Sí, Se Puede: Delano Then and Now
The roots of a small town, its residents and my family.
DELANO, Calif. – Here in the middle of California’s vast Central Valley a full phalanx of Secret Service agents have arrived. They are no-nonsense. Everyone who gets into this grassy field gets looked over.
That is, of course, after they go through the metal detectors that have been set up on top of patches of green grass and brown dirt.
Bomb-sniffing dogs pad around. No one goes near.
All this, in Delano, hundreds of miles from where, really, to ensure the safe arrival of the First Lady of the United States of America, Dr. Jill Biden.
Which begs the obvious question: what is the First Lady doing in Delano this fine spring day?
Dr. Biden is visiting Delano, a small agriculture town, to meet with farm workers who are due to receive vaccines – as these workers have been some of the most vulnerable to the COVID-19 virus, which has disproportionately affected front line workers and the Latinx community.
As everyone locally knows, activists César Chávez, Dolores Huerta and Larry Itliong led a nonviolent protest that lasted from 1965 to 1970 – the five-year grape strike by agriculture workers centering not only on better work conditions but living wages.
Dr. Biden’s visit to Delano – not coincidentally – marks Chávez’s 94th birthday. It is now a U.S. federal commemorative holiday.
When she takes to the microphones, flanked by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Dr. Biden tells a small, socially distanced crowd, “Hunger strikes, boycotts, the fight for civil rights."
“The United Farm Workers wasn’t only fighting for better wages. It’s always been a moral movement. One of justice and humanity for all. But especially for the agricultural workers who are mostly unseen. César Chávez understood that no matter the obstacles when people come together united in a cause, anything is possible.”
“Yes, we can. Sí, se puede.”
Huerta coined the famous slogan as a message to farm workers and supporters of the grape strike; it served both as a source of motivation and call to action. Barack Obama would use the English translation for his 2008 presidential campaign.
“I think it still has significance, especially in Spanish,” Huerta, now 90, said, while standing under the shade of trees at the nearby Agbayani Village hours before she would stand beside Dr. Biden at the Forty Acres.
“Sí, se puede doesn’t just mean we can do it – it means that I can do it. We know that [for] all of us to meet the challenges of racism, misogyny, sexism, homophobia and all of these things that we have been going through and suffering, that notion that each one of us can make a difference and, of course, when we come together we can really change things.”
At the same time, “Sí, se puede” in a lot of ways also encapsulates, for better or for worse, the transformation of Delano.
Once, it was a farm town. Then it saw a massive social justice movement. Now it hosts two prisons, faces urbanization and must confront its survival during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’s also about my family, which has been in Delano for nearly 70 years, and how they and we navigate the town and our relationship – when the spotlight is on, like it was when Dr. Biden came to town and, far more often, when the hot summer breeze of the Central Valley at dusk, as the sun gives way, offers the only quiet whisper of what might be in a life far from the glow of the big cities hundreds of miles beyond.
Sí, se puede.
Delano: A Land of Promise and Grapes
At 14.4 square miles in size, Delano is located in the San Joaquin Valley off Highway 99, where small pockets of other California farming communities can be found.
On the map, the San Joaquin Valley is that big blob in the central part of California between San Francisco and Los Angeles. That blob is the Central Valley – the two names are interchangeable – and the valley is huge: 40 to 60 miles wide east to west and about 450 miles long north to south.
Delano is in the southern part of the blob. It sits seven miles north of the town of McFarland and eight miles south of Earlimart.
The closest town of any consequence is Bakersfield, to the south, the focus of Kern County.
In this part of California, and particularly in Delano, before there were grape strikes, prisons and a highway, there was the Southern Pacific Railroad.
Delano was founded on July 14, 1869, named after Columbus Delano. He was at the time the Secretary of the Interior for the United States.
In the 1870s, Chinese immigrants worked on the construction of the Southern Pacific Railroad, which at that moment in history ended in Delano. The work on the railroad, and the passengers and trade it would later bring, helped establish Delano and made it for a while a booming town. The first post office opened in 1874; Delano was eventually incorporated in 1915.
The Central Valley makes Delano a perfect place for its most famous product — grapes.
Throughout June and July, the harvest in Delano yields a variety of over 20 table grapes. Much of the agricultural labor is now done by Latinx workers, who account for more than half the population of Delano.
According to a 2019 report from the U.S. Census Bureau, over 70% of Delano’s residents identify as Hispanic or Latino. About 12% identify as Asian, which reflects the town’s Filipino community. Black residents make up less than 5% of the population.
The Ortiz Family
My family, too, picked grapes when they first arrived into the United States from Mexico.
My great-grandmother, Eugenia, was raising three children, including my grandfather, Carlos, as a single mother in Tijuana, Mexico. Her two brothers had moved to California’s Central Valley in the late 1940s as a part of what was called the Braceros Program, which allowed Mexican men to come to the United States to work on farm projects.
The Braceros Program ran from 1942 until 1964. The braceros – from the Spanish word bracero, or manual laborer – were guaranteed a minimum wage as well as shelter, food and sanitation.
While in the program, my great-grandmother's brothers met fellow Bracero, Jose Ortiz, and they introduced them to each other. She and Ortiz later married, and he moved the family to another little California town, Wasco, 19 miles south of Delano.
Based in Wasco, they owned a Mexican restaurant in Delano called El Monte Carlo.
My family tells tales of how every relative, and then some, at one point worked at the restaurant. My great-grandmother managed the business while her husband ran the bar. After a few years of making the commute between the two towns, they finally relocated to Delano in 1959.
My grandfather, or Tata, as we call him, worked in the restaurant as a busboy and waiter, but it was there that he found his true passion — singing.
Tata would often sing rancheras, or Mexican ballads, for customers who dined at his parent's restaurant. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he bounced around with different bands. But that passion was short-lived – he started a family with my grandmother, Laura. They had their first child together in 1963, my mother Kathy.
To provide for the family, Tata traded his microphone for agriculture and started packing grapes and peaches. His wife, Laura, also worked in the fields, picking grapes, and later became a member of the United Farm Workers.
Unfortunately, the intensity of the work, along with the heavy exposure to pesticides led to the loss of my grandmother’s baby boy, who died stillborn. His name was Vincent.
“Grandma didn’t come to visit her baby until about 40 years after because she said it was too hard for her,” said my tía Xochitl, my mom’s younger sister. “She wasn’t even able to make it to the burial. She was still sedated in the hospital and hadn’t known what had happened to her baby.”
The family still grew after Vincent’s passing – once my grandparents later had my tío Carlos, and my tía Xochitl.
My mother and her siblings would also help pick grapes throughout their teenage years.
The home in which my grandparents raised my mother and her siblings is located on Albany Street, considered a low-income neighborhood. A small chapel is located 10 houses down on the same block. According to Tata, that chapel was where the United Farm Workers would first host their meetings before they found a permanent home – at what is now called the Forty Acres.
“I remember seeing the UFW flag hanging on the back of pickup trucks,” said Tata. “They would drive down our street after every meeting.”
Tata’s involvement with the UFW was also part passion and heartwarming. He would often sing for the farm workers and recalls playing old ballads for them in the evenings after a long hot summer's day of work.
Delano Grape Strike: Forty Acres & a Mule
My family didn’t know it then but they would soon be a part of a major labor social justice movement that was taking place in the Central Valley and then up and down the West Coast.
In the mid 1960s, farm workers, who were mostly Mexican and Filipino, were demanding better wages and work conditions.
On Sept. 8, 1965, Filipino American grape workers who were members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee walked out on strike against table and wine grape growers.
The strike was led by Filipino activists Larry Itliong, Philip Vera Cruz and Benjamin Gines. To better unite the farm worker, they asked César Chávez, who led a mostly Latino farm workers union, the National Farm Workers Association, to join their strike.
Together they formed the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee in a bid to bring more awareness to the cause. They stopped picking grapes and blocked the shipments of grapes.
On March 17, 1966, Chávez embarked on a 300-mile pilgrimage, from Delano to the state capital of Sacramento, in an attempt to pressure the growers and the state government to answer the demands of the Mexican American and Filipino American farm workers.
The non-violent grape strike lasted for five years until grape growers signed labor contracts with the union in the 1970s. The contracts included a pay increase; access to toilets in the fields; and laws that prevented farmers from working in extremely hot weather conditions.
This rich part of Delano history is located at the Forty Acres compound, headquarters of the United Farm Workers of America.
Located on the outskirts of Delano is a gated plot of land whose history may be unassuming to those driving past it on Garces Highway. A tall sign reads, “Welcome to the 40 Acres, Bienvenidos a los 40 Acres.”
This is where Chávez held his first fast in a bid to gain better working conditions and thus bring national attention to what would later become the five-year grape strike.
“We’re here at the historic Forty Acres compound, which was the first permanent home of the farmworker movement,” said Chávez’s son, Paul, president of the César Chávez Foundation.
“It’s a place where my dad fasted not once, but twice,” Paul said, referring to his father’s approach to nonviolent protest. Chávez started with a 25-day, water-only fast in 1968. He continued with another, 24-day fast in 1972.
In 1988, Chávez undertook a third fast – dubbed the “Fast for Life” – that went on for 36 days. It garnered attention from and provoked solidarity with a number of celebrities and progressive politicians.
In 1966, the National Farm Workers of America purchased 40 acres of land at 30168 Garces Highway.
It soon developed the once-barren landscape of alkaline soil into a service center for farm workers. Word spread: here is where lower-income farm workers could find assistance and services such as healthcare and food.
Paul Chávez said, “It’s a place that workers would come and get medical assistance here at the Rodrigo Terronez Clinic, back when they didn’t have access in the area. It’s where the grape growers came in 1970 to sign contracts providing benefits and protections.”
Forty Acres was also a false promise for former slaves during the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War. As a form of reparation, newly freed slaves received 40 acres of the land they once worked and a mule. This form of apology echoes still in the U.S. federal government's failure to redistribute the land that Black slaves once worked – as many such plots were later returned to their former white owners.
In Delano, however, the Forty Acres is the farthest thing from a false promise. It is, rather, a place that continues to serve agricultural workers 50 years later after the grape strike, now repurposed into a food distribution center and, most recently, a vaccination site for farm workers at risk from COVID-19.
According to the United Farm Workers Foundation, literally thousands of Central Valley farm workers were vaccinated over six weekends from March to April of this year. Forty Acres offered a centralized, well-known location to make vaccination that much more accessible.
“Farm workers have been at very high risk,” said Diana Telleson Torres, executive director of the Los Angeles-based United Farm Workers Foundation.
“They are individuals who have been dying at very high rates from exposure to COVID-19. Farm workers have always been essential and they are now receiving the opportunity to be able to get vaccinated.
“They have been some of the most vulnerable community members. They are mainly immigrants, mostly Latinos and many are undocumented. They live in congregate housing and travel in vehicles with others who they might not live with. The risk factors are very, very high.”
From Grapes to Urbanization
It’s a slow Friday afternoon in what was once Delano’s hub for restaurants and shopping. Main Street has now become a mostly vacant strip of surplus stores, barbershops and vacant buildings. Storefront windows advertise sales for cellphone repairs, prom dresses and party supplies. Some windows advertise the lease of space in the hopes that a small business can find a temporary home in the now ghost-town part of the neighborhood.
The famous JCPenney that once offered residents a variety of fine shopping is now a skeleton of the past. Signs that proclaim, “Availability,” hide behind its gated-up windows.
The store, a Delano landmark, closed its doors last June.
“I would come shopping here for birthdays, anniversaries, clothes for me and my grandkids,” said Alecia Padilla, a longtime Delano resident. “Now we have to go all the way to Bakersfield, about a 40-minute drive, just for JCPenney.”
For years, JCPenney had brought generations to its two-story building. It was the only store in town that offered anything and everything from clothing to furniture and kitchen appliances. You name it, Penney’s most likely had it.
“I’ve been in this community for about over 50 years and a lot has changed. A lot of businesses are going out of business,” said Padilla. “We had a lot of businesses but, unfortunately, we’re losing a lot of stores and JCPenney is one of them.”
Tata owned a business on Main Street for over 30 years. Back in the day, traffic on Main Street was consistent and customers reliable. He sold the business about 15 years ago to retire. It was called Surplus City.
“We sold general things, like, for example, all the parts and equipment for picking and pruning grapes,” he said. “We sold rubber boots, rain coats and all brands of Levis, Dickies and Wranglers.”
Most of his clients were agricultural workers. They needed certain tools, machinery and clothes to work in the fields. He credits their loyalty for keeping his business alive.
He, too, was upset to see the JCPenney go.
It’s where my grandmother, Laura, had bought clothes for their family since the 1960s. It’s where I would even go with my mother, Kathy, to shop for a jacket during the brisk winters.
On this slow Friday, I peek inside the window. Mannequins still stand inside.
“Now that we have all these new establishments, everybody is going everywhere else and not keeping our community going,” said Padilla. “I try to do my best to do all my shopping around here.”
It could be easy to credit the demise of JCPenney and other local businesses down Main Street as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disproportionately affected these local businesses, many owned by people of color.
However, Main Street’s erasure had already been in process for nearly 10 years.
On the outskirts of Delano, Walmart moved in. Nearby, a wave of other commercial businesses soon followed.
In the early 2000s, YK America, a commercial real estate developing company based in El Monte, California, in the sprawl east of LA, was looking for land to invest and develop in. After working on developments in the city of El Centro in the Imperial Valley, the city manager at the time suggested a town that would be of commercial interest— Delano.
“We saw that the land was inexpensive,” said Paul Lu, YK America public relations director.
“The city had a real potential for growth, not only in agriculture and logistics, but also just by the sheer fact that it's located in a very good location right next to the freeway, the land where the market places now.”
Two freeways cut through the Central Valley. One, to the west, is Interstate 5. The other is U.S. 99.
The difference between the two is that the interstate goes for nearly 300 miles between Los Angeles and San Francisco without venturing anywhere near a town. On the other hand, U.S. 99 does just the opposite, running through – or near – a succession of towns and cities in the valley.
The Delano Marketplace, located immediately off U.S. 99, is now roughly 10 years old and offers a variety of commercial businesses, something that Delano had never had before.
It includes Ross, the discount clothing store; a Big 5 sports store; an IHOP, and even a Hyatt Hotel. And, of course, Walmart.
The new center has found success in Delano. The Hyatt Hotel was recently voted the third-best Hyatt hotel in the nation, according to Lu.
“Not only can you cater to the residents of Delano but to the greater trade area between Bakersfield, Visalia and also the motorists that go up and down the highway,” said Lu.
YK America finalized an agreement in 2008 for the first major store that would be located in the Marketplace. Walmart opened in 2013.
“When we purchased the land, we started thinking, you know, what we should really start with is a big anchor store. And what better anchor store than the most famous and most established one, Walmart,” said Lu.
“Because once you have Walmart then the little stores will come along as well because of the sheer traffic that is generated by the superstore.”
Now with 33 businesses, all thriving, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, the success of the Delano Marketplace has brought up plans and proposals for other developments throughout the town, including a wider variety of commercial businesses and new housing.
In a story that is familiar nationwide, longtime local businesses like those found on Main Street are now being displaced as they struggle to adapt.
“There's gentrification taking place,” Lu said. “I think I want to say that, in some respects it's unavoidable, and in some respects, it's also good for the city, not to drive any sector of the population out, but it's kind of a byproduct of urbanization, you could say. There are some policies that can be stopped, but that is really out of our control.”
The Dividing Line Between Two Gangs and Two Prisons
Outside the Delano Police Department, Destiny Gonzales holds up a sign of her 21-year-old cousin. With a soft and welcoming smile, his picture is up against a blue backdrop. The sign reads, “End the Violence United Not Without Adam.”
“He was at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Gonzalez said in a wistful tone.
Gonzalez, along with other Delano residents who have lost loved ones to gang violence, attended a recent community vigil in honor of those who have passed away. They were joined by Delano and Kern County city officials, members of the police department and Pastor David Vivas, who was Adam’s stepfather.
On the evening of Jan. 31, 2020, Adam Guillen and a group of friends were visiting the memorial of a friend who had been killed in a car accident on the corner of Hiett Avenue and County Line Road. Suddenly, a gunman who police suspect was a gang member, shot at the group of young people. Four were wounded. Guillen did not survive. His killer has still not been identified.
In the past few years, gang violence has surged in and around Delano.
According to the Delano Police Department, as of January 2020, there have been four unsolved murder cases. They include the killing of Adam Guillen (21); Nayeli Gonzalez (19), who was gunned down at a park; Rene Rodriguez (18); and Elyana Dorig (12) and Makeliah Osorno (11) killed outside at a family home while enjoying a waterslide.
The victims did not have any direct ties with any gangs. They were remembered at the vigil.
Dorthy Morgan, too, was in attendance at the vigil.
Her son, Cody Harris, was killed in November 2013. The 20-year-old had gone to Kalibo Park, a few blocks from his home, to ride his skateboard with some friends when he was approached by then 19-year-old Joseph Mendez and was shot, according to Bakersfield Now.
“He decided to go to the park with three other friends that were Mexican, when a man called him out and told him to say, ‘F Norteños,” Morgan said as her voice choked up and tears ran down her face. “He told him that he didn’t bang and he was shot in the chest.”
Mendez was later taken into custody at the Kern County Jail on suspicion of gang-related charges. The Sureño gang member is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole, plus 57 years to life for the murder of Harris.
Delano is the dividing territory in California between two gangs – the Norteños or “northerners,” and the Sureños, “southerners.” The rivalry between these two Latinx, or Chicano, gangs has been ongoing since the late 1960s. More often than not, they receive their orders to take someone out from leaders, who they refer to as generals.
These “generals,” typically, are themselves already in prison.
Delano has two.
North Kern State prison is a medium-security state prison that opened in 1993. A mile away is Kern Valley, a maximum-security state institution that opened in 2005. Nearby, in McFarland, a repurposed facility once served as a private prison.
“There is so much gang activity in Delano,” said Robert Nevarez, Delano’s police chief. “If someone is sent to Kern Valley or North Kern, the families will relocate to this community.”
Nevarez, who has worked in Delano since 2018, credits these two facilities for having spiked the gang violence in town.
“There aren’t two prisons within a bike ride of Beverly Hills or within a bike ride of Stanford or Palo Alto,” said Nevarez. “Those communities don’t have the same challenges that we do.”
In an effort to track down and lessen crime throughout town, the city of Delano installed 60 cameras last August.
Nevarez said the cameras were strategically placed in areas of town where crimes typically occur or where there is an especially high volume of gang activity. The cameras are constantly recording; footage is saved for a certain amount of time, then deleted unless a crime is recorded, in which case it is saved for potential court use.
It is still too soon to tell if the cameras will prove useful in lowering crime. Nevarez asserted they did help prevent a major crime but declined to provide details.
Reconnecting to My Roots
I have this theory that no matter how you may be feeling, no other music comprehends your emotions better than Spanish music. I’m not sure if it’s the familiarity with the language that evokes a personal sentiment of home, or just the rawness of the lyrics. Also, I share the same taste in music as my grandfather, as my Tata. It’s music with passion.
When I think of Delano, at least I did before working on this story, I’m reminded of a song that details the absences of my family and the town.
The song “Paloma Negra,” or black dove, is a ranchera ballad that has been covered by countless singers. The song has been a Mexican ballad staple since 1961, when it was first sung by Chavela Vargas; it has since been interpreted by, among others, Lola Beltrán, Vicente Fernandez and Jenni Rivera.
The song recounts the longing of a lost love and how desperately the protagonist is missing them.
Delano was my “Paloma Negra.”
As with many families, a disagreement had sparked a rift. In this instance, it was with my mother’s side. This one in particular lasted eight years. We didn’t speak to each other. Literally. We missed birthdays, quinceañeras and weddings.
But that is no longer the case.
This story comes after a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, which in a lot of ways has brought life into perspective for a lot of people, including my family.
As I visited Delano countless times for my reporting, my family was there to provide me with contacts, resources and a place to stay. And in the process of all that we seamlessly picked up where we had left off.
“I missed them for so long,” said my mother as we sat in her brother's living room. “It’s like by coming together we are breaking generational chains that have divided us.”
My tío Carlos explained that he had to come into his own healing journey to better understand our family. He sat on the couch with his arm around my mother, his big sister.
“It’s like when you are a kid,” he said, “you’re so open to love but once you get older, life hardens you in some way. I don’t want to fall victim to that.”
My tía Xochitl choked up: “I had missed you guys for so long but didn’t know how to reach out. Now that we’re together again, I don’t ever want to go back to those years. It’s not worth it.”
The person who has been the most uplifted by this coming together has been my Tata. For him, seeing his children come together has brought closure and happiness. As a Mexican man, the tradition and role of family is something keenly important to him. He had instilled it into our family. Into all of us. Each of us.
Like my family, Delano has seen so much change. But in the midst of grape strikes, urbanization, and prisons, there is something really grounding about the town. For as much as it will change – it will always have its history.
Delano isn’t affluent nor is it very well known, not even perhaps in California. But it exists in its people and in their memories.
In a lot of ways, this story has been healing for me and my family. If Delano can heal itself, then other small towns and families can do the same.
It starts, as ever, with reconnecting to your roots.
Sí, se puede.
In loving memory of my tío Vincent Ortiz.