
I WORK FOR MEXICANS
I helped to form, and work seasonally for, a cooperative microenterprise with a half dozen Mexican and Salvadoran immigrants. I met these guys at my job as a coordinator of community gardens in New Brunswick, New Jersey. We rent land and grow strikingly beautiful giant marigolds that we sell to New Brunswick’s many Mexican residents for the Day of the Dead. Also, people with tiendas come, in vans, from Philadelphia, Manhattan, Freehold, Trenton, Asbury Park, Passaic, Atlantic City y otros ciudades para comprar multiple bouquets for resale.
The muchachos and I — me llaman Marcos — split the work and proceeds equally and we hire some of their family members for our busiest days. Demand for our flowers is strong. We could make semi-serious money if we were a little more focused and if the various Co-op members didn’t all have other jobs with unconventional hours, as landscapers and warehouse workers, and didn’t do things like wind up in Robert Wood Johnson Hospital — again — during the flower sale after going on another drinking binge. Or disbelieve weather forecasts. Ex cetera, as they say in Spanish. Cultural differences are sometimes interesting and enriching. At other times, they are vexing and inefficient. The same is true of collective decision-making. Thus, for La Cooperativa, all of that stuff squared.
Today, Halloween, was, at it is traditionally, one of our busiest days. We began working before daylight. The other Co-op members arranged and sold the flowers under a shelter. We jointly decided that I would go to one of our rented fields four miles away and cut additional flowers with my machete in the rain, alone. Normally, we work together on such tasks. But today that division of labor made sense.
Cutting was pleasingly primal, especially with water falling on my face, t-shirt and bare arms in a rare warm wind. One could see and feel the seasons changing. I was harvesting the product of both nature and hard work that had been done expectantly under a hot summer sun. Goats bleated — or whatever those sounds are — as black chickens roamed and pecked the ground nearby. A time to sow, a time to reap.
As I worked, an unfamiliar, dressed-for-outdoor-work Mexican man in his early forties called to me from the edge of the field, his voice muted by the rain. I beckoned him to approach. He, and a friend now walking with him, had seen the bright flowers through the mist from the rural road alongside the field.
They asked me in broken English if they could buy some flowers. I answered them in Spanish and we continued thereafter in their language. As often happens, they were surprised and pleased that I could understand them, and they praised my Spanish. While some gaps remain, I have a sizable Spanish vocabulary, can conjugate verbs pretty well and, therefore, can pull off a long discussion. So a short one is easy. I’ve surprised, and shared laughs and goodwill with, hundreds of Latin Americans, both in the US and abroad. This experience still hasn’t gotten old. When it does, I’ll know that I’m getting tired of living.
During the discussion, the rain-soaked men asked me how I knew about growing marigolds. I told them that Mexicans taught me. Exaggerating for fun, I told them that Mexicans were mis jefes (my bosses). They seemed to think this was some combination of surprising — if true, and my presence in the field at least suggested that it was — funny and great. Que bonito el pais! (What a country!)
I cut an unpackaged batch of brilliant — mostly school bus orange with a few sunny yellow — strongly pungent, bigger-than-baseballs, damp flowers abundant enough that the carrier had to wrap two arms around them. He handed me two wet, crumpled twenty dollar bills plus a ten. They thanked me and I thanked them. They left happy to have effected this spontaneous transaction yielding really nice flowers to commemorate their forefathers and mothers on the evocatively scented altars they construct inside their homes. I leaned over and slashed more waist high stalks for another hour until I had enough flowers to fill the back of a large pick-up truck.
When I returned to the gardens where my co-op partners were arranging and selling flowers, one of them, Andres, told me that while I was out harvesting, some Latino wholesale buyer had stopped by and requested a deep discount. Co-op members look unfavorably upon discounts because we know the expenses that we must cover and the hard work that we need to do to produce good flowers. The buyer hit an impasse with Andres. So, using the old let-me-talk-to-the-boss strategy, the buyer asked, “Where’s the Americano ?” (Me).
I guess the same buyer had also stopped by last year to inquire prospectively, figured I was the boss and that, when it mattered, he could negotiate a better price with me. The buyer didn’t know that that wouldn’t have worked: I take an at least equally hard line against discounts. I always remind discount seekers that people worked hard to make the flowers grow and that workers’ labor needs to be respected and fairly compensated. Plus, I was raised not to bargain. Take it or leave it is a broader theme in my life. It might be my epitaph. It might be what kills me.
In order to end the negotiation, Andres told me that he told the buyer, “We fired him.”
The buyer asked why.
Andres responded, “He was selling the flowers too cheap.”
