Close Quarters : Immigrant Family’s Fortunes Take Turn for Better After Fire

It has been only four months since a flash fire forced 43 members of the Carranza family out of their small rental house and left them tearful and homeless on an Oxnard street.

But it is already clear that what appeared to be a family tragedy has instead become an extraordinary stroke of good fortune for the struggling immigrant clan.

Progress can be measured by the new housing they occupy. By where they now sleep. And by how they see their future.

Before the fire, Javier Carranza, his wife and seven children all squeezed into a single bedroom each night, the two adults and two teen-agers on the floor. Their eighth child slept on a chair outside the room.

“Two children still sleep with us, but no one sleeps on the floor,” said Carranza, 42, whose family lived with the families of his five brothers in one 1,600-square-foot house until an overloaded electrical cord displaced them all with a fiery pop in March.

“The way we are living now is much better,” Carranza said last week.

Six Carranza brothers, their wives, one father-in-law and 30 children--farm-worker families from the same dusty village in northern Mexico--now live in six spare but clean houses and apartments in Oxnard.

Their rents are federally subsidized and represent 30% or less of the families’ incomes.

The March fire moved the Carranzas quickly to the top of the Oxnard Housing Authority’s five-year waiting list for public housing because they were displaced by catastrophe, said Melissa Mendez, the authority’s application supervisor.

“We’ve had to defend what we did for them,” Mendez said. “But I’m very proud of these people. They weren’t applying for housing. They didn’t want welfare. They wanted to do it on their own. We went to them, they didn’t come to us.”

The Carranzas--described by educators, emergency workers and city officials as humble and hard-working--may represent the best of the immigrant story in Ventura County.

But their situations also demonstrate the strains that a flood of Latino immigration has placed on housing, education, health and social services in this county, which over the last decade again became a major port of entry for poor Mexican laborers seeking a better life.

The county’s Latino population surged by 64,000 people or 57% during the 1980s, double the overall growth rate. One in four residents is now Latino, several school districts are mostly Latino and public health and welfare services are overburdened as never before.

About one-third of the county’s welfare cases involve people who speak only Spanish, and about half the babies born in the county hospital, which provides subsidized care for poor people, are Latino, officials have said.

Such circumstances repeated in communities nationwide have prompted new calls for a temporary halt in legal immigration and greater restrictions on services to illegal immigrants and their American-born children.

Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) has proposed a constitutional amendment that would deny U.S. citizenship to children born in this country to illegal immigrants. He says that move would save billions of dollars a year in welfare payments. Even moderates such as Rep. Anthony Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills), whose district includes Thousand Oaks, now endorse major reform to stem illegal immigration.

“There are limits, and we are being overwhelmed,” Beilenson said recently.

On a personal level, however, the story of the Carranzas’ cramped and meager existence on Oxnard’s L Street, and of their two-decade struggle to successfully relocate here, resonates because it has been played out repeatedly for 200 years in immigrant communities throughout America.

“We came here to work, we had no choice,” Javier Carranza said as his wife, Bertha, spun homemade tortillas and his children gathered round to hear him talk of survival and dreams for their future.

“I want them to be superior in school,” he said. “I don’t want them to work in the fields like me.”

Humble Beginnings

Javier Carranza was one of 12 children--nine boys and three girls--born in the hardscrabble village of Los Cerritos, Michoacan, to farmer Jose Guadalupe Carranza, now 70.

His nine sons all had moved to Oxnard by about 1980 after migrating to the United States in the 1970s as they reached maturity.

“In the days when we were illegal, my father would even give us money so we could get over here,” said Baltazar Carranza, 40, who as a 20-year-old followed Javier to a laborer’s job in America.

In their village, the Carranzas would work as sharecroppers in government-owned fields. But the corn, garbanzo and lentil beans they grew would last only two or three months after harvest.

Then they would scratch for work from rich property owners in the region, sometimes earning a few dollars a day, four of the brothers said.

“Los Cerritos was real nice,” Baltazar Carranza, said. “But there was not very much work, and very little money to be earned. That’s why I’m here.”

The Oxnard Plain was just the opposite. The climate was mild, the growing season long, and the brothers discovered they could find work during the February-through-July strawberry harvest.

Stooped eight to 10 hours a day, they toiled over the strawberries, working much harder and longer than they ever did in Los Cerritos. But the money--ranging from the $4.25 minimum wage to $10 an hour for the fastest pickers--was also much better. And they could see what the future might bring for their children.

By 1987, with rents increasing rapidly and work sporadic, five Carranza brothers decided to share a house, the three-bedroom home on L Street. At that time their families were smaller and some children were still living in Mexico. Only about 20 people occupied the house at first.

More Babies

By March of this year, a dozen more babies had been born, all five families had been fully united on L Street and a sixth brother, Ruperto, 29, had also moved in with his wife and three young children.

Ten of the children attended bilingual classes at nearby Sunkist Elementary School and others went to E.O. Green Junior High in the Hueneme Elementary School District, where 800 youngsters, or 11.5% of students, are enrolled in a special migrant education program.

“They had real good attitudes about coming to school,” former Sunkist Principal Richard Froyen recalled. “The parents were very good about coming in and meeting with the teachers, and the kids were well-behaved and working hard to get ahead and learn the English language.”

The Carranza children were also enrolled in intensive after-school programs where they studied math and the English language, administrators said. The older ones were instructed in career awareness and self-esteem.

“Self-esteem is one of our underlying focuses,” said district Assistant Supt. Yolanda Benitez, herself the daughter of migrant workers. “The other children have nice clothes, and they don’t, and nice homes, and they don’t.”

The Carranzas are representative, Benitez said, of first-generation immigrants from Mexico. “Their sense is that you work hard and you provide for your own family. It’s very hard for them to take handouts,” she said. “They’re still very much the farmer who provides for their families.”

But on March 10, the Carranzas were forced to start over. The electrical system of the family’s 34-year-old stucco rental gave way under the burden of three refrigerators and five television sets, consuming all their possessions.

No one was injured, because several adults who otherwise would have been picking strawberries could not find work and were home to snatch their children from the fast-spreading fire.

The Carranza house represented the worst crowding ever encountered in Oxnard, officials said, though census figures show 25% of all dwellings in the city are overcrowded. And if the fire had been at night, lives surely would have been lost, they said.

Sifting through the rubble the next day, Bertha Carranza, 35, said: “Yes, it was difficult here. The kids would start arguing and fighting and then the parents would fight. It is not easy because we don’t make enough money for anyone to get their own place.”

But even as she examined lost mementos, Bertha said that she would never have traded her life in the crowded house for the one she had left behind in her native village.

“Only my husband works, so there’s only enough money for food,” she said. “But there are more ways of surviving here. You can live better here. The government has ways of assisting.”

Within eight days of the fire, the housing authority had relocated all six families, and the American Red Cross had collected food, clothing and $3,570 in donations to cover part of the $23,000 the agency said it spent to give the Carranzas a fresh start.

“On the surface this may have been a catastrophic event,” said Mike Goth, director of emergency services for the Red Cross’s local chapter. “But for the family, this may have been one of the better things to happen to them. We were glad to help. These were hard-working folks who had a great deal of pride and who wanted to help themselves.”

A Bright Future

The Carranzas said last week that their lives and the promise of the future are bright, although living apart has taken some getting used to. They had always lived communally--sharing food, income and child care.

Even before the fire, the six brothers had hoped to split their families into two houses. But strawberry crops had not been good for two or three years, and work was scarce.

Now they live in six dwellings, paying between $41 to $426 a month for the subsidized housing.

Ruperto Carranza, who lives with his 21-year-old wife, Rosala, and three small children, hopes he has left farm labor behind. He works as a maintenance man at a golf course restaurant and studies at night to be a carpenter.

He said he expects to make $7,000 this year, more than in the fields. And he pays just $190 a month in rent, compared to $300 when all six brothers lived together.

“This is much better,” Ruperto said. “We have everything here. We have our own beds, we are working, we have enough food, we have clothes and doctors, we have a car, and the children can go to school.”

For the larger families, budgets are still very tight despite public assistance, which for most of the families also includes food stamps.

Baltazar Carranza, whose rent is highest at $426 a month because three family members worked last year, said he is concerned. He has only a few workdays left in the strawberry season, his wife, Blandina, is unemployed and his 18-year-old son, Luis, has been laid off.

Unemployment payments of about $80 a week do not stretch far when there are eight mouths to feed, he said.

“We all had to split up. They didn’t let us rent together,” said Baltazar, who did not begin to bring his children to the United States until 1990 for financial reasons. The youngest children finally arrived last fall.

As Baltazar looked to his oldest son, he said his goal for the youth is to earn money, “so he will be able to help me in what we need around the house.” For his youngest children, he hopes for more. “I want to see them get educated and not to be like me.”

Living on perhaps the tightest budget of all the Carranza families are Javier, Bertha, their eight children and two other sons by Javier and a former wife who have moved in for the summer.

To feed so many, Bertha can afford to serve only homemade tortillas, beans, rice and potatoes for every meal. The kids wash it down with Kool-Aid. Cornflakes and milk are a special treat once or twice a week, she said.

Her children have never gone out to a movie, Bertha said. And when asked what the family does for recreation, Javier said: “We go from work to home. We don’t go out because it takes money.”

It is a difficult life, Javier Carranza said, but he sees his children stepping out of the fields through education. Adela, 15, wants to be a doctor and David, 14, an architect. Neither wants anything more to do with picking strawberries.

But both joined their father in the fields for three weeks recently after junior high school adjourned for the summer.

“I felt tired. When I had worked two hours, I couldn’t stand up,” Adela said. “It’s too hard.”

Javier Carranza said that as the children left the field each day he would use their fatigue as a motivator: “ ‘Well, do you like it? Do you want to do better in school?’ ” he said he would ask them.

The children’s labor also was a matter of necessity. “I’m not sure if it’s legal or not,” the father said, “but when you’re hungry, you have to work.”

Javier and Bertha Carranza are troubled that they now live in housing paid for by the government. They didn’t apply for food stamps until a few months ago, they said. And, Javier said without being asked, that he had paid the hospital bills for the births of all but two of his children.

“I am proud that I was able to do it and not ask the government for help,” he said. “I hope in a couple of months I will no longer need help. Just as soon as I can, I will do it all again for myself.”