[ Applause ]
>> This is my first visit and I'm very happy to be here.
I hope my face shows up cause I may not, but I must apologize for being late.
I was telling Chuck on the way over, to come and see y'all.
It's my fault, because the plane was on time.
You know. So I have no excuse [inaudible].
I should like to begin with a monologue.
And it's going to be easy for me to tell you what it's about.
If a writer can't tell you what it's
about through the reading then he better be in another line of work.
I'm not going to subject you to tell you what it is for two hours,
remember the old '60s coffee guys use to sing with a guitar, they play for 22 seconds and talk
for two hours about what the hell they had written.
It's not that at all.
Monologue.
My name is Fructuoso Alaniz Garcia.
And I was so named from my Saints Day, the 21st day of January.
In English, according to my granddaughter, Lucia, my name means bountiful, productive.
Myself I find it proper that one so name should be chosen to work the land, to know it
and to give it life so that it, the land, return part of that life in grain, and cereal,
and vegetables, and yes and fruits of labor.
And a bounty to that person who prepared the land and watched the crops grow
from nothing, but a hope and handful of seeds.
When I worked my land, the one I own, I work it the same way I work somebody else's land,
it makes no difference, none, really.
Land is land.
And when it's all said and done, or as we say when the music is over, one leaves the terrain,
el terreno, for somebody else to occupy.
But one must leave the land clean, weeded, and ready for that someone else to come to it
with that hope and that handful of seeds I spoken of.
I'm from here, the valley.
The north bank border like my father and my kids father and his too.
A Mexican of course, but an American by birth.
Yes. And once when I was 19 years old, in 1918,
I was sent to France, but as you can see I came back.
Two of my cousins, Antonia and Francisco Garcia did not come back.
My granddaughter Lucia and she too worked the land until she was 17 years old.
My granddaughter says that my cousins are remembered, is that the word?
Remembered?
Anyway, my granddaughter says, if they are remembered in Austin, the capital, yes they are.
In a park at the university, where the young men play football.
She saw the metal plaques in that park, took down the dates of where and when the boys died
and yes they are the same, Antonia and Francisco Garcia alright.
That's something that I didn't know about, the memorial plates.
Yes I was in France.
And the land there was tired.
I remember but it's come back to feed its people hasn't it?
Hum. One thing about land professor, God's not making any more, but it isn't going anywhere.
And you got to work it, that's all there is to it.
I worked the land in Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, places like that.
We use to drive up from the valley to Texarkana, Texas, across to Arkansas
and they had some bad roads there in my day.
And down to Poplar Bluff in Missouri.
From there we'd go east to the Mississippi River to Cairo,
Illinois and then north to Kankakee.
From there east again, to Reynolds, Indiana, that's on route 420.
And then north to New Buffalo, Michigan.
Well once in Michigan we picked plums, and cherries, grapes, soft fruit.
But if we drove on to east Michigan we picked cucumbers in Pinconning or beets.
And then we'd go south to Ohio.
We'd pick tomatoes there.
This could be done if we drove, if we had a car of our own.
If we went by truck on a contract, then we'd go where they take us.
Sometimes we'd meet in Hoopeston, Illinois and separate from there.
Some friends and relatives of ours from the valley,
worked for years for one family in Iowa, one family.
They owned a nursery, and they needed special people for that.
I worked there too, seven or eight seasons there.
My wife she made the trips too and we traveled together for some 27 years.
And once we worked in Wyoming with some people who came up from Laredo, Texas.
My wife died ten years ago and our son Marcus died two years ago
in a train truck accident in Monon.
Indiana. And my granddaughter Lucia was unhurt.
And she's a student at Austin, at the university.
My son's widow, Estéfana, lives in our house and she runs it now.
My wife and I raised her from childhood and she's been part
of the family since she was a baby.
And Estéfana is one of the best and one
of the fastest lettuce cutters and packers in the valley.
She's as good as some men I know and better than others.
And she can read and write English too.
Her cousin Isaura is a school teacher
and in the summertime Isaura teaches school for free, out in the field.
She buys pencils, and writing tablets, and she teaches reading,
and writing, and the numbers to the kids.
She's there at the school we built from seven to five, everyday.
And she does it because she says it's necessary.
Once in a while some friends come and help her.
But no matter what, Isaura is there everyday.
Working. My grandson, Balde, is 23 years old
and he already owns a used truck.
He and a friend of his, a valley boy named Raúl Santos Coy, is his partner.
Balde is a champion hay stacker, yes he is in competition too.
Raúl drives the truck and the two of them contract for hay hauling in North Texas,
Amarillo, Plainview, what we call up north, el norte.
Balde is my granddaughter's oldest brother and he sends money to Austin for her schooling.
She's an example he says and he's very proud of his sister, well so are we.
But Balde's also a fine young man who's not afraid of hard work.
We have a saying here in the Rio Grande Valley, es el agua,
it's the water, the Rio Grande water.
It claims you, you understand, it's yours and you belong to it too.
No matter where we work we always come back to the border, to the valley, es el agua.
The valley is a good place.
It's hard sure, seguro.
But there's farm work and one just has to be harder than the work.
And the valley is different too.
And it makes us different somehow.
When we leave it to go to Yakima Valley, or to Oregon, or for the hops,
or Nampa in Idaho, we're home there too.
Why? Well because the workers there are valley people, yes.
And the kids who have never seen the valley, they say they from there,
because that's where their folks are from.
Es el agua, the parents talk about the valley, see and the kids know.
This is changing.
But everything changes, it's in the nature of things.
I'll show you.
When my wife and I and our friends picked cotton and this is just an example.
We picked cotton in the valley from June to August
and then the owner plowed the ground in September.
Well by late August some of us would go to central Texas to pick,
or to west Texas in October, and November.
To places like Brownfield, and La Mesa.
Sometimes we'd go to Arkansas, or to Missouri for cotton and to Tennessee.
But not now and not for some 20 years now either.
Machines do it.
But they can't do everything, no.
You still need la mano de obra, the human hand, the eye to see and distinguished.
Machines don't take pride in what they do, they can't.
But we did and do, yes.
Work is work and most of it is hard, but that's expected.
What's a bother and shameful too, is where one has to live in the American Midwest.
In our cars, or trucks, or on the ground, in the carpas, a tent.
Or in chicken and turkey coops, these are the words, yes, terrible.
It isn't always like that, no.
But even once is enough, believe me.
What one endures, one survives.
One even survives and endures the seasonal racismo, racism,
prejudice from everyone, even our own.
But I can't change it and God won't as we said, pero tampoco nos rajamos, we won't crack.
We won't throw up our hands and say I give up, no.
No, no nos rajamos y ya, we won't give up and that's it.
But after all the work and travel it's back to the valley for more work.
Es el auga, yes, hum, those who claim
that hard work never killed anybody are fooling themselves and their friends.
Hard work is hard, that's why they call it that.
It's killing.
But there's a certain kind of pride, foolish pride perhaps and unexplainable too.
But a family is proud of what it does and what it can do.
It's like when I was in France 60 years ago, one was there
and one stayed there until they said let's go.
Let's go home.
And that's the way it is when we were in Indiana, or Iowa,
or in the Red River Valley in Minnesota.
One is there and then someone says let's go, let's go home to Texas, home.
To the valley, es el agua.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]