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The money will help her survive the month of January, when Buca must return to Mexico to renew his H-2A temporary guest-worker visa, as he must do every year. Amanda hasn't been back to their hometown since 1993, when Buca lost his job at Pemex, the federal oil company, and the couple came north looking for work.
Buca writes the guys their paychecks, $10 an hour, much higher than the going rate for Hispanic farm-workers.
"Gracias, don," Silvio tells Gerónimo, who recruited Silvio and his brother to work.
"Don" is a Spanish word for "sir" that conveys respect and admiration. Gerónimo's fashionable Carhartt ballcap and metallic dental work are a study in contrasts, showing how far he's come from his impoverished childhood in Veracruz. To be in a position to issue paychecks, Gerónimo and Buca have accomplished something few Hispanic farm workers have: They've found a way to invest in the future. Buca didn't graduate high school; Gerónimo finished only the sixth grade. Now, both dream of sending their children to college.
Living on less than $30,000 a year, Buca and Amanda are somehow able to send Darby and her sister Daisy to dance classes, piano lessons and every school field trip that comes along. After he and Gerónimo planted their trees, Buca says he worked "to the death" -- some 80 hours a week for several years -- until his evangelical Christian mother in Mexico told him to read the book of Ecclesiastes, which says a man's life and labor are foolish because everything he makes fades away.
We don't want your money, Amanda told him, we want you.
Buca has tried to cut back on his hours at work, whether on the commercial farm, among his own trees or with the summer lawn-mowing business he started a few years ago. He prefers to spend his weekends with the girls, at backyard barbecues with his sister and brother-in-law, at church functions or rafting on the river.
At one point today, just after the trouble with the tractor, Buca shook his head: "I don't think we're going to plant anymore." For a man whose life has been dictated by a faltering Mexican economy, his family's uncertain immigration status and the financial pressure to work a back-bending job for pay that few Americans would be willing to live on, it's nice to have that choice.
Jesse James DeConto wrote CL's July 6 cover story "The New Latino South."
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Eighty percent of North Carolina's Christmas-tree workers are Hispanic immigrants. In an NC State University Survey, growers said they'd have to scale back or go out of business without Hispanic labor.
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Calendar
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Wine & Paint @ Blackfinn Ameripub- Ballantyne
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Face to Face Foundation Gala @ The Revelry North End
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An Evening With Phil Rosenthal Of "Somebody Feed Phil" @ Knight Theater
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Kountry Wayne: The King Of Hearts Tour @ Ovens Auditorium
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Queen Charlotte Fair @ Route 29 Pavilion
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