Immigration Links Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula With San Francisco
Mexico's Yucatan peninsula juts out into the Caribbean Sea like a defiant fist. Three thousand miles away, the San Francisco Bay area looks like a miniature version of it.
The two may be separated by distance but they depend on each other. Yucatan needs the work and San Francisco needs the workers. Their decades-long relationship has developed into something of a love affair, which returning migrants find hard to forget.
But for the migrants' relatives who have stayed behind, the benefits of immigration have begun to lose their luster.
In the city of Oxkutzcab, in the heart of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, a man tooted his bicycle horn as he pedaled down the narrow streets. He sold sweet bread from a basket for a few pesos a piece, a meager way to make a living. Jobs like his have pushed nearly one third of Oxkutzcab’s population to migrate north.
Fernando Buenfil Gongora is the man locals associate with the ultimate immigrant success story. Like many ethnic Mayans who live here, he’s short and stocky. Buenfil owns the Hotel Classico, built with 15 years worth of remittance money. He worked his way from busboy to bartender at an upscale Asian restaurant in San Francisco.
"I have the Golden Gate Bridge and I have another cable car here," Buenfil said pointing to murals inside his 11-room hotel, which is like a shrine to San Francisco.
The top floor is painted canary yellow and features rooms with bay windows. Today the hotel keeps most of his family employed. His remittance money also helped his sisters pay for college.
“[Financially] I'm okay," Buenfil said. "I can survive with this. I'm not making much, like in San Francisco, but I'm happy to be here with my family."
But Buenfil confesses leaving San Francisco was like swearing off a mistress. He misses the city. So much so, that he’s cut off all contact with his friends there. He fears being pulled back.
“I feel like part of my life is in San Francisco," he said. "I feel like if I go there I’m gonna stay ... So I don't wanna leave my family.”
Family is what ultimately yanks many Yucatecos back to Mexico. For Buenfil, it was his dying father. Now he’s married with an infant daughter.
Traces of San Francisco are everywhere in Oxkutzcab. A few restaurants serve Asian dishes like Pad Thai and chicken dumplings in addition to cheeseburgers and tacos. The San Francisco Giants logo is displayed on taxi cab windows, baseball hats and tattoos.
Oxkutzcab is far from the mega tourist destinations of Cancun and Playa del Carmen, which attract millions of Americans annually. Seventy percent of locals live in moderate to extreme poverty. But the consistent flow of U.S. dollars, which averages $120 million a year in the state of Yucatan, has nurtured a modest middle class. They drive newer model trucks and carry smartphones. It’s common to see a two story American-style home built next to a traditional adobe hut.
As a teenager Juan Carlos Chablé CoCom would wake at 3 a.m. to unload crates of pineapple destined for the downtown market in Oxkutzcab. He made the equivalent of $26 a week, not enough to take his future wife out to a nice dinner. When they married, they moved in with his parents.
"I couldn't make it," he said. "I was barely making enough to feed us."
So he went north. Chablé spent two years in San Francisco kneading pizza dough, washing dishes and garnishing salads. He saved up enough to move back to Oxkutzcab and build a spacious four-room home with a patio and a fancy wrought iron gate. He now has two kids and owns a motorcycle taxi. On a good week he’ll make the equivalent of $120. But lately he’s been feeling restless.
"I want to go back to San Francisco," he said. "I have hospital bills to pay off and I struggle with the day-to-day expenses."
Chablé keeps his savings in three yogurt containers atop his refrigerator. All three are empty, save for one American dollar. Chablé wants to earn more dollars and open up his own car wash.
But those who stay behind, mostly women and children, are less convinced that immigration is the solution to their money troubles.
Next door Chablé's mother Sofia rinsed a chicken before lunch. She squatted in a tattered Mayan embroidered dress. Her sink was a large plastic bowl, her faucet a lawn hose and her stove a pile of firewood. She scoffed at her son's desire to leave again.
"He's crazy," she said. "He has his house and a motor taxi for work. What is he missing. He's got everything he needs."
Chablé's wife is also against his leaving. Now that their children are in school she's offered to get a job, but Chablé won't allow it.
"Here it reflects badly on a man if his wife is working," he said. "You will be ridiculed for failing to provide for your family."
In a nearby neighborhood, 30-year-old Maria Juvencia Chan swatted flies off chunks of raw pork meat. She has never hesitated at the thought of work. Chan and her husband run a small butcher shop and food stand. She also makes her own soaps to sell.
With their earnings, they’ve raised two kids, built a home, a drive a 2005 Volkswagen Jetta. Neither has migrated to the U.S. for work. Chan takes pride in this.
"It’s difficult no matter where you go," she said. "But if you apply yourself and work hard you can make it in Mexico."
This story was produced in collaboration with reporter Mely Arellano and Round Earth Media's Mexico's reporting project.
