April 11, 2006
Lincoln Journal Star
Art Hovey

Outside the San Miguel grocery store Monday, 4-year-old Alexis Castovena dipped his idle fingertips into the grooves of the store's brick surface and indulged his daydreams.

Inside, his mother, Yolanda Chavez, rose from her seat near the cash register and talked about waking in the middle of the night without feeling in her hands.

As thousands of minority meatpackers marched in favor of friendlier immigration laws in Lincoln and Omaha Monday, former meatpacker Chavez acknowledged the damage done by dull knives and cold slabs of pork.

Can she envision something better for her Nebraska-born son and his 7-year-old sister, Melanie?

I think living here in the United States, they will get a better life, she said in her halting English.

Twenty-five miles away in Lincoln, people from Crete and other area towns carried banners, waved tiny American flags and made a visible claim to belonging in this state and this country.

By their presence, they also spoke out against the chance lawmakers will end their immigration gridlock by deporting millions of undocumented workers and building a fence along the Mexican border.

In Crete, home to hundreds of immigrants who work at the nearby Farmland pork-processing plant, things were quieter.

Men, women and children hurrying across a park toward three buses chartered by immigration advocates in Lincoln were one of the few signs of anything out of the ordinary.

Farmland worker Maria Sanchez and 15-year-old daughter Jennifer were among those getting ready to depart.

While action in Washington could improve the outlook for immigrants, Jennifer was more focused on a possible crackdown.

She and her mother would march because they don’t need to pass that law. We have to be treated equally.

As she spoke, more truckloads of squealing hogs rumbled past a Farmland-Smithfield Foods sign a few miles away that proclaimed Good Food from the Heartland Since 1959.

Relaying their response through security guards, officials at the plant between Crete and Wilber said they were too busy to talk about any disruptions in pork processing.

However, the parking lot appeared to be almost full of cars driven by workers from the first shift.

Across the road at Seajay Cold Storage, everybody from a workforce of about 40 was at work, said Human Resources Director Heather Schafer.

Back in Crete later, convenience store worker Tara Montejo said her husband, an El Salvador immigrant, was among those who decided to pass up a trip to Lincoln out of fear for his job.

While he supposedly had the option of asking for time off, Montejo said, the call-in line available for that purpose carried a recording saying it had no more memory capacity.

That means so many people called in and it was full. And none of those (messages) was retrieved and erased.

She mentioned earlier rumors about Farmland closing for the day, but said they were completely without substance.

There were signs up all over that you had to be at work.

One of the three buses waiting at the park left without any passengers about 9:30 a.m.

In a follow-up phone interview, Milo Mumgaard of the Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest, which chartered the buses, said rally organizers anticipated quite a few more people from Crete than actually came.

He said fear of employer reprisal appeared to be a factor.

The number of absences from the ranks of about 2,000 employees at the Cargill Meat Solutions plant in Schuyler was apparently somewhat higher.

Spokesman Mark Klein called the pace of cattle slaughter and processing there, about 65 miles northwest of Lincoln, slow today.

Klein cited the number of people calling in, which most likely was to participate in the rallies. For competitive reasons, we haven't said how much slower. But it slowed production there and at one of our seven other major plants.

A sister beef-processing plant that employs about 500 at Nebraska City slowed down slightly, Klein added, but nothing like in Schuyler.

Schuyler had its own immigration rally Sunday. City Clerk Mary Peschel said police estimated the crowd marching toward courthouse speeches at 2,000 people.

Barb Blum, based in Schuyler as business agent for Local 22 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, said the Sunday choice may have boosted participation from a plant that operates under a union contract.

Blum said many workers were absent Monday, but Cargill wasn’t going out of its way to encourage marching in Lincoln or Omaha.

This is what they said: ‘This is Monday and we will work.’

Back at Crete, school absences rose to 21 percent of Crete Public Schools’ enrollment of about 1,500.

That number is normally about 8 percent of the study body, which is about 35 percent minority, said Assistant Superintendent Kyle McGowan.

This is hitting very close to home, McGowan said, so my perception is that families in Crete are very interested in it.

Across the street at Blue Valley Community Action, Antonio Cubas said absences were higher than usual among Head Start students.

At least 10 of our families went to march, Cubas said.

Cubas, a Peruvian immigrant, wore the white shirt meant to symbolize unity at the rally, but he was far from certain that Monday would matter in making U.S. immigration laws tougher or easier.

It's just an argument, he said.I don't think it will help either way. We're trying, as a community, to win the battle. But I can see it not happening.