C H APTE R 9
The Grass of Wrath:
U.S. Labour Migration and Organizing Practices
among Peruvian Sheepherders
Karsten Paerregaard
This* chapter examines the historical development and social organisation of a global migration network of Peruvian peasants who travel to
the United States on H-2A visas to work as sheepherders for American
ranchers on three years labour contracts (León 2001: 148). It also analyzes the importance of the remittances and savings of these herders on
the rural economy of peasant communities in Peru’s central highlands.
Finally, the chapter explores the social implications of U.S. labour migration for migrants’ livelihood strategies and discusses the broader social
and political perspectives of this migration practice for poverty alleviation in Peru as well as in other Third World countries. The chapter draws
on ield research in the Alto Cunas area of Peru’s central highlands irst
of all from 1983 to 1985, and later between 1997 and 2000, and in Los
Angeles and Bakersield, California, in 1998.
Theorizing Poverty Alleviation in a Global Context
A growing body of literature within the theories of development in Third
World countries calls for more attention to be given to the importance
and implication of people’s own efforts to alleviate poverty and improve
their living conditions (Long 2001). Some of these studies point to decentralisation and empowerment as the answer to rapid change and suggest that such an approach takes the point of departure in people’s own
organizing capacity and conventional knowledge (Escobar 2008). Others
* A previous version of this chapter was published in Spanish in El Quinto Suyo. Transnacionalidad y formaciones diásporicas en la migration peruana, ed. Ulla Berg and Karsten Paerregaard (Lima:
IEP, 2005), 69–96.
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argue that it is pertinent for the researchers of poverty to understand
how people strategically organize themselves in their everyday lives (Nuitjen 2003) and to pay more attention to the strategies the poor apply
to contest the social and cultural categories employed by government
institutions and NGOs who promote development in rural areas (Villarreal 1992: 263–267).
Yet others suggest that we focus on the role transnational connections
play in the poor’s organizing practices and strategies to generate change
and improve their life conditions (Andolina, Laurie and Radcliffe 2009).
Thus, today many rural poor are linked to economic and political processes at an extra-local level through food and commodity chains and labour networks that operate across national borders (Long and Villarreal
1998). These transnational connections expand the room for manoeuvre
available for marginal populations and offer them new opportunities to
create livelihoods (Tsing 2005: 1–18; Kearney 1996; Long and Villarreal
1998). Long observes that ‘globalization processes generate a whole new
range of conditions and sociopolitical responses at national, regional and
local levels’ (2001: 214–229). He also points out that these changing global conditions are ‘“relocalized” within national, regional or local frameworks of knowledge and organization which, in turn, are constantly being
reworked in interaction with the wider context’ (ibid.). Long concludes
that ‘these processes entail the emergence of new identities, alliances and
struggles for space and power within speciic populations’ (ibid.).
Whereas, as Long points out, the ‘localisation’ of global forces provides
peasant populations formerly enclosed in regional and national power
structures with new options and opportunities, a growing number of rural poor in the Third World also take part in the globalisation process by
migrating to the industrialized world. These population movements are
propelled by global migrant networks (Paerregaard 2008) and entail a
constant low of goods and ideas between First World cities and rural areas in the Third World (Levitt 2001; Meisch 2002; Miles 2004). They also
prompt the emergence of bifocal identities and hybrid lifestyles among
marginal and impoverished population groups in the Third as well as the
First World (Smith and Bakker 2008).
While most of the rural poor looking for new economic opportunities
in the First World migrate to urban metropolises where already existing immigrant communities offer them support to ind jobs as domestic servants, factory workers, or in construction and the service sector, a
small group of Third World migrants are recruited as seasonal or temporary farm workers in the industrialized countries.1 Such migrants often
1 In both the United States and Europe, fruit growers and vegetable gardeners make exten-
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The Grass of Wrath
live in many different places and change job and residence frequently,
which make it dificult to establish social networks with fellow migrants in the host country and maintain contact with relatives in the
home country. Similarly, as many Third World migrants working as farm
workers in the First World live in isolated rural areas and have little or
no knowledge about their legal rights, they are easy objects of economic
exploitation and ill-treatment. Hence, while contemporary globalisation
processes have enabled the rural and urban poor in the Third World to
engage in global migration practices and thus elude social and political
constraints that curb their agency and mobility at a local or regional level
in their home society, the jumping of the geographical scale from a national to a global level leads migrants into new mechanisms of economic
control and power relations in the host countries. Because of their limited knowledge about the complex nature of international relations and
their lack of information about civil and legal rights in foreign countries,
their effort to create new livelihoods and overcome poverty by travelling
abroad easily becomes a hazardous and unpredictable affair.
The Grass of Wrath
Over the past thirty years, labour migration to the United States has provided the population of Alto Cunas and other pastoral areas of Peru’s
central highlands with an important source of income.2 Traditionally,
the main economic activities in the region – that is situated between
3,600 and 4,000 metres in altitude – are agriculture combined with
stockbreeding. While agricultural production is oriented primarily towards the peasants’ own consumption, pastoral products such as meat,
milk, cheese, furs and wool are sold in weekly markets, either locally in
the villages or regionally in Huancayo, Jauja and other cities. This trade
provides the inhabitants with an important income and links them to
the national economy. The development of commerce in the region is
spurred by its close location to Lima, the country’s capital, and by a fairly
welldeveloped transportation system. Another important economic activity is temporary paid work in the region’s mining industry; and, up
sive use of underpaid and often illegal labour from Third World countries. While Latin Americans, and particularly Mexicans, are used as day labourers in the orange and tomato ields of
Florida and California, the Spanish agricultural industry recruits seasonal workers from North
Africa. See Smith and Bakker (2008) and Kearney (1996).
2 Paerregaard (1987: 56) was the irst scholar to report on US labour migration by sheepherders from Peru’s central highlands. Altamirano (1992: 136-153) and León (2001) provide
more recent information on this issue.
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until the land reform in the early 1970s, employment could also be found
on the haciendas and the big estates that specialized in stockbreeding.
Stockbreeding has been the object of commercial interest in the hacienda economy in the central highland for centuries. When the wool trade
boomed on the world market in the beginning of the twentieth century
and the sheep ranching industry prospered (Manrique 1987: 254–261),
the ranchers began to encroach on the highland pastures causing tensions between the mestizo-owned haciendas and the Indian communities (Smith 1989: 67–96). The situation went from bad to worse in 1924
when the American mining company, the Cerro de Pasco Corporation,
bought vast areas of pastures in the central highlands from a Peruvian
sheep ranching company and engaged in stock breeding on a large scale
(Mallon 1983: 214–243). In response, peasant communities throughout
the region began to claim back land that had been encroached upon by
the haciendas and mining companies causing numerous conlicts in the
region (Caycho 1977: 26–28; Vilcapoma 1984: 112–133). In 1969, the
military government of Velasco intervened and implemented a radical
reform process that expropriated the land of the large estates and foreign
owned companies, and by the early 1970s, the hacienda system had lost
its dominating inluence in the region (Roberts and Samaniego 1978).
This land reform changed the power relation between the haciendas
and the communities in favour of the latter. It also incited the current
labour migration practice to the United States, facilitated by the American staff of the Cerro de Pasco Corporation who returned to the United
States after their land was expropriated in 1972 and who brokered the
contact between the peasant population of Peru’s central highlands
and the sheep ranchers of California, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Colorado,
Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.3 Most of the ranchers are organized in
an association called WRA (Western Ranch Association), based in Sacramento, and over the past forty years, a Peruvian mining engineer who
worked for an American owned cattle ranch in Peru called Corpacancha
before the land reform,4 has assisted the WRA in recruiting male members of the peasant communities and former haciendas of Peru’s highlands to work as sheepherders in the United States (León 2001: 147).5 In
3 León reports that the irst Peruvian sheepherders arrived to the United States in 1969
(2001).
4 After the land reform the Corpacancha hacienda became a production unit of a cooperative called SAIS Pachacútec.
5 During my interview with the engineer he explained that the irst herders to be send off
to the United States came from the Corpacancha hacienda (northwest of Huancayo) in Peru’s
Junín department where he had worked as an administrator until the land reforms in 1969
(after 1970, Corpacancha became part the SAIS Pachacútec cooperative). As president of the
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The Grass of Wrath
the early 1990s, the man retired and was replaced by his son who now is
responsible for the recruitment of sheepherders.6
During the irst half of the twentieth century, American ranchers primarily contracted Basque sheepherders but when the Spanish economy
prospered more in the 1970s, these Basque herders lost interest in working for American ranchers. Subsequently, Mexicans and Chileans were
brought in and in the wake of the Peruvian land reform, the WRA began
to recruit Peruvian sheepherders.7 By the mid 1970s, Peruvians had surpassed Mexicans and Chileans, as well as Basques, in numbers, and today
the ex-haciendas and peasant communities of Peru’s central highlands
are the chief source of labour for American sheep ranchers.8 According
to data collected by the engineer in Lima, over the past thirty years more
than three thousand Peruvians have worked on American sheep ranches
on H-2A visas and currently, almost two thousand Peruvians are working
for the WRA.9
national association of sheep ranchers (La Sociedad Ganadera en el Perú) for several years, the
engineer began to recruit herders from other haciendas and sheep companies in Peru. Hence, in
the early 1970s, herders from Huasicancha and neighbouring haciendas (which, after 1970, became part of the SAIS Cahuide cooperative located southwest of Huancayo) were sent off to the
United States. In the early 1970s, the migrant networks spread to the neighbouring community
of Chongos Alto, then up north to the community of Yanacancha and, in the mid 1970s, to the
communities of Chala, Chaquicocha and Usibamba in the Alto Cunas area. According to the
engineer, sheepherders from these communities (located approximately 40 km. west of Huancayo) have a reputation as particularly trustworthy and conscientious and are therefore in high
demand among the WRA ranchers. Although most migrants come from the Junín department
in Peru’s central highlands, the association also recruits herders from other departments (such
as Cerro de Pasco, Arequipa, and Puno).
6 Before they are recruited, the new herders are submitted to a medical examination. They
are also interviewed by the engineer in Lima who asks them general questions about sheep
breeding (grazing, shearing, lambing, diseases, etc) and interrogates them about their family
and community of origin.
7 Since 1965, changes in immigration policies have made it more dificult for Latin Americans and other Third World migrants to enter the United States (Paerregaard 2008). However,
as U.S. immigration legislation allows the import of foreign labour to take jobs American workers are unwilling to do, Mexicans, Chileans and Peruvians recruited as sheepherders are met
with few legal obstacles. Despite immigration becoming a growing concern for the American
public, and an issue pursued by many politicians in order to gain votes during elections, agriculture continues to import foreign labour on H-2A visas (Wernick 1997: 140)
8 Peruvians in California report that the WRA also tried to recruit sheepherders from Mongolia. However, they stopped this because of language dificulties
9 The engineer in Lima responsible for the recruitment of new herders to the WRA claims
that over the past thirty years around 3,800 herders have passed through his ofice. While approximately 1,000 have returned to Peru, almost 2,000 are currently working on contracts in
the United States. On the other hand, more than 800 have overstayed their H-2A visas and have
either settled in the United States as legal or unauthorized residents or have returned to Peru on
their own account. Two other organisations are reported to be recruiting Peruvian sheepherders
in the United States.
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Karsten Paerregaard
Sheepherding in the Rocky Mountain area follows an annual work cycle of three stages. From December to March, the herders are brought
down to the ranch where they have the opportunity to meet other migrants; this is also a time that requires hard physical work. Although the
principal activity in this period is the lambing, many ranchers order the
herders to do the fencing as well, a job that often causes serious back pain.
When spring starts, around April, the herders move out of the ranch to
the pastures in the desert and the woods to let the sheep graze. After another two months, they continue pasturing the sheep in the mountains
until it is time for lambing again. The work cycle varies according to geographical location and individual ranch owners. Some herders explain
that they spend most of the year on the ranches doing all sorts of different kinds of work, while others report that they spend all spring, summer and fall in the desert, woods and mountains, often incommunicado
for weeks or months at a time. Yet others work as camperos, i.e. delivering
food and goods to employees who work outside the ranch. In California, the herders are often sent up to the mountains in the northern part
of the state from April to December because the pastures are greener
there than in the south in the summer and the fall. In Oregon, Idaho,
Montana and Wyoming, on the other hand, where the pastures are more
plentiful, but also more remote, the herders sometimes spend part of the
year in tents isolated from the outside world because of snowfalls.
Many herders complain of solitude and isolation while grazing sheep
in the desert and the mountains. As some ranchers have more than thirty
thousand sheep, the distances between the pastures where the animals
graze are often huge. The numbers of herders working on the ranches
varies from ten to twenty, and are often of mixed nationality. Each herder
is responsible for two to three thousand sheep that he oversees and tends
to while they graze in the desert or the mountains. The employer provides him with shelter, food, vehicles to transport water for the animals
and a small TV operated by batteries that is the herders’ only access to
information and news from the outside world. Periodically, the campero,
the foreman or the ranch owner comes by to inspect the sheep and deliver food and only on rare occasions do the herders come together or go
to a town.
Although the H-2A visa only permits them to herd sheep, the herders
report that they are ordered to ranch cows, construct fences and do agricultural work as well. Many herders assert that their health is at great risk
because they sleep in small camping vans or in tents despite the harsh
climate of the mountains and deserts where temperatures can luctuate
between 30 degrees centigrade below zero and 40 degrees above. They
also report that they live off canned food most of the time and often
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The Grass of Wrath
get ill because clean drinking water is not available. Some catch dangerous diseases such as Valley Fever because of the dust and the insecticides
used by the ranchers; others get injured because of the accidents that
occasionally occur because they are ordered to use tools or drive vehicles
without proper instruction and the required license to use them.10 The
danger of illness and accidents is aggravated because herders rarely receive proper medical attention when they get ill or have an accident.
Some herders contend that the employers meet their complaints about
the working conditions with threats of physical violence. While gringo
employers are said to be demanding but fair, employers of Basque origin
are known to be harsh.11 They often contract other Basques as foremen
who are feared because of their bad temper and rough language.12 Over
the past thirty years it has been reported that a number of herders have
either been beaten up, disappeared or perished under circumstances that
have not been oficially investigated.13 Unfortunately, it is extremely dificult to document and obtain access to data on these incidents as many
herders are afraid to contact the authorities, and the health, labour and
immigration authorities in the United States do little to supervise or
control American ranchers’ use of foreign labour. Similarly, many employers prefer to either hush up any work accidents, cases of illness or
negligence of medical attention, and excesses committed by their foremen. Some employers simply report herders who are injured or perish to
have escaped or committed suicide.
As most herders have become dependent on earning in dollars over the
years, they continue working on their second, third, fourth or ifth con10 One female villager in Usibamba told me that her husband had died in 1996 in a car accident while working on a ranch in Idaho. The WRA had informed her that her husband was
killed while driving without a driver’s licence after drinking. But because he had married a Mexican woman in the United States, and signed an individual work contract with his employer
independent of the WRA, his wife in Peru was not entitled to receive economic compensation
from the insurance company. Laconically, the woman claimed that the only thing she received
was the urn with her late husband’s ashes. Another woman in Usibamba claimed that her husband died while working in the United States under circumstances that were never investigated
by the police. She did, however, receive economic compensation for a limited period of time.
11 Today the owners of some of the largest sheep ranches are Basques or descendants of
Basque immigrants who came to the United States as sheepherders themselves.
12 Peruvian sheepherders and Basque ranch owners have generally little dificulties communicating in Spanish. However, many Peruvians resent the ease by which the Basques swear and
curse, a habit they ind insulting and frightening.
13 In 1996, the Peruvian magazine Caretas reported seven herders as having perished in California (June 20, No. 1419, 1996). The same year, the Lima daily La República brought the news
of the death of sheepherder Apolinario Quiñones (August 16, Local, p. 11, 1996). Similarly, the
weekly Perú de los 90 in Los Angeles claimed that approximately thirty herders died between
1985 and 1995 (December 1995).
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Karsten Paerregaard
tract. Eventually, many end up spending a signiicant part of their adult
lives in the wildernesses of the western United States. Upon returning,
many ind it hard to adapt to the environment in their native villages and
home country or to reunite with their families. Some even complain that
their children do not recognize them when they come back. The grass of
wrath has turned against them as they realize that the reward of many
years of solitude and hard work is to feel estranged from the families they
left behind. Indeed, an increasing number of herders simply drop out
of their work contracts as sheepherders and become unauthorized immigrants in the United States, or form new families after marrying legal
female immigrants of Hispanic origin.
The Political and Cultural Economy of U.S. Migration
Peruvian labour migration to the United States meets different economic needs and links distinct life worlds in the First and the Third World.
At one end of the migration network, the economic and political crisis
in Peru generates a constant supply of rural workers in desperate search
of alternative sources of income. At the other end, the sheep ranching
industry in the United States looks for cheap labour to perform work
shunned by Americans. The two ends are connected through a migration
low of Peruvian herders who travel repeatedly between the United States
and Peru. In the North, the ranch owners, the WRA and American immigration authorities control the low of Peruvians who enter and leave
the United States on the H-2A visa; in the South, an informal network of
family and household relations assures the reproduction of the labour
force and provides new recruits.
In the Alto Cunas area and other parts of Peru’s central highlands,
travelling on work contracts to the United States as sheepherders represents an opportunity to save capital and invest in transport, business or
other non-agricultural activities when they return. Meanwhile, the herders support their families through monthly remittances. The number of
villagers working on labour contracts has increased over the past thirty
years, and today almost 10 percent of the male population of the community of Usibamba are in the United States. In the neighbouring community of Chaquicocha, it is more than 15 percent. The continuous migration of these herders has developed into an organizing practice based
on networks of close kinship and household relations that regulate the
recruitment of new migrants.
New recruits usually obtain their work permit because migrants who
have either completed a contract, or are currently working in the United
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The Grass of Wrath
States, suggest them to their employers. As most migrants are cautious
about proposing candidates outside the close circle of household and
family ties, entering the migrant networks is the most dificult part of
gaining a work contract in the United States. Thus, when I did ieldwork
in Usibamba it was striking to hear young villagers deploring the fact
that they had no relatives or kin members to propose them to go on their
irst contract. When I asked a young man whether he wanted to go to the
United States, he replied, ‘Sure I want to, but I have no one in the family
there to call upon me!’ Obviously, the potential number of new recruits
is much higher than those currently working in the United States.
Many herders seek to renew their contract with the WRA when it expires and as this requires their employers’ recommendation, they do
their outmost to stay on good terms with the ranchers and their foremen
despite the harsh working conditions and cruel treatment. The efforts
of the herders to gain the conidence of their employers are urged on
by the expectations of the herders’ families in Peru to help young male
relatives obtain a work contract in the United States. Herders who have
been gone for long periods of time, or are reaching the age of retirement,
come under strong pressure to coax their employers and the WRA to hire
a son, a brother or cousin or brother-in-law before they return to Peru.
Young males in Peru, on the other hand, are expected to make use of
such an opportunity. One herder in the United States explained to me
that he went on his irst contract after his brother had suggested him as
a new recruit to his employer. At that time, all his brothers and most of
his brothers-in-law were already working in the U.S. The man recounted
that several family members in Peru had been pressuring him, arguing,
‘If they can do it, you can too! Think of what they are doing for you so
you can go too!’ At the heart of the recruitment process and the migration practice it generates, then, lies a cultural economy built on trust that
in Peru spurs the sheepherders to continue working in the United States
and to call upon new family members, and in the United States is used
by the American ranch owners and the WRA to discipline their migrant
work force to endure the harsh working conditions in the mountains
and the desert and to deter them from running away.
The relations of trust that the sheepherders create with their employers
sometimes last for many years and lead the latter to employ the former
on a permanent basis. This saves the ranchers the trouble of contacting
the WRA and saves the herders from having to visit the engineer’s ofice in Lima. In the recruiting communities in Peru, such arrangements
are also seen as a sign of the herders’ status and power in the migration chain. The public telephones that were installed in Usibamba and
Chaquicocha in the late 1990s relect the readiness of villagers to adopt
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Karsten Paerregaard
modern technology to their transnational migration needs. Thus, several
villagers explained to me that they now call their previous employers in
the United States directly by phone to ask for new contracts or to suggest
relatives.
The contract that the herders sign with the WRA normally lasts three
years. It assures the herders a monthly salary of between US$600 and
$80014 and includes free lodging and food. With their travel expenses
and most of the costs during their stay in the United States covered by
the WRA, their earnings as sheepherders make up a substantial supplement to their families’ modest income in Peru. Such remittances normally amount to about US$300 a month, which the families use for
food, clothing, medicine and school expenses for the children. As migrants only spend money on clothing and rarely go into a town, many
are able to save as much as US$300 a month. When returning to Peru after their three years in the United States, this amounts to approximately
US$10,000. Young single herders may save as much as US$18,000.
Upon their return, some invest their savings in agriculture or stockbreeding. They either buy land and cattle or invest in a tractor which
they rent to local villagers.15 To others, however, income from U.S. migration represents a shortcut to construct a new house (either of bricks
or concrete) in their native village or to get out of agriculture and cattle
breeding and begin a business. Yet others buy a plot, put up a house and
settle in Huancayo or Lima, or purchase a used pickup truck or van and
earn a living transporting passengers back and forth between Huancayo
and the Alto Cunas villages. In the past twenty years, the number of vehicles offering such transportation has more than tripled in Usibamba and
Chaquicocha. Some start up a grocery shop or a workshop in the city and
make an income in commerce or small industries.
In some Alto Cunas villages, such as Usibamba and Chaquicocha, the
local peasant communities try to restrict the villagers’ migration practice. During the reform process in the 1970s, these communities redistributed all village farmland among the households. Today, households
hold the right of usufruct to the land they received from the community
14 Ten dollars are withheld for health insurance while the WRA charges ifteen as a general
fee.
15 In Usibamba, there are currently six ex-herders who make their living by renting the tractors they bought after returning from the United States. Initially, the charge was 35 Peruvian
soles (US$10) an hour but because of the growing competition from new tractor owners in Usibamba and neighbouring villages, the fee fell to 30 soles (US$8.50). A similar drop in earnings
occurred to ex-herders who invested their savings in pickup trucks and vans used to transport
local villagers to Huancayo. As the number of vehicles increased, the owners had to lower the
fee. Another popular way of investing savings is by buying cattle, in particular dairy cows, which
cost approximately 1,500 soles a head (US$450).
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The Grass of Wrath
but are not allowed to either sell or rent it. In return, household members are required to participate in the collective labour organized by the
community and to occupy administrative and political ofices in the village.16 Villagers who migrate are required to apply for permission before
leaving in order to keep their right to land, a practice that traditionally
allowed them to take a year or two to work in the neighbouring mines,
or to go to Huancayo or Lima to study or make money before getting
married. However, as the number of migrants working on contracts in
the United States has exploded in the past two decades, the communities
have started to charge annual fees from villagers who go abroad and who
earn their salary in dollars. In Usibamba the fee is currently US$200, and
in Chaquicocha US$300. Moreover, in Usibamba, migrants who leave for
a third contract even lose their right to land and are disqualiied as members of the community. Thus, rather than promote labour migration to
create new livelihoods as an alternative to agriculture, these communities try to discourage villagers from migrating. In response to this restriction, most returning migrants from Usibamba and Chaquicocha invest
their hard earned savings from the United States outside of their home
villages.
Taking Things Into Their Own Hands
The networks that link sheepherders to their families in Peru have developed as extensions of already existing kinship ties between villagers in
the highlands and urban migrants in such cities as Huancayo and Lima
(Long and Roberts 1978: 31–36). These bonds grow out of a century long
rural-urban migration tradition in the central highlands that generates
a constant interchange of products and services between migrants and
their native villages (Mallon 1983: 247–267; Smith 1989: 96–111).17 Today, most villagers migrate to the mines or the city while young to make
money and expand their knowledge of the world; some return to their
native villages later but many marry and settle elsewhere.
This blend of rural and urban worlds also transcends the sheepherders’ migration networks that recruit migrants of very different social and
economic backgrounds. Although most migrants were born in pastoral
16 When the Shining Path took control of the Alto Cunas area in the late 1980s, most of the
peasant institutions that had been created during the land reform were dissolved. Today, terrorism has been defeated and the peasant communities have been re-activated with help from
the State and local NGOs (see Paerregaard 2002a). (The Shining Path was a terrorist rebel group
that operated in Peru in the late 1980s and early 1990s.)
17 For more information on rural-urban migration in Peru, see Paerregaard (1997).
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Karsten Paerregaard
villages in the central highlands and have intimate knowledge of sheep
herding, their experience as herders is often limited to their rural childhood. Indeed, many of the migrants recruited by the WRA have lived in
Huancayo or Lima, or other cities, for many years where they worked
as schoolteachers or in factories or made a living in commerce. Some
have studied in universities in Huancayo or Lima and a few even hold
academic degrees. The social heterogeneity of the sheepherders in the
United States is relected also within the individual families and sibling
groups practicing migration to the U.S. Thus, many of these family networks stretch across large geographical distances and have members living in the village as well as in the city. In the following, I present six migration histories that illustrate in different ways how migrant networks
develop over time and how U.S. migration practice affects the lives of
the migrants and of their families in Peru. They also elicit the scope and
limitations of the poor’s organizing practice and individual agency to
generate change and perhaps, even more important, point to the dificulties migrants face when crossing national borders in the search for new
livelihoods and the ambivalent role their own networks play in American
ranchers’ recruitment of cheap labour from Third World countries.
Eugenio is forty-two years old and comes from Chala Nueva, a neighbouring community of Chaquicocha in the Alto Cunas area. He has
four brothers who have worked, or currently work, in the United States.
The irst to leave was the oldest brother. Recommended by a brother-inlaw, he left on his irst contract in 1981 and continued to travel another
three times in the 1980s and early 1990s. After a total of twelve years in
the United States, the brother eventually bought a piece of land, built a
house and started a business in Huancayo where he now lives with his
family. Another brother spent nine years in the United States on three
different contracts before he eventually settled in Chala with his family.
He managed to save US$17,000 which he used to buy a tractor and some
plots of land in the village. This brother now makes a living by renting
the tractor and part of the land to other villagers. To supplement this
income, he cultivates the rest of the land by contracting local labour to
plant carrots, garlic or other cash crops that he sells on the regional markets. Two more brothers are currently working in the United States on
their second contracts. Their families live off the remittances forwarded
by the brothers who both plan to use their savings to buy a piece of land,
build a house and start a business in Huancayo when they return.
Eugenio left on his irst contract in 1981, at the age of twenty-one,
recommended by the oldest brother. He spent three years working for
a Mormon rancher in Utah and returned in 1984. He stayed in Chala
for seven months and then left on another contract. This time Eugenio
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The Grass of Wrath
worked for a Basque rancher in California which turned out to be a rather unpleasant experience. After returning in 1988, he remained in Chala
for a period of ive years. At this point, Eugenio had saved enough capital
to settle down, buy some land and marry a local woman with whom he
had his irst children. Meanwhile, the political violence had reached the
Alto Cunas area and made Eugenio change his plans. By 1993, he had
spent the savings from the two irst contracts, so he decided to migrate
for a third time. Three years later, in 1996, Eugenio came back to Peru
again, stayed in Chala for four months and then left again on his fourth
contract. When I irst met Eugenio in the cold Californian desert in April
1998, he was making plans for the future while grazing sheep. Eugenio
told me that his fourth contract was due to expire in 1999 and that he
felt it was time to settle down for good in Chala. His wife has a little
shop there and Eugenio told me that he wanted to follow his brother’s
example and use his savings to buy a tractor and rent it to local villagers.
In January 2000, I met Eugenio again, this time back in Chala. He had
just realized his life’s dream and bought a used tractor from another returned migrant in neighbouring Usibamba for US$18,000. While proudly watching the fruit of many years’ efforts to create a new livelihood, Eugenio assured me that he would never return to the United States again.
Bernardo, thirty-eight, was born in Corpacancha, a former hacienda in
Peru’s central highlands that after the land reform became part of SAIS
Pachacútec, a cooperative established by the military government of Velasco in the 1970s. Corpacancha is also the hacienda where the Peruvian engineer who runs the recruiting agency in Lima worked before the
land reform and thus was the incubator for the sheepherders’ migration
practice. Bernardo claims that his father knew the engineer and that he
picked Bernardo’s oldest brother as one of the irst recruits to be sent to
the United States in the early 1970s. In 1976, another brother left and in
1979 it was Bernardo’s turn, when he was only seventeen years old. He explains that a special permit was required to leave the country because he
was under age. During his four contracts in the United States, he worked
for several employers in different states. The irst contract was in Oregon
where the dense woods make sheep herding particularly dificult. As the
herders often sleep in tents in the mountains despite the cold and have
to transport themselves around on horseback while grazing the sheep,
Bernardo says that he suffered a lot. The ranch owner, who was of Basque
origin, did little to make life easier for his employees.
In 1983, Bernardo left on his second contract that sent him to California to work for an American rancher who turned out to be friendlier
than the Basque. When he returned to Peru in 1986, Bernardo used his
savings to buy a van to make a living transporting villagers between the
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Karsten Paerregaard
Alto Cunas villages and Huancayo, the major city in the region. However,
as the political situation and the economic crisis deteriorated in the late
1980s and early 1990s, transport became unproitable. Furthermore, in
1990 Bernardo got married and as he realized that he still lacked any
capital to start a new business, he decided to go for yet another contract.
Thanks to the recommendations he received from his previous employers, the WRA accepted his request and in 1991 Bernardo began work on
a new ranch in California. In 1994, he returned to Peru but left again in
1996 on his fourth contract to work for the same rancher. When I met
Bernardo in California in 1998, he told me that his wife and their three
children were living off the remittances they received from him and the
modest earnings they made from a small booth in a tourist market in
downtown Huancayo. Bernardo also said that he was planning to return
to Huancayo for good to start up a new business when his contract expired in June 1999. Yet, when I visited Huancayo in 2000, Bernardo was
still in the United States. Relatives of his told me that instead of returning he had become an unauthorized immigrant and that he planned to
marry a Mexican woman who is a legal resident in the United States.
Unlike Eugenio, who fulilled his original goal of returning to Peru to
invest his savings, Bernardo had changed his plans and decided to create
not only a new livelihood in the United States but also a new life and new
family.
Teógenes, forty-four, was born in a small village outside Huancayo. He
moved to the city with his parents at the age of four where he went to
school. At the age of seventeen, he began studying at the university but
because his family lacked the means to support him, he was forced to
give up an academic career and became a schoolteacher. To supplement
his salary, Teógenes borrowed money to start a small printing workshop
and got a deal with the municipality of Huancayo to produce printing
and deliver materials. He also got married and had two children. In the
late 1980s, Teógenes ran into debt because the municipality delayed his
payments, and the following years of economic crisis in Peru slowly killed
his business, forcing him to look for new ways to make an income. Teógenes, therefore, asked his brother-in-law, who had just returned from
the United States, to recommend him for a contract as a sheepherder,
and in 1989 he travelled to California. Before returning to Peru in 1992,
he had his contract renewed and after a few months with his family in
Huancayo, Teógenes left again.
In 1995, Teógenes returned to Peru for a short visit but took off again
for a third contract, which also turned out to be his last. An accident occurred on the ranch while making fences that caused a slipped disc and
after an operation in Los Angeles, he was hospitalized for three months.
250
The Grass of Wrath
He also had to have an eye operation because of an infection he caught
while herding sheep. Although the insurance company covered the expenses for both operations, he never received any inancial compensation
for the damages he suffered. When I met Teógenes in California in 1998,
he said that he hoped to return to Huancayo the same year and invest his
savings in a hardware business. He also told me that he was deeply concerned for his family in Peru who had not been receiving any remittances
from him since his operation. In January 2000, I met Teógenes again in
Huancayo. He had returned as planned the year before and invested his
savings in a small printing ofice where he now works together with his
wife.
Euraclio, forty-ive, was born and raised in a village close to the town of
Junín. After inishing his studies he became a school teacher, got married
and had three children. As it became increasingly dificult for the family
to live on his salary in the late 1980s, he decided to look for new ways to
make a living. Euraclio, therefore, asked a cousin who already had been
in the United States to recommend him, and in 1991 he left for his irst
contract in Idaho. He relates that the climate in the northern United
States makes the life of the sheepherders extremely tough. After a year he
was transferred to California where the climate is less hostile. However,
the new employer, a Basque, turned out to be more malevolent than the
irst, which made life even harder for him. Euraclio returned to work for
the same employer on a second contract in 1995 but got seriously ill of
Valley Fever that is caused by dust and the insecticides that the ranch
owners use to spray the ields and the grazing grounds. Consequently, he
was hospitalized and had part of a lung removed.
When I met Euraclio in 1998 he had been discharged from hospital in
Bakersield, California, but was still on medication. Although the insurance paid the hospital bill, he was worried that the WRA would return
him to Peru where the medicine he was taking is dificult to get. Moreover, since the WRA stopped paying his salary, his wife and children had
not received the monthly remittances. Hence, while recovering, Euraclio
was looking for inancial support to sue the WRA for not covering all the
expenses of his medical treatment.
Teodocio is sixty-ive and was raised in Quishuar, a community southwest of Huancayo. As a child he learned how to herd cattle and became
familiar with the solitude of the mountains, but before he became of
age, he migrated to Huancayo together with his father. The irst member of Teodocio’s family to go to the United States was a cousin who
left in 1972 and returned for another three contracts in the 1970s and
1980s. Eventually, the cousin settled in the United States where he now
lives together with one of his sons. In 1976, one of Teodocio’s broth251
Karsten Paerregaard
ers was recommended by the cousin and left for the United States. This
brother returned for another four contracts and is currently working in
the United States on a sixth contract for the same employer. Teodocio,
on the other hand, went in 1977 and spent his irst contract working for
an Arab sheep rancher in Wyoming. He returned on a second contract in
1989 to work for an American rancher in Utah.
In January 2000, Teodocio invited me to visit him at his home in
Huancayo. The house was built with the savings from his two contracts
in the United States. He explained that he feels content that he turned
down an offer to return for a third contract in 1991. Teodocio also told
me that he often advises young men who want to work as sheepherders in the United States to be cautious of not becoming dependent on
their earnings in U.S. dollars. He is particularly concerned about his own
brother who has been estranged from his family. Over the past twenty
years, the brother has built up a relationship of mutual trust with his
American employer who repeatedly offers him new contracts to work on
his farm. The employer has even helped him to get a permanent work
permit which allows him to travel back and forth and stay as long he
wishes without the approval of the WRA or the engineer in Lima. To Teodocio, however, the family has suffered from the brother’s intense itinerancy and constant absence from home. In fact, today Teodocio feels
more attached to his nephews than his brother. In Teodocio’s eyes, the
prospects of higher earnings should never lead the herder to neglect his
responsibility as a father and breadwinner.
Victor, forty-ive, was born in a village close to Junín in the central
highlands of Peru. He was brought up in Pachacayo, a cattle ranch that
belonged to the American owned Cerro de Pasco Mining Corporation
before the land reform. His father was an employee of the company and
worked together with the Peruvian engineer in charge of recruiting new
herders in Lima. This connection has had a critical impact on the life
course of Victor’s family. Today, Victor and his three brothers all work in
the United States and his father and sister are the only members of the
family left in Peru. Victor’s migration experience began when he moved
to Lima as a young man to be apprenticed to a tailor. Later he started his
own tailor’s workshop and got married and had several children. However, Peru’s economic crisis in the late 1980s had a disastrous effect on
Victor’s business and forced him to look for help among relatives. At
that time, two of his brothers were already working in the United States.
The irst in the family to leave was a cousin of Victor’s who had worked
formerly as a veterinarian in the SAIS Túpac Amaru cooperative. He left
on his irst contract in 1979, then returned on a second in 1982 and inally ran away and became an unauthorized immigrant before the con252
The Grass of Wrath
tract expired. Four years later, he was granted US residence. Today, the
cousin works as a gardener in New Mexico where he lives with his daughter who came to the United States through the family reuniication
programme.18 The irst to leave in Victor’s sibling group was his oldest
brother, Hugo, who was recommended by the cousin. After the factory
where he had been working in Lima closed down, he migrated in 1988,
leaving his wife and three children in a newly built house in the shantytown of Huaycán. Hugo is currently on his fourth contract for a ranch
owner in Wyoming. Victor also has a brother, Máximo, who left for the
United States in 1989. Máximo had lived with his wife and children in
Jauja in the central highlands where he earned a living as a tailor until
the economic crisis crippled his business. In 1991, it was Victor’s turn to
be recommended, and in 1994, his last brother, Leopoldo, joined the sibling group in the United States. Leopoldo had just inished school and
was still single at the time of migration. He later married and now works
on his second contract for a ranch owner close to San Francisco.
Although Victor no longer has regular contact with Hugo, he has
learned through relatives in Lima that the brother’s family suffers a great
deal from his long absence. Instead of studying, Hugo’s sons spend the
remittances that the father periodically forwards on drinking and enjoying themselves. In the eyes of Victor, U.S. labour migration has damaged
Hugo’s family relations. Máximo, on the other hand, followed the example of his cousin and overstayed the H-2A visa in the United States when
his second contract expired in 1987. He then settled in Los Angeles and
married a woman from El Salvador, and as she was a political refugee at
the time of the marriage, Máximo was automatically granted residency
in the United States. They now live in Moreno Valley outside Los Angeles. Victor’s last brother, Leopoldo, is currently working on his second
contract.
When Local and Global Perspectives Intertwine
Victor’s U.S. migration experience turned out very different from what
he had expected. Instead of returning to Peru after his irst contract, he
decided to become an unauthorized immigrant in the United States. Although Victor had spent most of the three years of his contract on the
ranch and thus had avoided the hard life in the desert and the mountains, his experience with the Basque employer was very traumatic and
18 The cousin’s daughter later married a Peruvian sheepherder who had overstayed his H-2A
visa. They now live in San Francisco.
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Karsten Paerregaard
changed his view on labour migration to the United States. On the
ranch, Victor had the opportunity to observe how the employers exploit
the herders’ search for loyalty and trust to make them accept working
and living conditions that normally would be considered perilous and
degrading. He even saw cases of ranchers and foremen committing excesses against the herders. Victor recounts that these experiences made
him realize that the herders’ must take responsibility for their own lives
and limit their dependency on U.S. migration as a source of income.
In 1994, he overstayed his H-2A visa when the contract expired and settled down in Bakersield, not far from the ranch where he had been working. Here, Victor ran across a number of sheepherders who were waiting
for the WRA to transfer them to new ranch owners. Some of them had
come from other ranches while others were newcomers from Peru. He
also met several herders who were hospitalized because of work accidents
or diseases they had caught while working. Some were on their way back
to the ranches, others were about to be returned to Peru. Victor also met
another group of migrants in Bakersield: throughout the 1990s, the city
had become the centre for the growing number of Peruvian sheepherders in California who overstay their H-2A visas and settle in the United
States as unauthorized immigrants. They now make up a community of
more than 100 Peruvians who come together every Sunday to play soccer and drink beers. Some of them, including Victor, have married local
women of Hispanic background and become legal residents. Others have
applied for political asylum19 or spend years as immigrants looking for
work in the service sector or as factory workers.
In response to the herders’ many unattended needs, Victor decided
to create an organisation to defend the rights of his countrymen in the
United States. Together with thirteen other herders and ex-herders living
in Bakersield he formed a trade union for sheepherders called Unión
de Pastores Ovejeros in 1995. The union was established to defend the
rights of the sheepherders and to disseminate information about their
situation in the United States and Peru and is associated with the United
Farm Workers of America, an afiliate of AFL-CIO.20 Although the herders commenced their struggle with few economic means and little experience, they have been able to put their situation on the agenda of the
leaders of the Peruvian immigrant community in Los Angeles and poli-
19 This group of migrants present themselves to the American authorities as refugees from
the political violence in their home villages and towns. Many of the sheepherders in the United
States come from rural and urban areas that were affected by the war fought between Peru’s
armed forces and the Shining Path.
20 The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations
254
The Grass of Wrath
ticians in Peru. They have also had success in supporting herders who
make complaints to the WRA for not complying with the obligations of
the work contract. Several ex-herders who were injured because of work
accidents on the ranch, or who became ill in the desert or in the mountains, have sued the organisation with assistance from the union. Thus,
one herder, who had an arm injured while using a vehicle without the
required authorisation, iled a lawsuit against the insurance company for
not paying the medical bills for his treatment. The man, who fully recovered from the accident, won the suit and received more than US$50,000
in compensation. To the regret of Victor and other leaders of the union,
however, this man never recognized the support they offered him. Today,
he owns a gardening business in Bakersield and uses cheap Peruvian and
Mexican workers.21
The union received public attention in Los Angeles the same year it
was formed because a Peruvian newspaper, Perú en los 90, began publishing a series of articles about the sheepherders’ situation. The news
caused intense discussion within the Peruvian community in California
about solidarity among fellow migrants and the moral and legal rights of
immigrants in the United States. Many Peruvians have either entered the
country illegally, or overstayed a tourist visa and are living and working
as domestic servants, gardeners, waiters, construction workers, etc. in the
big cities. To many of them, it came as a surprise that sheepherders from
remote villages in the Peruvian highland were working as legal migrants
in the United States in conditions worse than what they were used to in
Peru.
The scandal further escalated when Perú en los 90 reported that the Peruvian consul in Los Angeles had ignored the herders’ complaints previously. The consul was later dismissed. The news also reached Peru where
one of the country’s major dailies, La República, and a weekly magazine
in Lima, Caretas, reported on missing and ill-treated Peruvian herders
in the United States. In addition, a television channel in Lima, Canal 4,
produced a documentary on the use of Peruvian labour on sheep ranches
in California. The reporters interviewed a Basque ranch owner and revealed the unsanitary conditions in which his Peruvian employers were
21 To Victor and other union members, the ight for legal rights in the United States requires
a change in attitude among the herders themselves and their relatives in Peru. He recounts that
when a herder from Usibamba was found dead in his camper van some years ago, the widow
asked the insurance company to return his body to Peru. As they told her she would be charged
for the expenses of such a transmission, Victor contacted her to offer his help in suing the company. To his regret, the widow turned down the offer. According to Victor, she was later coaxed
into signing a document at the engineer’s ofice in Lima in which she unwittingly signed away
her rights to make further claims on the company. While Victor laments the loss of the woman’s
husband, he also disapproves of her reluctance to stand up and ight for her rights.
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Karsten Paerregaard
living. The documentary sparked yet another scandal among politicians
in Lima, where the President of Congress at that time, Martha Chávez,
referred to the herders’ situation in a heated debate about human rights
in Peru. Similar reports on Spanish language television channels in
the United States caused moral indignation among Hispanic minority
groups, and in 1996 the Peruvian ambassador paid a personal visit to several ranches that were using Peruvian labour force together with oficials
from the U.S. Department of Labor.
The debate about economic exploitation and human rights abuses of
Peruvian sheepherders in the United States, which emerged in the wake
of the formation of the herders’ union in Bakersield and Victor’s accusations against the WRA, bears witness to the complexity of global migration practice. Once the Peruvian community in Los Angeles, the media in
Peru and the United States and politicians in Lima engaged in the controversy, the herders’ situation became the concern of economic, ethical
and political interests of very different kinds. Whereas the Peruvian consul in Los Angeles was replaced, the editor of Perú en los 90 won an award
for the newspaper’s coverage of the conlict. Meanwhile, Martha Chávez
played on national sentiments in Peru and accused the American government of using double standards when it criticized the Fujimori government’s human rights politics while not taking action against American
sheep ranchers’ ill-treatment of Peruvian herders.22 Reversely, the political opposition in Peru traced the cause of the tragedy to the failure of the
Peruvian government in solving the country’s economic problems.
In this myriad of global and local perspectives, Victor was not the only
ex-herder articulating the interests of the sheepherders in public. Since
Teodocio returned from the United States in 1989, he had made friends
with the Peruvian engineer in charge of recruiting sheepherders in Lima,
occasionally offering his advice and support in the selection of new candidates. As the WRA and the engineer came under increasing attack in
the late 1990s, Teodocio and a group of ex-herders in Huancayo became
worried that the Peruvian government would eventually close down the
entire migration programme and thus encouraged American ranchers
to look for sheepherders in other countries. They therefore formed an
association called Asociación de ex-trabajadores de la Western Ranch As22 Martha Chávez is known as a stubborn supporter of President Fujimori and has been a
member of Peru’s congress for almost two decades. Apparently, her interest in Peruvian sheepherders in the United States was triggered primarily by the political situation in Peru in 1995.
The U.S. government had been criticizing Fujimori for his lack of respect for human rights
issues and, for Martha Chávez, the reports of the Peruvian herders came as an appropriate opportunity to remind the Americans that they should look to their own human rights reputation
instead of criticizing the Fujimori government.
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The Grass of Wrath
sociation (Association of ex-workers of the WRA) that speaks in defense
of the WRA and the engineer. These ex-herders claim that sheepherding
in the United States represents a unique opportunity for young men in
Peru looking for alternative sources of income and that it is in the herders’ own interest that the migration programme continues. In 1997, Teodocio was invited to present his viewpoints at the committee for human
rights formed by Peru’s Congress. He also participated in a meeting at
the engineer’s ofice in Lima in which Victor and representatives from
the Peruvian government were invited to exchange viewpoints.
The outcome of the dispute was an informal agreement between the
WRA, the engineer and the Peruvian government to respect the herders’
rights. To Victor’s regret, but Teodocio’s satisfaction, the programme
was allowed to continue with few changes. Within a short time the public and political interest in the herders’ situation faded away while the
number of herders travelling to the United States continued to increase.
Whereas Victor was successful in calling public attention to the matter,
he had failed to mobilize the support of the sheepherders in the United
States and Peru.23 Though many agree that the work and living conditions on the ranches are reprehensible, they also share Teodocio’s concern that the controversy was jeopardizing their future possibilities of
working on labour contracts in the United States and to create an alternative source of income. In the eyes of these herders, the Basque of wrath
outweighs the grass of wrath. The dispute, then, not only disclosed the
predicaments inherent in Victor’s strategy to organize the herders and
ight the WRA and the sheep herding industry in the United States
through the public media and with the help of Peruvian politicians, but
demonstrated the complexity of economic, social and political interests
involved in global migration practice and the ambivalent role migrants’
own networks play in the recruitment of cheap labour transnationally.
Conclusion
Peruvian labour migration to California and other states was initiated
by the WRA and American ranchers who were looking for cheap labour
at a time of land reform and social change in Peru. For almost a quarter of a century, the WRA’s migration programme and the sheepherders’
23 Even within his own family, Victor stands alone in his struggle for the rights of Peruvian
sheepherders. Thus, Hugo regards Victor as a troublemaker and claims that his younger brother
is creating an atmosphere of mistrust between herders and ranchers with critical implications
for the recruitment of new family members.
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Karsten Paerregaard
networks remained detached from other Peruvian migration networks
and immigrant communities in urban metropolises such as Los Angeles and San Francisco. However, when the herders’ work and living conditions became the centre of attention of the Peruvian community in
California, the public media in Lima and the Fujimori government, the
herders’ labour migration was suddenly connected to larger processes of
globalisation and localisation in the United States and Peru. Although
this linkage initially caused a heated controversy about the economic
and human rights of low paid Third World workers, U.S. labour migration has changed little and continues to be controlled by the WRA and
a small group of family and household networks in Peru. The periodical
clamour by the public media and national politicians reaches the remote
grazing grounds of Idaho or Alto Cunas late, if ever. Yet, what may have
crucial bearings for this migration practice in the future is the growing
number of herders who either quit their work contract or overstay their
H-2A visa, becoming unauthorized migrants and over time joining the
already existing Peruvian communities in the United States. As the drop
out rate increases, the ranch owners, the WRA and U.S. immigration oficials may simply decide to do what many herders fear most: close the
programme and start importing labour from other countries.
Global migration has become a widespread poverty alleviation practice
in Third World countries. To many rural and urban poor families, the
remittances and savings from male or female members migrating to First
World countries make up a crucial contribution to their modest earnings
as agriculturalists, street vendors and other low income activities and,
thus, an important component in their livelihood strategies. This effort
to ind their own solutions to economic and social needs represents an
analytical challenge to development theory that conventionally has taken
as a point of departure that the poor depend on support from external
agencies to overcome poverty. While the data discussed in this chapter
suggest that global migration is generated and reproduced through the
poor’s own practices and thus calls for a closer inspection of their capacity to design alternative poverty alleviation strategies, they also point to
the myriad of economic, social and political problems that the poor face
when taking things into their own hands. Rather than romanticizing the
poor’s own agency, the data suggest that we explore their organizing practices and livelihood strategies with a critical eye on contradictions and
limitations. In theoretical terms, development research not only has to
incorporate the poor’s agency in the analysis of poverty alleviation, but
must expand its ield of research to include current processes of globalisation and localisation in order to better understand the power structures
the poor are up against when pursuing their own livelihood strategies.
258
The Grass of Wrath
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