Far from home

Angel Tomas Yescasis still adjusting to life in Hillier. He is a long way from home.

When work is thousands of miles, and months away from family

This week The Times begins a series of stories featuring conversations with some of the migrant workers who toil in the vineyards and fields of Prince Edward County.

It is hard to be so far from home. Angel Tomas Yescas lives in the pretty hillside village of San Juan Juquila Vijanos in the Sierra Juarez mountains of Mexico. He is married with three children. The oldest is four. The youngest, Carmina, just turned one.

For the next five and half months, home for Angel—and other migrant workers like him—is many thousands of miles away from family. It is his first time away from home. He likes the work. He enjoys being outdoors and working with Edgar Ramirez and the team at Ramirez Vineyard Services. Angel is the most recent addition to the team. Others have been returning season after season for years.

It is a great opportunity. Angel knows that, too. There aren’t many jobs and few prospects in San Juan Juquila Vijanos. Nothing that will pay him what he can earn over seven months in Hillier. Back home, he works December and January in the coffee harvest and he has had other jobs in and around his village, but not enough to sustain his family the way he would like to. It is just too remote, says Angel.

It is getting harder for people like Angel to secure seasonal work in Canada. Officials in both countries have tightened rules. For example, Angel had to prove his agriculture experience and skills before he could qualify for the seasonal worker program. That is new this year.

Angel manages to fight off homesickness during the day. There is always work to do and plenty to keep his mind occupied. It is harder at night. He lies awake thinking about Jessica, his wife, his two boys Gael and Empipo, and his new baby Carmina.

They sometimes talk by phone. But there is no internet or Skype in his rugged village of 560 people.

Angel reminds himself he is doing this for his family, and that he is fortunate for the opportunity. Still, it is hard. He isn’t sure he will do it again next year.

“It depends on how it goes,” says Angel through a translator, though his English is passable and improving. “It doesn’t suit everybody.”

Despite the lack of good job prospects, Angel will never consider leaving his village.

He is a descendant of the Zapotec civilization that predates European settlement by more than 2,000 years. More specifically, he traces his roots to 10 Zapotec families that settled in the highlands of the Sierra Juarez centuries ago. They are known as the “Gente de las nubes,” the people of the clouds.

It is his connection to his home and village— to his people—that ensures he will stay and raise his family in his mountain village. It is why he has work in Hillier. It is how he, a campesino, can improve his children’s prospects.

He is hoping to send his kids to a good school. He wants them to get a good education and a good career. He doesn’t want them to follow in his footsteps.

In the meantime, he tends vines in Hillier. He is thankful for the work and the advantage it gives his family. These are long days, spent mostly in the fields.

When the light fades, Angel prepares dinner— heavy on the habaneros and onions—and he dreams of home. He’ll often share a meal or cerveza with his colleagues. Sometimes they will be joined by friends working at Stanners Vineyard, nearby.

When it rains, Angel likes to go shopping and eat Chinese food in Belleville. Occasionally, he swims at North Beach.

He likes the County and Canada. Some of the mornings have been a bit too cold for his liking but he is getting used to it.

Would he prefer to work in the US? He says Canada is safer and he feels less vulnerable to harassment and exploitation than the mostly private migrant worker programs common in the US.

Any other reason he prefers Canada?

“No Trump,” he says with a big smile.