. We are the same.
Speaker 3:You know? We are the same. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, I think that's a really good point. The only other thing I would say is, you know, in terms of the security issues is how many of those security issues are actually, you know, caused by US foreign policy Exactly. Over the past several decades. And so, you know, really all of us have a responsibility, not just to understand their stories, but to push our own government and our own people to do better and to improve some of these foreign policy issues, whether it's sanctions on Venezuela, creating instability in places like El Salvador and Nicaragua and and elsewhere.
Speaker 1:But I I I think that's really all of our work. I think it's all of our responsibility, and, you know, I'm happy that we get to do our little piece today.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, I just think that Sunday will be the whole world, whole continent, and everybody will be connected. And that's it. Now us versus us. Not like the invader the invaders and the natives or something like that.
Speaker 3:That this thing that Trump is telling all the time. You know? I would like to think that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I agree. So thanks to everybody. Thanks to the audience. Thanks to everybody who tuned in, and we'll catch you next time on the San San Jose.
Speaker 1:Slow down. Sorry. I used to do that Spanish.