Terry Easton, Geographies of Hope and Despair: Atlanta’s African American, Latino, and White Day Laborers

I left Guatemala May 28. I had problems crossing into Mexico from Guatemala. Mexican officials threw me back eight times but I kept trying. They tried to get me the last time but I jumped off a train and fell down a riverbank and they couldn't catch me. I was in the army in Guatemala, so I had a compass. I took a train through Mexico. I swam across the Rio Grande. I didn't use a coyote. I got mugged on the Mexican side. They cut my head with a knife. They took my shoes and my gold necklace and then they threw me in the water. They cut me because I fought back. There were days when I didn't have water and I was eating cactus. Oh, the sun! I walked from Laredo to Houston. I would walk until I couldn't walk anymore and then sleep and keep walking. I came in a train to Atlanta . . . Caught it in Houston. When I grabbed a hold of the train, I didn't do it very good, but I held on and the train dragged me and that is why I am so scratched.
— Francisco Castillo 1

On the hot and humid morning of September 10, 2003, thirty-three-year-old Francisco Castillo, a hungry, bruised and scarred man of slight build had just arrived at the day labor hiring hall in Canton, Georgia, after a three-month journey from Guatemala.

Francisco hopes to work in Atlanta for two or three years and send money to his children in Guatemala. In order to save money and arrive in the United States free of debt, Francisco decided not to pay a coyote (or a "pollero" as some border crossers call them) to help him get from Santa Cruz, Guatemala to Chamblee. He made this decision understanding the risks. Francisco knew it might take him two months to complete his journey, so he packed about four-thousand dollars. He paid for transportation and food in Mexico, and he offered bribes to Mexican officers who beat his chest with weapons. By the time "pirates" jumped him at the Mexican side of the Rio Grande and robbed him of his necklace and shoes, he had no money left for them to steal.

After crossing the border into the United States, Francisco passed through Houston, in route to Atlanta. He sometimes asked people for water, while other times thirst forced him to drink what remained in discarded plastic water bottles. For food he sometimes rummaged through garbage cans after waiting for people to throw away their unwanted breakfast, lunch, or dinner. "A police officer saw me do it one time and told me to get out of there," he growls, mimicking the officer's reproach. Fearing that he might be arrested and deported, Francisco did not dare steal water or food. People sometimes gave him food when he asked; other times they told him to go see immigration officials. When he arrived in Canton, somebody gave him five dollars to buy food, and he ate a meal for the first time in three days: bread and a rice-enriched drink.

After arriving at a downtown Atlanta train station, Francisco found his way to the hiring hall through a series of drop-offs and handovers. This chain of concerned people included nuns who told him about Ministries United for Service and Training and their programs to assist people in need, including a hiring hall where men wait for work. This was a fortunate turn of events for Francisco. Eva Villafañe, coordinator of the hiring hall, offered to place him on the sign-up sheet for day labor and searched for a place for him to sleep for the evening. Despite having no money and having slept under a bridge near downtown Canton the night before, Francisco refused her offer. He was anxious to find his uncle in Chamblee so he could call his family and let them know he had arrived safely. He hadn't talked with them since May. "They might think I'm dead."

This episode in the life stream of Canton, a city struggling with the push and pull of economic, political, and familial forces of migrant workers passing through or settling in, highlights one story among many. Gone are the days of white workers filling positions at Canton Cotton Mills (later Canton Textile Mills) as a major source of employment in this town that emerged as a center of textile production in the twentieth-century South. The mills closed in 1981. With the passing of textiles Canton has become a place where Latin American workers at day labor sites and the ConAgra poultry processing plant comprise a vital labor market in this Georgia town that is adjusting to its place as an immigrant destination in the northern tip of metropolitan Atlanta.

Passing time waiting for work. Canton, Georgia. Photo by Terry Easton, August 2003

If Francisco Castillo is unable to find his uncle in Chamblee, he may end up working as a day laborer like thousands of others in the metro region. He would rather not do this. In Houston, he went to the street for work and a man in a pickup truck asked if he could do carpentry. He and a group of other waiting men were hauled away to work with the promise of ten dollars an hour. At the end of the day, the boss ("el patrón," "el jefe") turned to Francisco, rolled up a wad of money, gave it to him, and sped away. Francisco counted thirty-three dollars, about one-third of his expected pay. Angered, he vowed he would never work as a day laborer again.

Francisco Castillo is one of thousands of immigrants who have traveled through or settled in contemporary Latino gateway cities such as Atlanta since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Atlanta is not a final destination for many, but rather a place to occupy for a year or two, make enough money to send a portion to their families back home, pay rent, buy food, and establish some semblance of normalcy and stability while living a temporary life in a region where Spanish-speaking migrants and immigrants are variously welcomed, tolerated, and scorned. In recent years, Latin American immigrants comprised the largest population of new arrivals to Atlanta: "the population grew from 26,000 in 1980 to 108,000 in 1990 to 250,000 in the year 2000."3

Immigrant population growth was not the only demographic shift in Atlanta: From 1980 to 2000, in-migrants from the U.S. and refugees from around the world also settled here. During this period, Atlanta's population grew from two million to more than four million.4 By 2004 Atlanta was the ninth-largest metropolitan area in the United States. The demographic shifts that accompanied this population boom meant that Atlanta could no longer be divided along the traditional racial and ethnic lines of black and white.