Where We Are Now: Fidel Ramirez, A Mexican immigrant goes from $6 a day to owning his own company

Driving almost anywhere in Dallas, you'll see that a neighborhood's appearance-road repair, yard maintenance, home construction, and roofing-is quite literally in the hands of MexicanAmericans. A standard defense of immigrants from Mexico is that they perform the labor everyone relies upon to keep the city's infrastructure intact-labor that most white people can't or won't do. They often work under wildly fluctuating pay scales, as well as unpleasant to hazardous conditions.

Dissatisfaction might be the great impetus in the classic capitalist model. You want to continue the work you know best but on your own, more profitable terms. Fidel Ramirez, 51, started the Mesquite-based Fidel's Roofing Co. doing what he'd done for $6 a day when he arrived in Dallas in 1976 - measuring and laying roof shingles on houses. Life is very different now than when he came to America illegally, but it took awhile. After he splashed across the Rio Grande, he wasn't sure what was worse-being a young man who'd only finished third grade in the rural Mexican state of Nieves Zacatecas, or being an itinerant Texas laborer.

"In Mexico, we didn't have money for buying food," he says. "We ate twice a day, and sometimes it was just one tortilla and one hot pepper When we got hungry at night, my mother said, 'Drink more water.' When I came across the border, I ate armadillos and goats and sometimes had to drink green water from ponds."

As he worked his way up the state into North Central Texas, he shifted from migrant farm worker (for $6 a day) to construction man. Both often entailed 13-hour days. He got a better grasp of the English language and gained legal-citizen status. A now-defunct roofing company here paid him $4 per 10 feet of shingles and soon noticed his gregarious interaction with co-workers. The company eventually promoted him to crew supervisor. Ramirez dealt with builders and suppliersand absorbed the business minutiae that company bosses brooded over in their closed offices. In 1983, he quit the best job he ever had and opened Fidel's Rooting. The early years of self-employment proved almost as lean as when he arrived in Texas.

"There was no work," Ramirez says. "The white builders asked, 'Did you come from San Antonio?' I said, 'No, from Mexico.' They didn't trust me. But I had an American angel. The 75-year-old man who lived next to me, he worked for a builder ail his life. He knocked on my door and asked why I wasn't working. He introduced me to his boss. And then he introduced me to other builders."

Ramirez credits luck and word of mouth more than hard work for the rapid expansion of his roofing business around Dallas and Fort Worth. ("You can work like a burro. It doesn't always pay off," he says.) His reputation soon swayed most of the white builders who'd initially refused him business. Fidel's Roofing Co. now employs 20 Latino men and has enabled its founder to buy land and multiple properties in Texas and Mexico, including a ranch, rent homes, and a soon-to-open discoteca in Nieves Zacatecas, Although he still climbs ladders occasionally, most of his time is spent negotiating with lawyers, insurance companies, and the builders who contract his services. He goes to the office and various work sites almost seven days a week, but the worries stem from a different place than when he started.

"There are many headaches," he says and sighs. "I have more people to please, more money to watch. But I am happy."