TRANSCRIPTION
What type of work did you do?
When I was a young man the majority of the time we did field work. A lot of the work was picking cotton for one depending on the year or should I say the season becasue every season had a different type of plant or something that was coming up. But mostly cotton we would go every summer working the cotton fields.
In your opinion how have child labor laws changed?
I dont know I don't know how they changed. I know before I don't think we had the labor laws in place until Caesar Chavez came. Then he started working for the migrant worker and then the labor laws changed to where you couldn't be a certain age, you had to be a certain age to go out there and work in the fields to where as before there was no age limit. you just go out there and work period.
How old were you when you started working?
I wanna say I was about 6 maybe 7 when I started to go out and do the field work.
How long did you work?
I worked every summer from age 6 all the way to age 17 and every summer we would go out there to work in order to get clothes and school supplies for the school year.
Where did you work?
We worked in Colorado, we worked in Wisconsin we worked in Michigan and all these different states had different fields that you would go out to work in as far as cotton cucumber the apples stuff like that.
How many hours a day did you work?
We workedfrom sun up to sundown. It usually meant that we started work around 5:30 in the morning till about 8 at night.
Were there other kids there working with you?
Yes. There was a lot of other families that went out there with us. Although, we didn't really know the other families we all came together because where we stayed it was a certain area where the owners would establish to keep the families for that summer.
Did you miss school to go to work?
I did missed school. I missed part of the school year every year. I missed atleast the first six weeks of school every year.
What was it like working as a child?
It was hard, it was hard work. I mean you go out there whether your picking cotton or apples or whatever. It's a long day and you really didn't have enough time to be a kid.
Do you know how much money you earned?
That was so long ago I don't remember what we earned. It wasn't really a whole lot of money but it was a certain base pay that they had for everybody but i don't remember what it was.
ANALYSIS
I learned how hard it was for some kids back then, because there was no child labor laws back then. Kids could work from sun up to sundown. The most important point made in here was the change in child labor laws. I could not believe that he had to work from sun up to sundown the whole summer. I didn't know that he had to miss school to go to work, and that he had to work from sun up to sundown, and that he worked in several states I thought that it was just in Dilley, Texas and Colorado where he worked. I didn't realise he had been to several states. Yes, I really hadn't thought much about child labor laws until this point. He talked about how difficult life was for them back then and how different his childrens lives are from his. I verified these stories by asking my grandpa to see if he remembers these things. The benefits of learning the past through these oral history projects is that you can learn from your mistakes, or you can make things better. This is an effective way because you get the history straight from somebody who has lived it.
TIMELINE
- Jacinto was Born on Nov 27, 1956 to Jacinto and Manuela Santos in San Antonio
- Worked the fields of Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, and texas from 1962-1973
- Started school in 1962.
- Worked for Brooks air force base in 1974.
- Worked for Kellys air force base in 1975.
- Dropped out of Harlandale High school in 1975 and got a GED in 1976.
- Started full time work as trainee for CPS in 1977.
- Married Nina Cortez in 1977 at the age of 20.
- First son Javier born on 1980.
- First daughter Angela born on 1983.
- Manuela Santos passed away on February 1st, 2004.
- Retired from CPS as a foreman in 2007
- Interviewed by Mark Santos on 4/2/15
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