Raising the Blackbirds

The Mexican dicho "You raise the blackbirds, and they pluck out your eyes" captures succinctly Mexico's four-hundred-fifty-year history of treachery conspired and blood spilled both by its leaders and by those in rebellion. The saying likewise captures this story; Mexican history and culture—vibrant still in the blood and flesh of its people—propel the narrative to its soulful yet redemptive conclusion. Sixto Torres narrates his journey from childhood in Mexico to his emigration to the Rio Grande Valley. Eventually, in order to support his growing family, he joins the migrant stream to California. He and his family arrive in Salinas in early 1970 just as César Chavez is challenging the power of the Valley's growers. A natural leader, Sixto joins the farmworkers' struggle for better wages and greater power over their living conditions, but he is soon organizing a new effort focused on the Valley's deplorable farm labor housing conditions. He seizes a rare opportunity to purchase and rehabilitate an abandoned labor camp. His fight to gain the knowledge and skills needed to overcome daunting cultural, political, and social obstacles—and to bring his fellow farmworkers along in the process—is successful; but Sixto is less able to overcome distrust, jealousy, and opposition among some in his own community.

The Mexican dicho "You raise the blackbirds, and they pluck out your eyes" prompted the title of this adult, historical, literary novel, "Raising the Blackbirds"; the story of a Mexican migrant farmworker, Sixto Torres, and his community . The narrative follows Sixto's life as a child in San Ciro; his "coming-of-age" experiences as a student attending a Catholic seminary and his struggle to lay aside that vocation. It describes Sixto's efforts, after the death of his father, to care for his mother and siblings, his marriage to Elida, and his decision to come north and to cross the border, eventually to join the migrant trail from Texas to California. Later chapters are set in the early Seventies. As Salinas Valley farmworkers organize for better wages and greater power over their living conditions, Sixto seizes a rare opportunity to purchase and rehabilitate an abandon labor camp. He is beset by numerous political, social, and cultural divisions—internal and external—as he leads his community in securing needed permits and financing. The housing cooperative's successful completion signals an immigrant community's transformation from a migratory and disregarded population to permanent and respected members of society. "Raising the Blackbirds" is carried forward over a period of forty-three years (1940 through 1983) through a narrative of three journeys: the Torres family's migration from Mexico to Texas (which occurs in Part One), the family's migration from Texas to California (which occurs in Part Two), and the family's and community's migration from squalid labor camps to decent and stable homes (which occurs in Part Three). As a community leader, Sixto must deal with jealousy, deception, suspicion, conspiracy, even persecution. Like many leaders, he sacrifices his own health and strains his relationship with Elida to follow "what he must do, his macho"; yet he is also weakened as a leader, at times, by his failure to control his temper and his drinking. Sixto constantly looks ahead to the next great challenge that, once overcome, will bring greater opportunity for himself, his family, and others around him. Sixto's early years in Mexico, reveal the society's wounds and scars inflicted during four-hundred-fifty years of oppression from without and within. The Mexican immigrants' journey north is not taken in isolation. It is presented as a direct product of the recurring bloodbaths: murder, disease and dislocation brought by the conquistadors, the fight for Independence from Spain, the 1846 invasion and land appropriation by the United States, and the assassinations of the young nation's leaders during the Revolutions and succeeding uprisings. The people carry this onerous history even as they seek a new life and new opportunities "al Norte". Sixto's fight to gain the knowledge, skills, and political power needed to bring positive change and to overcome distrust, jealousy, and opposition from some of his own community is reflective of Mexico's immigrant farmworkers' broader struggles in California and the nation. The labor camp that Sixto and his followers purchase is Old Camp McCallum, located five miles south of Salinas, with long and colorful history in the Valley; a history that is trisected by the story of guayule, a plant that grows wild in Northern Mexico and was a vital source of synthetic rubber during World War I and World War II; the bracero and other government programs that brought Mexican labor to the U.S. during both of the World Wars; and the central role that these two products of Mexico (guayule and labor) played in winning both wars. Sixto is seen as an iconic figure whose restive spirit and sometimes feverish resentment reflect social, cultural, and economic scars that were inflicted on Mexico and its people both from without and from within and that continue to affect the struggles and behavior of its sons and daughters who come north and strive to assimilate.

Born in Los Angeles in 1942, Edward Moncrief grew up in the rural town of Redlands, California. As a boy, he beat the summer heat by sleeping outside. He awoke in the mornings, hearing bracero laborers, singing their alabados among the nearby orange groves. He spent ten years studying to be a Franciscan priest, receiving a solid grounding in the liberal arts. During those years, he developed a love for literature and the English language. Moncrief decided to leave his studies for the priesthood at the age of twenty-three. He married Judi Carl in 1967. The following year, he entered graduate school where he earned a Master's degree in Social Work with an emphasis in Community Organizing and Development; after which, he moved first to the San Joaquin and then to the Salinas Valley. Moncrief spent his forty-one-year career directing non-profit housing organizations and developing new housing for farmworker families and other economically disadvantaged people. "Raising the Blackbirds" is based on his experiences developing farmworker housing. In 1980, he founded Community Housing Improvement Systems and Planning Association (CHISPA), a non-profit housing development corporation operating on California's Central Coast. Over the years, he has been a guest columnist and has written editorials and articles for the "Salinas Californian", the "Monterey County Herald", and "Western City Magazine" among other newspapers and journals. He was also a contributing writer to Jill Shook's "Making Housing Happen", an anthology of stories about faith-based affordable housing models in the United States. Later in his writing career, Moncrief was a freelance reporter for the "Salinas Californian"