The 'Bolillo' - a personal experience of working a day with Mexican farm workers, weeding an onion filed - Brief Article

Commonweal, Sept 8, 2000 by George Dardess

Six a.m. of a July morning in an onion field in Wayne County, New York. (Wayne County adjoins Lake Ontario, between Syracuse and Rochester.) The six of us had just parked our cars at the field's edge. Mist was rising from the wooded areas surrounding the field. The sky was overcast--thankfully, for the weather had been hot and humid.

There was a discussion about guantes, gloves. I'd brought some canvas ones, but they were the wrong type. What were needed for weed pulling in wet grass were the yellow rubber ones. Tirso spoke briefly to Lazaro, then one handed me his left glove, the other his right one. But wouldn't they be lacking a glove? They grinned. "Doesn't matter," said one. "He's left-handed, I'm right-handed." We set off to where they'd left off weeding the previous day.

The fact that Tirso and Lazaro, economic refugees from Mexico, had included me, the gringo, indicated an unusual openness and attentiveness. Here illegally, how could they not view me, the bolillo (their preferred term; bolillo is a type of very white Mexican bread) with suspicion and resentment? All they and the other field workers knew of me was based on a brief encounter a few days earlier. As part of a "field study" requirement for the diaconate in the Diocese of Rochester, I had been touring farmworker encampments with my mentors, Padre Jesus Flores and Sister Lucila Romero. We were looking for an equipo (group) that might be interested in my leading a mini-mision among them. I would do Bible study, teach some English, and encourage the men, most of them far from home and facing daily indignities as indocumentados (people without papers). The mini-mision would begin with Sunday Mass followed by a procession, and would culminate a week later with Mass at the encampment.

Padre and Sister explained this to the men as we sat in their trailer, sipping soda. Then all eyes turned to me. What did I have to say for myself? Instantly, I became conscious of how out of place I was, my imperfect Spanish, the physical and cultural disparities. A social disaster was in the making. I prayed for inspiration and said that the mini-mision would concentrate on the semillas del Reino de Dios (the seeds of the Reign of God, mentioned in Matthew 13). We would encourage the seeds' growth in ourselves and in one another. But first I wanted to work with the men, since I needed to share in their lives if I was going to share in their prayers. It was not a great speech, but it was enough. After that day I felt that our differences were transformed, that they motivated us in concrete ways to affirm one another's reality in Christ.

The rubber gloves, for example. They were more than symbols of generosity and attentiveness. They were sacramental. They anticipated the sharing of the eucharistic meal. By becoming partners in the mini-mision, we were asking that each detail of our lives be changed into signs of the kingdom where we could stand as true equals.

A more concrete approximation of the eucharistic meal was offered in the field at midday. We had spent the morning weeding, moving up and down the rows, gabbing and singing. Toward noon, Felix asked me if pizza was an American food. I wasn't clear about the point of his question, but said, yes, and that I'd even heard Italians seldom ate it. The answer seemed to satisfy him. The men quickly pooled their money and asked me to accompany Cornelio to buy pizza for lunch. No, I couldn't help pay. It was their treat.

I didn't understand the sacrifice this represented until later. The men ate the pizza to provide me with food I'd be comfortable with; the money--two or three dollars apiece--represented half a day's wage in Mexico; and the length of the lunch break--an hour by the time we'd finished the last slice--got them in trouble with the owner of the field. Yet none of them resented the sacrifice.

In the early afternoon, the clouds broke and the sun blazed. Unaccustomed to the heat, the stoop labor, and the farmer's failure to provide drinking water, I got lightheaded. What would happen to these vulnerable people, I wondered, if this bolillo should drop dead among them? But there was to be no melodramatic collapse. I simply quit early, before the end of the men's twelve-hour day. Don Jose, a member of the equipo, summed up the situation. In the morning I had told about a hike to the top of the Aztec Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan with my wife and a Mexican friend. The friend had pretended to cut out my bolillo heart and replace it with a Mexican heart. "Jorge," Don Jose joked, "in the morning you had the heart of a Mexican; but in the afternoon you had the heart of a bolillo again."

When I began pondering how to open the mini-mision, I thought of my day in the fields. Wasn't there something to help me illustrate the theme of "the seeds of the kingdom"? Suddenly inspired, I poked under our kitchen sink until I found what I was looking for. When I addressed the mini-mision, I told the equipo how they had taught me about the semillas del Reino. Then I pulled out a pair of yellow gloves and held up a pizza box. The men smiled. They knew exactly what I was talking about. Sometimes it is the humblest objects, and the most unlikely situations, that make us aware of the love that surrounds us. "They are seeds you planted for me," I told them; "seeds you planted for yourselves and for the whole church."