California Story Fund
Coastal Voices Project:
Latinos Encontrando Su Lugar en la Costa
Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County
Santa Cruz
Project Director: Francisco Serna
Davenport Resource Service Center
Documenting the life of migrant workers in Santa Cruz County
This project gathered the stories of the Mexican immigrant and migrant-worker population in the town of Davenport and the surrounding enclaves on the north coast of Santa Cruz County. It was a continuation of recently conducted oral history projectwith the area's early immigrants, primarily Italians and Greeks.
The project targeted three long-time residents of the area and three migrant workers. Men largely make up the Mexican migrant worker population on the north coast. Every year, they leave Mexico in March or April and come north to work in the area's brussel sprout and artichoke farms, returning to their homes in Mexico in December. The project documented thatway of life. The three migrants selected for the project received training and were then given three disposable cameras and a voice recorder to document their annual journey home to Mexico. Upon their return, they weree interviewed about their experiences living and working in this country.
The materials from the interviews and the recorded journeys were edited into a bilingual video for viewing at a north coast community event.
The aims of the project were to honor the contributions of the Mexican population and provide a forum for greater understanding and connection between the area's diverse residents.