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. 237 Karsten Paerregaard 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- 238 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. 239 Karsten Paerregaard 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 240 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. 241 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 242 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). 243 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 244 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 245 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). 246 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). 247 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 248 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 249 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. 253 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. 255 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. 256 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. 257 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. 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