Beyond the Border: Zacatecan villages

The series:
Part I: Trans-national Zacatecan families
Part II: Looks at the intensifying debate over U.S. border law
Part III: Documents some of the changes that continue across the Great Plains amid the nation's largest-ever wave of immigration.

Note to readers: Harris News Service reporter Sarah Kessinger and Salina Journal photographer Tom Dorsey traveled to the north-central Mexican state of Zacatecas in November, 2005, to revisit the villages profiled in a 2000 report on immigration to Kansas. This is the final of three stories updating the issue.

Destination Kansas: Bus lines, bilingual teachers and Bazine

By Sarah Kessinger
Harris News Service

A farmer harvests oats on a mountain plain near the village of Carrizalillo. The decades-old farm implements and practices often come from local Mennonite communities whose families originated in Germany. Both the indigenous Mexican and Mennonite populations of northern Mexico continue to see families migrate to southwest Kansas. <<Click here to view the entire photo gallery>>

  While Greyhound cut back its bus service in Kansas last year, other lines have picked up steam amid growing demand for transport between Mexico and the Midwest.
  On Interstate 35 through central Kansas recently, buses owned by the Conejo or Mares carriers were full to capacity, headed to the border for the holidays.
 " It picks up this time of year, but most of all in the summer when children are out of school," said Maria Banda, who sells bus tickets at her family's store in Salina.
  Bus service isn't the only sign that immigration, which boomed nationally in the 1990's, continues across the state.
  An ongoing shortage of bilingual teachers now has Kansas and several other states recruiting across the Atlantic in Spain's Education Ministry.
 The Teachers From Spain program, run by the Kansas Department of Education, has filled a handful of teaching positions with Spaniards in both southwest Kansas and the state's urban districts.
  There they instruct a growing number of students classified as ELL's - English Language Learners - hoping to keep them in school.
 "Spain's so progressive in reaching out to other countries to promote multi-lingual education," said Melanie Stuart, bilingual education consultant for the state.
  Kansas' program is small, yet need continues to emerge in all sizes of communities statewide, Stuart said. About 24 percent of Kansas districts now serve limited-English students.

Bilingual in Bazine

  Some districts are relying on homegrown help. In tiny Bazine, set amid western Kansas' reviving oil fields, new rig workers have moved to town since 2000 with young families.

Rust-hued dust coats the small town of Abrego, where residents travel by truck or horse due to extremely rough road conditions. When people migrate north from Zacatecan villages, a pickup truck often is among the first purchases with the U.S. dollars they earn. <<Click here to view the entire photo gallery>>

  The children at first knew little English. So local educators launched an effort to change that.
  Western Plains Superintendent James Frank said the challenge has turned into an opportunity for the Class 1A district.
  Educators teach English to new immigrants while also offering Spanish classes to the entire student body.
 "We have a pre-school to start teaching English to them," Frank said. "We figure if we're going to prepare them for state assessment tests and to be productive citizens, they need to get the language as soon as possible."
  Likewise, native Kansas students are gaining bilingual skills. They all take Spanish starting in kindergarten and have the opportunity to master a second language by graduation.
 "If you come through this system and you can speak fluently, it opens the doors for many new professions out there," Frank said.
  The new families have been well accepted, he said.
 "They all learn together," Frank said. "I think that's why these people are so happy, and that's why they stay."

Ongoing change

 Recent population studies by the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Hispanic Center show that even after the heightened security spurred by the Sept. 11 attacks, immigration's pace rarely slowed to the United States after peaking in the 1990's.
  The issue of illegal immigration continues to play a part in Kansas congressional and state school board races. It is expected to come up again in some of next year's races.
 "Hopefully level heads will prevail," said Elias Garcia, executive director of the Kansas Hispanic and Latino-American Advisory Commission in Topeka.
  Those who minister to the new population witness an ongoing struggle.

Physician Mario Mendez Ramirez (right) runs a small, federal government clinic in the Zacatecan village of Abrego. Many people become ill from ailments easily prevented by clean water, Mendez said. But so far, the community cannot afford to build sanitary waterworks. The nurse, Maria Refugio Torres (left), said many leave the community for better opportunities. Her siblings migrated years ago to Salina and Garden City. <<Click here to view the entire photo gallery>>

  Father Carlos Ruiz, a priest in the Catholic diocese serving central and northwest Kansas, has seen a steady stream of new faces at Spanish-language masses in the past two years at Salina's Sacred Heart Cathedral.
 " Who is planning for the changes that will come? There are new families every day, every day, that I see here," said Ruiz, a native of Guanajuato, Mexico.
  The local Catholic Charities offers English classes, he said, especially targeting stay-at-home moms who don't get to use English frequently.
 "I think there are unmet health-care needs as well," Ruiz said.
And there is resignation among the undocumented, he said, and underlying that, frustration.
 "Especially for those who have been in the country struggling for years and years."
 He learns of immigrants struck by fraud, at times, losing pay or benefits or falling victim to people posing as immigration attorneys.
  The problem will worsen, Ruiz said, if the federal government doesn't do something. A guestworker program might work, he said, if it doesn't just address individuals.
 "It has to be about the family, the whole family. Because they are living here," Ruiz said.
 "What I see is the numbers are going to increase. It's just amazing how families move from one place to another," he said. "When they find a town that's calm enough, offering good opportunities and affordable housing, they want to settle down."
  But are communities prepared? Ruiz asked.
 "I don't know if authorities are seeing that and are just pretending they don't know. They need to plan ahead for the future."