By Abby Bartles
The stories I am telling are of three men from the Southwest whose narratives highlights the diverse experiences of Mexican workers in Lane County and as they returned home or migrated elsewhere. These life histories illustrate life before the 1930 census and what drew Mexican workers to Lane County and how they made the journey back home. Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado have long-established roots with Mexican communities before and after the Mexican American War in the mid-1800s. As these men, and many others, migrated across the United States in the 1930s, they took many dangerous jobs on the railroads. These migrations to the United States to work on rail lines, especially in the Southwest and Midwest (Jeffery Marcos Garcilazo 2012), was due to the railroad industry’s growing dependency on Mexican labor. Jeffery Marcos Garcilazo, in his book “Traqueros: Mexican Railroad Workers in the United States, 1870-1930”, highlighted the significant contributions of Mexican immigrants to the railroad industry. He also mentioned how the first laborers for railroads were many Chinese workers and Irish workers who were laying tracks before. As employers suffered from the limitations of Chinese and Irish laborers due to immigration quotas, Mexican labor became the go-to. This was due to the significant amount of people coming through the U.S.-Mexico border and employers tricking them into accepting lower pay than their predecessors.[1]
Angelus Studio photographs, 1880s-1940s, University of Oregon. “PH037_b177_75408” Oregon Digital
Jose Coronado was born in 1897 and raised in Arizona by Mexican immigrants. Jose made the arduous journey further north from Arizona to Lane County, Oregon to work as a railroad laborer. Like many of his peers, Jose did not have the opportunity to attend school but was literate and fluent in English. Once he moved to Oregon, he rented a place to live alongside his fellow workers. Goadfaryse Leyba was born in 1897 and raised by Coloradoan-born parents. At the age of thirty-three, Goadfaryse worked as a laborer on the railroad and rented a place to stay while he labored. Jose Ortiz was born in 1902 in New Mexico who migrated at twenty-eight years old to work on the railroad in Lane County. He was fluent in English and literate despite not attending school. The lack of sourcing to better illustrate the lives of these three men in Oregon suggests that they likely returned to the Southwest to be with his family once he finished his contract.
Angelus Studio photographs, 1880s-1940s, University of Oregon. “Logs on railroad.” Oregon Digital
Angelus Studio photographs, 1880s-1940s, University of Oregon. (16 May 2024). PH037_b177_75408 Retrieved from Angelus Studio photographs, 1880s-1940s, University of Oregon. (21 May 2024). Logs on railroad.
Deutsch, S. (1987). Women and Intercultural Relations: The Case of Hispanic New Mexico and Colorado. Signs, 12(4), 719–739. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174210
Garcilazo, Jeffrey Marcos, and Vicki Ruiz. Traqueros: Mexican Railroad Workers in the United States, 1870-1930. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2012. muse.jhu.edu/book/20567.