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Guanajuato, Mexico
Eva spent the first three years of her life in a small town called Valle de Santiago in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. The village is known for the healing thermal and sulphuric lakes that lie in its extinguished volcanoes. It is also the site of pre-Hispanic ruins.

When the Spanish arrived they mined the area and found rich veins of silver in the land. One of the mines, the Valenciana mine, was one of the richest silver finds in history! In the 18th century, this one mine alone accounted for two-thirds of European silver production. In Mexico, silver production was done by local Indians who were enslaved by the Spanish and forced into mining. The Spanish sold the silver that the Indians mined and used the money to build a charming city for themselves—now the capital of the Mexican state of Guanajuato.

Downtown Guanajuato Photo courtesy of Mexico Connect

Today the state's capital city of Guanajuato is just as beautiful and charming as the Spanish intended. It has very narrow streets and really must be explored by foot. The city is crisscrossed by hundreds of callejones (alleyways), the most famous of which isCallejón del Beso (Alley of the Kiss). Legend says that this alley is so narrow that lovers, each standing on a balcony on either side of it, can reach across and exchange a kiss.

Every year, dancers, poets, actors, musicians, and writers from all over the world come to Guanajuato for the International Cervantino Festival, named in honor of Miguel de Cervantes, author of the novel, Don Quixote.

When Eva left Valle de Santiago, she was too young to have memories of her own. But she does recall her parents' memories of the town. She especially remembers the art, music, language, and Mexican style of living and loving that they held. Says Eva:

You know, what my parents shared with me about Mexican culture and values really helped me while I was growing up. Sometimes I didn't like being who I was because of the prejudices of people, but I could always reach in and remember that I was valuable.

When Eva was 25, she traveled to Guadalajara, Mexico, to meet her husband's family. While she was there, she took a side trip to Guanajuato and Valle de Santiago. Although it was her hometown, she couldn't stay for long, because "there was too much of my parents' pain there." But she did find inspiration for her life's work. While on a Valle de Santiago street, she watched a local man making azhares, wax flowers.

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Pharr, Texas

Pharr is a small Texas town in the Rio Grande Valley just north of the Mexico-U.S. border. Established in 1909, it was named for Henry N. Pharr, a sugar planter from Louisiana. In the early 1900s, men from the Pharr family visited southern Texas to see if the land would support the raising of sugar cane. Finding that it would, several more family members moved to Texas to buy land. They eventually created large plantations where they grew sugar cane and food crops.

As the Pharr plantations were thriving, workers in Valle de Santiago, Mexico, were struggling. Many Mexican men, including Eva's father, Fidel Silva, had to go north to the U.S. to support their families. Eva's father took a job on the Pharr farm. Fidel worked very hard, and although he earned less than one dollar a day, he sent money home regularly and visited as often as he could.

Each year after all the food at the Pharr farm was harvested Fidel contracted himself to the Amalgamated Sugar Factory. He worked in their fields and factories in Nyssa, Oregon, making the 2,000-mile, 43-hour trip twice a year.

Eva's father kept up this rigorous this schedule for several years. And the more time that passed, the more he missed his wife and children. So, almost three years after he left, he reunited the family. Eva was three years old when she, her baby sister, and her mother left Valle de Santiago for Pharr. As soon as she was old enough, Eva started working to support her family. Says Eva:

We lived on a cotton and vegetable farm that grew tomatoes, radishes, onions, and cucumbers-all the stuff that stores used, you know. From the age of seven years old, I have worked out in the fields. Children did that—or at least that's what I know about my sister and myself. Before we went to school in the mornings, we had to work.

We had different jobs—sometimes we made bunches of radishes or onions, other times we picked cucumbers or zucchinis. Then after school, we'd put on our grubbies and go back into the fields picking cotton, oranges, tomatoes-whatever was needed to help the family.

I didn't mind working so hard. My Daddy said that we needed to know everything that we could in life because we never knew what would come up. He always told us that the work we did was honorable. "And who knows how a person's life will turn out," he said. "We may need these skills one day."

While their children were young, the Silva's stopped migrating. But when Eva was 15, the family began doing migrating back and forth between Pharr, Texas, and Nyssa, Oregon. She made this long journey with her family for three years.

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Nyssa, Oregon

Nyssa lies near the Idaho border in the Snake River Valley of Oregon. Originally a rich area where local Indians found abundant food, game, and fish, it became home to European American fur traders, settlers, farmers, and ranchers during the 1800s. With the development of irrigation systems and the arrival of the railroad in the 19th century, farming and ranching prospered. Many thousands of sheep were raised there.

Nyssa's history also involves migrant farm workers. For decades, workers have gone to the area to harvest and process crops, such as sugar beets. Some stayed in Nyssa during the off-season to work in factories that processed the harvested crops. Those who stayed became the foundation for what is now a thriving Latino community in Nyssa.

For three years, Eva and her family were part of Nyssa's migrant farm worker community. They journeyed 2000 miles from Pharr, Texas, to work on sugar beet plantations in Nyssa. Like many Mexican-American families, they were migrant farm workers who followed the ripening cycle of fruits and vegetables to earn money.

One year, when Eva was 18, the Silvas decided not to return to Pharr. "After the harvest," she says, "we just stayed in Nyssa and made it our home." Eva's family found year-round work at the Amalgamated Sugar Factory. They also found a large community of migrants because, in addition to Amalgamated, there was an Ore-Ida packing plant just 12 miles away in Ontario, Oregon.

The Silvas moved in 1959 when there were only five other Mexican families in town. Now Nyssa is about 80 percent Hispanic and is an example of how migrant farm workers create stable communities. (Gamboa & Buan 1995:98)

In Nyssa and other agricultural towns in Oregon, the annual pursuit of seasonal farm jobs eventually led to the development of permanent Hispanic communities. In each place, the pattern was similar. One or two families would decide to stay rather than migrate elsewhere. The next year, others would do the same until a community was established. Soon, settlers wanted food, music, and other businesses, and people were able to make the leap from farm work to education, shop ownership, or healthcare.

Settlement began with families who had visited the state for several years. Once families made the decision to remain, they experienced considerable isolation from their new cultural surroundings.... However, as the communities grew, traditional cultural practices like baptisms and marriage celebrations helped to soothe the feeling of alienation.

"The social scene of these new communities was complex. For example, wealth did not define social status entirely. Folk healers and individuals who were able to provide spiritual guidance were important, as were the elderly, those who could speak English, and those who had been in Oregon for a long time….. [Despite the difficulties,] Oregon provided a welcome escape from constant dislocation....As former migrants, they understood the value of education and did what they could to enroll their children in school. Adults attended evening English classes when available." (Gamboa & Buan Nosotros: The Hispanic People of Oregon. 1995:16-17)

Eva's voice rises with pride as she relates memories of life in Nyssa: the town, the crops, and something called "running potatoes":

Nyssa was a very beautiful, very bustling little town full of stores and full of people. There were gas stations. There were lots of car dealership places…. That's all we knew so we thought it was beautiful; just a wonderful place to be. We were really happy, plus there was more money here because there was more work. And we could stop moving in a truck from Pharr to Nyssa and then back to Nyssa from Pharr. We just stayed here through the winter and went back to work in the fields in the spring and summer.

In Nyssa, we grow lots of grain, wheat, and corn for cattle. We have lots of beautiful potatoes and onions, and there are apples, pears, and peaches and I have participated in harvesting all of this. It's a very, very wonderful little town, just very…fruitful! And we're happy here. There are still lots of people who come here to work. Not as much as before, when I was a young woman, but we still have migrants come in to harvest onions.

In the winter many people work in processing plants or packing sheds where they run potatoes. When you "run" potatoes, you put them on a conveyer belt. Then, as they pass, you take out all the dirt and debris that they bring in with them from the field. After they're run, they're packed and brought to storage places or to Ore-Ida. The same happens to onions. First, they're cleaned of sticks and stones. Then they're put into trucks and stored away in storage places and onto Ore-Ida for processing or packing. And then they're sent to Japan and other places. So there's a lot of work for a lot of people here!

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