HispanicVista Columnists

By JOHN SALAS
The Pueblo Chieftain

It took just one day of backbreaking work in the broiling Texas sun for Barbara Blagg to realize what many soft-bellied Americans already know - that manual labor has become a task best left to people with names like Manuel.

The slender, 55-year-old Mrs. Blagg is blond-haired, blue-eyed and of Irish and Cherokee Indian heritage. In 1995, she and her daughter, Gina, spent a day in a vineyard, working side by side with the working poor of Mexico, picking grapes by the crate near Kingsland, Texas.

"I get so mad when I hear Americans complain that they're losing jobs to Mexicans," said Barbara. "Americans wouldn't do this kind of work. I did it for one day and I didn't want to go back. At the end of the day I was dehydrated, covered in ant, spider and mosquito bites and had cuts all over my hands. "

Her role reversal in Texas puts an unblinking eye on the highly charged debate over immigration policy and the clamor for more protection of U.S. borders. Those deliberations, say Mrs. Blagg and her husband, Geno, too often cast Mexicans in an unfair stereotype.

"Americans have this impression of Mexicans as being on continual siesta," said Geno, a former construction company employee in his native Pueblo. "But they have no idea of the work ethic of these people . . . they put in a day's work before we've even taken our breakfast."

Barbara's grape-picking experience took place when the family was living temporarily in Texas.

"At the time, my daughter, Gina, and I were remodeling homes and selling them, so we were used to hard work," she recalled. "But this kind of labor was so physically intense. We just weren't prepared for it."

The Blagg women arrived at the vineyard at daybreak and signed up for day labor, hoping to pick up some extra money working by the crate rather than by minimum wage.

"We figured we'd make more by the crate, but the work was so hard we couldn't keep up," she said. "The Mexican girl we went with picked twice as much as Gina and I did together."

At the end of the day, the Blaggs earned a total of $40.

The growing presence of Mexican labor, much of it skilled, should come as no surprise to Puebloans, says Geno. They need only to look outside their windows to see Mexican nationals pouring concrete in their driveways, slathering stucco onto the side of their new homes, attaching roofing shingles and other unglamorous, low-paying jobs that only a few years ago had been done almost exclusively by home-grown workers.

And to those American critics who insist that those jobs return to American hands, Blagg says it's time to wake up and smell the tortillas.

"Too many Americans with the choice between hard work and welfare, choose welfare," said Blagg. "And it doesn't have anything to do with race or nationality."

The Pueblo (Colorado) Chieftain article at: http://www.chieftain.com/life/1133103613/3