[acoustic guitar plays rhythmic flamenco music] (Victoria Ramirez) My grandmother would always tell her children and her grandchildren that this is hard work, and hard work is valued.

(Teresa Rodriguez) As we get older, I started working as an 8-year-old.

(Ken Mendez) That's the length that these families went through.

You didn't drop them off at the babysitter, you didn't call in sick because you had a cold.

There was no excuses; you were in the field.

(Jorgine Hanson) We owe them so much.

I've always used the term, they worked with us.

(Teresa Rodriguez) Even though I'm from Texas, I grew up Minnesotan.

This is my home.

[acoustic guitar plays rhythmic flamenco music ] (Ken Mendez) My father spoke about seeing posters advertising for workers.

He responded.

They came for what they thought would be a better life, a more secure life.

In 1927, that was the first year the plant in East Grand Forks was being built and in operation.

So it's kind of amazing to know that my father was one of the first of the families that came up here.

Grapes of Wrath took you west, and the sugar beets brought you north.

[Jesus Mendez speaks Spanish] (man, for Jesus Mendez) We crossed over in Laredo, Texas.

That is where they contracted us to work in the beet fields.

in East Grand Forks, Minnesota, in 1927.

The factory had set up a sort of colony for the people that wanted to stay for the winters.

My father and other families decided to stay, because if you stayed, you would get a better price the next year.

In those days, they would bring the people up here in special trains, not in trucks.

On the trains, they would give you food and everything.

The trains started in Laredo, they started with about 100 families in 2 train cars.

From there, they would pick up people in San Antonio, Dallas, and Fort Worth.

They would add in extra cars as needed.

They didn't have to worry about food or anything else.

Crookston is the logical place to have a museum because this is the first place that sugar beets were raised in the Red River Valley.

In 1918 a guy from Michigan moved here, and he'd raised sugar beets in Michigan, he brought some seed along.

He planted it in a garden up on the north edge of Crookston.

From there it's gone to hundreds of thousands of acres in the Red River Valley.

In the first few years they got German-Russian immigrants that were down in Southern Minnesota, came up here and did the work.

Then eventually the company had a recruitment agency down in Texas, and they recruited workers to come up here.

The farmers paid a fee to the company to get the workers.

Earliest I remember, somebody would have a truck, and they built a wooden box on it, and covered it with a canvas top and have benches along each side.

Imagine riding on a wooden bench all the way from Texas to Minnesota.

There was thousands of them that came up to the Red River Valley.

(male narrator) Stories of migration and immigration throughout history happen for a variety of reasons.

But one of the common reasons is economic necessity.

Such is the reason and the story of the remarkable trek north from Texas and Mexico starting in the 1930s and '40s to the rich farmlands and sugar beet fields of the Red River Valley in Western Minnesota and Eastern North Dakota.

Itinerant Hispanic farmworkers making an unknowable, dangerous, and life-changing journey to a land that might as well have been another planet from where they came.

I don't think you could have a successful business because the nature of the crop back then, we're talking prior to Roundup, prior to GMO seeds, the germination rate was poor, and there was no way that if you didn't hand-thin or hand-weed, you would not have a crop.

The original seed was multigerm seed, which meant multiple plants would come up from a single seed.

And they'd have to crawl along on their hands and knees and thin them out-- grab one plant, then with the other hand dig the extra beets away, then crawl ahead a little ways and leave other plant-- it was hard work.

(narrator) The migration continued uninterrupted for decades, the same families returning each spring and staying through harvest, often working for the same farmers for years and years.

I go down a little further.

We had farm labor come up in the early '70s.

We had two different families that would come.

We would house them up in Northcote, just a mile and a half away from here.

The family included moms, dads, kids, the whole gamut.

They would come up to do weeding and thinning for us, In the advance of technology and devices thinning came along, they were primarily used for weeding then.

We would run them through our fields 2, 3 times a year to control the weeds and the sugar beets.

They would put in 8 hours or so.

Two o'clock in the afternoon, peak heating time of the day, they would quit and go home, but they'd be right out again the following day.

If it was going to be hot, they would be out there at the crack of dawn; tremendous work ethic.

We had a great relationship with them.

At the end of every year, they would put on a feed for us at the farm over here across the river.

Tremendous food, ethnic food-- was fabulous!

Back in the '70s, we ended up typically with about 35 workers.

There were about 5 core families, I would say, that came up, and sometimes there would be acquaintances of those families.

But of those families, 35 workers.

Then when you total the numbers of spouses and younger children, there got to be a total of 50 people that were up throughout the summer.

We were responsible for housing.

They were clean, they were neat, they had all of the facilities were provided in those units, so that when they came up, they could live there comfortably.

The work ethic was just outstanding.

They wanted to do the right job, they wanted to do the job well.

They worked long hours, very long hours, they did it gladly, They did it to support their families.

They used the machete knives like this to pick the beets up off the ground, grab them with their left hand, cut the tops off.

Then they'd throw them into that area where the furrows had been, then the farmer would come with his beet fork, fork them up into a wagon, then they'd haul them to the receiving site and have to fork them off the wagon again.

They were handled 4 or 5 times by hand.

(narrator) But by the early 1990s, the need for Hispanic migrant labor in the valley would basically dry up.

The biggest thing that took out the migrant working people is the onslaught of Roundup.

That certainly killed the whole system is the Roundup industry that came in the late '80s, early '90s.

When you hired migrants, you hired them to take weeds out in the row, not between the row.

With the advent of Roundup, you'd take care of the weeds throughout the whole field.

(narrator) But even though the field work was done, a remarkable thing would happen.

Many of those who traveled north for work would stay and find a better future for themselves and their children in their new home of Minnesota.

My parents met and married by Comstock, Minnesota.

My dad was a very hard worker, and a couple of the local farmers, which was Ted Peet and Douglas Sillers offered him work year-'round.

My dad loved it up here.

There were several years that I worked in Wisconsin, that we went to Wisconsin to pick cucumbers.

That was really hard work.

We also worked in the sugar beet fields every year.

I had to help my mom make lunch.

So as soon as I could smell the coffee brewing in the morning, it was time to get up, and I would be rolling tortillas.

We would make breakfast tacos to take to the field.

My father had to sign a labor permit allowing me to work.

The story goes there had been some child hurt in the field one or two summers before, and some kind of law was passed that kids that were 13 years old on up could work.

Since I was going to turn 13 in September, we would go during the month of August, my father signed a labor permit.

I don't remember my father signing this.

I have it framed in my office because it's a constant reminder of where I come from and where I've been.

When I look at it, I can go back to being 12 years old and working with cucumbers, and thinking who was to know that this little girl was going to go on to become working with the Immigrant Law Center, helping people with their immigration status.

I started doing some of that stuff when I was with Migrant Legal Services, helping people either apply for citizenship or petitioning for a family member, renewing their green card, also working with victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.

I think Minnesota will always be home because this is where I grew up, but a part of my heart is also in Texas because that's where I have a lot of relatives now.

My boys are very very proud of the roots that they come from and the hard work that their grandparents did.

My grandmother, Mabelita Carmen, she's originally from Mexico, and she came over to the United States and started coming to this area to work in the fields when she was 20.

She would work, and she would save money, and she would send it down to Mexico to bring her other siblings across the border.

My grandmother would always tell her children and her grandchildren that this is hard work, and hard work is valued.

My dad worked basically his whole life, and then when the migrants labor work in the field was starting to thin, he started driving sugar beet trucks.

So he did that all the way up till he no longer could.

That first year I did work in the field with my dad one day, and that was enough for me.

I was not able to tolerate the heat and the manual labor, it was too hard.

They accepted that I was not willing to go back to do the sugar beet harvest, but was encouraged to then pursue something different.

When we first moved up here, I remember going to the high school the very first day, and I remember just the whole hallway filled with people with blond hair, blue eyes, white skin tones, and just feeling this fear and anxiety, kind of skimming through the hallway trying to find someone that looked like me, and I didn't; it was terrifying.

It was tough, even in the first week of school there I got into a couple of fights, lots of name-calling, lots of pushing.

I had people calling me names like spigg.

People would drive by my house and throw eggs and rocks and say things like go back to Mexico, go back to your home.

I remember thinking at some point that maybe I'll just be what people think I am, just be a troublemaker, and maybe I'll skip school and just drink and smoke and not care about my grades.

I did go down that path, then at some point I realized that wasn't the path I wanted to take.

I really really enjoyed the University of Minnesota Crookston-- very diverse campus, lots of support, faculty and staff, very inclusive.

I felt like I belonged, and I felt like they believed in me.

Being able to bring in a different culture to this area has made this community stronger.

Most definitely are the economic contributions that we give to the area.

I often think about my mother who had never left the state of Texas to move to Crookston Minnesota.

I've always wondered like, what made you move here, why do we stay here?

I find my wise in being able to give your talent and skills to better someone's life.

I feel that my calling is to be able to use my voice here and to help empower others to find their own voice.

I do feel like there's a purpose here for me.

We were constantly on the move.

I was born in Crystal City, Texas.

We didn't stay there too long.

We traveled to Michigan.

There was little camps that they had in Michigan The farmers never really asked you how old are you?

It was just, can you work?

[Letty laughs] I remember working in the harvester for, I would say about 5 years, and the farmer kept asking me how old are you Letty?

And I'd say oh, I'm 16.

That was the age.

Next year, how old are you?

I was really about 14.

My dad was very proud dad.

He didn't believe in women being out working.

But the Lord didn't give him any males!

[laughs] He gave 3 females.

There wasn't any child care or anything like that, so we kinda started working out in the fields at a very early age, 5, 6, and 7.

He wouldn't allow us to get on our knees or anything like that.

We had to be bended all the time.

He got a taste of how good we became at it and skillful at it since they they were very demanding about it having to be perfection.

From there on it was 5 in the morning until 9 in the evening every day, 7 days a week unless it rained, then we had a little break.

If you were able to make a few acres during the day, then it was worth all the effort.

If you slowed down to take breaks or whatever, you lost.

The weeds were pretty bad.

If you don't get them in the right time, then you pay a price later, and if you didn't do it right, or if you left too many weeds or new ones would come, you'd pay the price in the second hoeing-- we had to do the job.

We'd do thinning first, and then between the thinning, then he'd take us out to around the Glyndon, Dilworth area.

We cut out, we're all over the place in the Red River Valley.

My dad used to migrate with a crew of men.

He secured a farm that we worked in pretty much until he retired.

My husband and I, when we got married, we just decided to stay on and not migrate anymore, and just made it a home in Minnesota.

The regulations were there, but they weren't enforced.

Farmers were to look the other way most often.

My parents would make us hide while there were inspectors, then once they left, we were back in the fields again.

I thought it was normal, and that everybody was doing it.

All we wanted to do is try to make it easy for my parents.

My dad was an abuser, so we would do anything to alleviate some of the financial burden, so we just worked at that and put 100 and then some just to keep him happy so he wouldn't do anything to my mom.

I am an intervention advocate for victims of domestic violence and victims of sexual assault.

I've done a lot of things from grassroots, of course, I didn't want my kids in the field.

My husband and I protect our kids and never had them out in the field, only to teach them a lesson when they thought it was too hard to wash dishes!

Looking back, it made me a perfectionist, it made me appreciate what I have, of what we've done, and where the steps of jobs is nothing, compared to being out in the field, not having running water or even have a place to go to the bathroom -- there was nothing.

You had to stay there no matter how you felt.

My parents did not graduate from high school.

In our hometown it was very hard to have work during the summertime, so they would migrate up north to the Red River to find work in the fields.

We would be coming up north right around May.

We never finished school in our hometown, so we started school back here in Minnesota, wherever we ended up coming.

Most of the time would be over by Morton, North Dakota.

We farmed for about 15 years for the same farmer.

We would do the sugar beets, and that would start right around May.

That's when you start thinning and weeding.

It was physically lots of walking.

As the sugar beets got bigger, you walked through big sugar beets and you would end up getting wet all the way to your neck.

Sometimes it was raining, muddy.

Being that I was one of the oldest child, getting up early, helping mom making tacos for breakfast for when we were out in the field.

We would stop from working at 10 in the morning, we'll eat, sit down all together, eat breakfast.

We would sit down again and do lunch, then by the time we'd get home, 5:00 in the evening.

In '98 it was probably the last time I would work in the field.

We started our first restaurant, it was in 2000.

We struggled with the first one, were unsuccessful, then we headed here, and we've been here 16 years.

Me and my husband, he enjoys doing his job, I enjoy people.

It's a lot of work, it's from 6:00, 7:00 in the morning till 10:00, 11:00, 12:00 at night.

It's worked amazing for us.

Minnesota has been a very great state for us.

Fergus Falls has been a community that embraced us with open hands; it's a very nice community to live in.

My dad is 87 years old.

He's still healthy, strong.

He's very proud of all the kids.

He says you guys are working too hard.

Well, that's what you taught us; you taught us to get up early.

He says hey, take it easy, take it easy-- now he says that to us!

Back then at 6:00 in the morning you were out in the fields, lunch packed, ready to start the day.

Working in the fields taught us how to work.

I never knew what working in the fields was like.

None of us kids actually knew.

That's one of the things that my parents-- I don't want to say were against, but we were not used as a vehicle out in the fields My family is not unique, there were a lot of other families that came up.

I've read other Historical Society interviews, and their stories are similar.

They came up for what they thought was a better life The best example that I have of what I know is from these pictures from 1938 through Russell Lee that I was able to just haphazardly stumble upon.

Then it was like, oh my goodness, it was a gold mine.

I had these pictures for years, and I just didn't know what to do with them.

One day I was talking to Allan Dragseth, and just in conversation I said, you know what, I have these pictures, he saw them, and it was his reaction that said okay, these are going to be shown.

These pictures have brought a flood of memories for farmers, for families.

It's been an amazing experience.

When I look at the pictures personally, I wonder, where is my dad?

Because I know now that he was up here during those times.

It has opened my eyes to an appreciation of my parents that I never had before.

My parents didn't tell me a lot about the fields.

This makes me wonder how hard they did work.

This interview shouldn't be so much about me, it should be about what brought us here.

These pictures are the toils on these bodies, and the brute strength.

Somehow they survived, and somehow they did this.

[Ramona Mendez speaks Spanish] (woman; for Ramona) Our children never worked in the beet fields.

Jesus and I worked in the beet fields, but they never did.

The 6 oldest have finished school.

We encourage our children to get ahead and go to school.

There are many opportunities for them.

It's amazing what has happened from when my father came up here when he was 17 to the individual stories now generations later to my own kids.

I have a daughter that has an agronomy major, I have a son that is an IT major because of the hard work of my mom and my father.

Today we have a scholarship at the University, the Ramona Mendez Endowed Scholarship for Hispanic kids from the area.

What's humbling about that scholarship was, it wasn't initiated by a family member, it was initiated by a group of Hispanic ladies that were on a committee that I was on and said, can we have this idea about honoring your mother.

If my dad had any ounce of, I don't want to say fear, but in Mexico, when he saw that poster, if he would've said no, we wouldn't be here today.

[acoustic guitar plays softly] ...is made possible by the State's Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and by the members of Prairie Public.

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