July 21, 2006 — Yesterday I got to chatting with a gardener here in the Lake Chapala area. He spoke some English, and so I asked him if he had worked in the United States. Yes, he had, and the priest at the Catholic church he attended there had arranged English lessons for many of the Mexican workers. Despite working long hours, he went to class two nights a week.

But he hadn’t liked the US much.

He had encountered racism and many difficulties. I asked where he had been, and he said Palo Alto. Well, I graduated from Stanford and I remembered seeing an article in the alumni magazine about grad students sleeping in their cars and doing everything else in the campus facilities, due to the extremely high cost of housing there. So I asked this guy about that. Yes, he said, he was one of sixteen migrant workers who shared a one-bathroom apartment. He grimaced at the memory.

Worst of all, he said, was how much he missed his family here. After working in the US for about three years, one day just before Christmas, it got to him. He took a bus ride back home and has been happy to be here ever since.