Reflection of a changing America

03.11.04

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"Beardstown: Reflection of a changing America" by S. Lynne Walker was published Nov. 9-12, 2003, in The State Journal-Register of Springfield, Ill. Walker's stories will be included in Best Newspaper Writing 2004 produced by The Poynter Institute.

Here are excerpts:

(Mayor Bob) Walters, who worked for 18 years as a ham boner at Oscar Mayer, had reservations about what many saw as the salvation of his dying town.

Excel Corp., the second-largest meatpacker in America, wanted to reopen the Oscar Mayer plant, and most of the town's residents were enthusiastic about the offer. They thought life would be the way it used to be, with an influx of money, thriving businesses and jobs for their children and grandchildren.

But during his travels as a representative for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Walters had seen what happened when meatpackers, operating on profit margins of just 2 or 3 percent, opened plants in the rural Midwest.

Yes, they hired local folks. But they also recruited a stream of immigrants, most of them Mexican, to feed their insatiable demand for strong, young workers.

* * *

Nobody can remember when the first Mexican families moved into Beardstown. Suddenly, they were just there.

The Rev. Eugene Weitzel recalls looking out at his congregation at St. Alexius Catholic Church in 1995 and seeing a handful of Mexicans in the pews. Soon, they were knocking at his door, asking for a Spanish-speaking priest. …

Principal Pam DeSollar remembers a Mexican mother and father walking into her kindergarten office and using hand signals to enroll their 6-year-old son.

"How were we going to talk to this family? How were we going to fill out the forms?" DeSollar said she wondered at the time. "We couldn't communicate."

DeSollar's concern was echoed throughout the town. For the first time in their lives, Beardstown residents weren't able to talk with their neighbors.

They didn't understand anything the Mexicans said or did. And the Mexican families didn't understand the stuffy, small-town rules that now dictated their lives.

* * *

But as the Hispanics' presence became more obvious, ambivalence by some longtime Beardstown residents turned to resentment.

Martha Martinez, 29, was denied her right to register to vote at the same time she applied for a driver's license, which she was entitled to under Illinois' "motor-voter" law. She asked why and was told, "it was because I was a naturalized citizen, not a citizen citizen." Martinez's family was also the target of hate crimes.

"They threw flaming rags at the house," said her husband, 35-year-old Alejandro. "They punctured our tires. They said we came to take their jobs."

* * *

Like other Hispanics, (Marisela) Chavez believed a mix of Anglos and Hispanics made Beardstown a stronger community.

When the town's 11 churches called a meeting after the arson, 60 people showed up to discuss their concerns about the growing tension.

By the end of the meeting, Anglos and Hispanics had formed an alliance called Beardstown United. Plans were made to enter a float in the town's Fall Fun Festival, and a block party was planned for October.

Beardstown United noted that the racial divide touched every facet of the residents' lives.

… In 1996, Beardstown wasn't a community, but two separate groups of people: Anglos and Hispanics.

* * *

Life in this small, quiet town had brought prosperity to Beardstown's immigrants. But their prosperity was built on lies as well. Their spending could continue only if immigration agents didn't show up in the town.

… "Economically, you live like a king here," said Alejandro Martinez, 35, who moved to Beardstown in 1994. "I have an account at the bank. I bought a car. We eat shrimp twice a week. We go to the store and if we spend $200 or $500, so what?"

… But Martinez is a legal resident of the United States and his wife is a naturalized American citizen.

Other Hispanics, working at Excel without legitimate documents, could never let their guard down. Fearful of being deported, they spent most of their off-work hours at home.

"I feel trapped," sighed a 49-year-old woman who left Acapulco in 1999 and crossed the border illegally.

"Every day I'm here, here, here," she said, sweeping her arm in the direction of the two-story home she and her husband bought. "We almost never go out. I feel very lonely."

* * *

By autumn of 2003, Beardstown had once again settled into a comfortable rhythm. But the rhythm was different than before.

Beardstown was no longer a community of white faces, where people spoke only English and bragged about banning minorities. Instead, it was part of the new American Midwest, where brown faces and Spanish are woven into daily life.

… In the 16 years since Excel Corp. opened a pork slaughterhouse at the outskirts of Beardstown, the Hispanic population has reached 30 percent. With Excel hinting at increasing production and some longtime residents of this town of 7,000 moving out, many people believe Hispanics will become the majority here, too.

That bothers some of the town's Anglo residents, although their resentment has softened over the years. There is still racial prejudice. But it is muted by an acceptance, even an appreciation by many people, of the new ideas that cultural diversity has brought.

* * *

People don't stare at Hispanics, like they did when the Excel workers first got here. Most Anglos choose their words carefully. Many preface any negative comments with, "I'm not a racist."

People don't like to bring up the subject of race because talking about it divides them again. But some of the racial barriers remain.

"You still hear people say, 'wetbacks,' " said the Rev. Tomas Alvarez, 46, who leads the Spanish-speaking congregation at the Church of the Nazarene. "In the Hispanic community, I still hear 'gabacho,'" a derogatory term for Anglos.

At his church, which he calls "Libertad," or freedom, Alvarez worked to reduce the barriers. Although he built the separate church with his own hands for Hispanic worshippers, Alvarez said they often join the Anglo congregation. "Many times we pray together."

* * *

(Wyatt) Sager and his wife, Trish, own the town's largest funeral home, so their most personal encounters with Hispanic families have been during moments of profound sadness.

They still remember the first Hispanic parents who asked them to ship their child's body home. Their 17-year-old boy had died of cancer. "He had come up here hoping our medicine could save him, but it couldn't," Sager said.

He and his wife drove the body to Chicago themselves, and they got transit permits in English and Spanish stamped by the Mexican consulate. They saw firsthand the anguish a Mexican family experiences and the arduous process they face in sending a body home. Now, they understand "that horrible hurt and how separated they must feel from their cultural background."

It bothers the Sagers when their friends in Jacksonville and Rushville tell them "you've just become a little Mexico down there."

"I've heard it so much. The quiet criticism of them as people," said Sager. "No one has the right to criticize someone for who they are. It should almost be taken as a compliment that people chose our community as the bright spot in their lives. That's what I tell people when they say that."

© The State Journal-Register, Springfield, Ill., and Copley News Service