KPBS takes 'Uneasy' look at misery
Thursday, May 11, 1989
by Robert P. Laurence
In one long, sweeping shot the camera pans from hillsides lined with
new homes costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, to a small valley where a few tiny
plywood shacks have been propped out of sight beneath trees and bushes.
The people who live in these vastly different shelters are, as the
camera plainly shows, neighbors. Those great differences make them, in the title of a
documentary airing from 8 to 9 tonight on KPBS-TV, channel 15, "Uneasy
Neighbors,"
Produced, written and directed by KPBS's Paul Espinosa, the disturbing
35-minute film is followed by a 25-minute discussion, and the two together make for an
illuminating lesson in the misery suffered by too many people in this smugly, callously
prosperous community.
Put "Uneasy Neighbors" on a double bill with last week's
"48 Hours" CBS documentary on the local drug trade, and you've got a portrait
quite different from the "America's Finest City" image that San Diego likes to
promote.
Filmed last winter, "Uneasy Neighbors" focuses on a
settlement of Mexican workers in the Green Valley camp between Encinitas and Carlsbad, and
on the closing of the camp Feb. 1. In one of those ironies of modern bureaucracy, the camp
was shut down on the order of health authorities. Its residents were driven off to find
some other, but probably no more healthy, place to hide.
A local resident neatly sums up the problem of the workers as the
program begins: "These people don't have a place to live. So either they live 22 in a
rental property, or they live in the fields."
They are among the homeless of San Diego. The difference between them
and other homeless people is that many of them have never had real homes on this side of
the border.
And these homeless people live in a high-income area with little or no
low-income housing They live there because they work there.
"We come in search of dollars," says one Mexican, "Your,
precious commodity. You're so selfish. You treat us like dogs. That's what hurts us."
They live in conditions that Americans expect to find only in the Third
World, as narrator Bob Landers points out "Shelters of plywood and plastic are for
the lucky ones. Others live under bushes, or in these so called 'spider holes.'"
Most of them are not agricultural workers, but day laborers, domestics;
yard workers. "These people are here because we offer them jobs, because we need
them," says Rafael Martinez, a retired Presbyterian minister who tries to care for
some of their needs. "When the day's work is finished, they want them to
disappear."
They don't disappear. They go to live in the shacks and bushes without
electricity, running water or sanitary facilities. In the morning, they show up again,
standing on street corners in groups of 20 or so, waiting to be hired by passing
motorists.
One elderly woman calls it "frightening" to see such groups
of men. "Maybe in the Depression there were things like that. But not since the
Depression."
After the camp is broken up, one of the Mexican workers remarks that
"there will always be work. The hardest jobs are for Mexicans. An American isn't
going to take a pick and shovel and get big blisters. That's the Mexican's job."
Moderated by Espinosa, the closing discussion reveals that precious
little has been done by government to help the workers, although federal funds are
available.
"Every city talks about it as a regional problem, as does the
county," observes Claudia Smith, regional counsel for the California Rural Legal
Assistance. "But what that means is that nobody has shouldered their share of the
burden."
In 16 years of working with migrant laborers, she says San Diego County
can boast of the worst conditions she has seen in Southern California, conditions she
summarizes as "appalling."
Dick Goodman, chief of housing for the City of Oceanside, points out
that Oceanside does have some homeless shelters in its plans, but residents fear the
shelter may be too good, that it may act as a "drawing card" for homeless people
in other communities.
Residents say they want to help the homeless, he adds, but no matter
where shelters are built, "you're going to get the 'not in my back yard'
syndrome."
Trouble is, the homeless workers are now just outside the back fence.