February 12, 2010
Washington
Flavor of Daviess County town continues to change
Father Gene Heerdink enjoys a dish of flan at Mi Pueblo Restaurant in Washington where friends gathered after the Mass in Spanish to celebrate Father Gene’s birthday and Victor Escheverria’s retirement as lead musician. Click for a larger version.
By MARY ANN HUGHES (Message staff writer)
A quick view of the small town of Washington couldn’t possibly reveal the diversity there.
What for years and years was an Irish- and German-American community surrounded by Amish farmers now includes Hispanics from Mexico and Central America and refugees from Burma.
Lynne Kiesel is the facilitator at the Latino Community Learning Center in Washington, which is part of the Purdue Extension Office.
In the last few years she has seen a radical change in the make-up of the labor force in Daviess County, mainly due to U.S. immigration policies.
One business that has been affected is the Perdue turkey processing plant which is located on the western edge of Washington. For many years, the company employed a large number of Hispanic workers.
In 2008, agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, began arresting illegal immigrants on a large scale across the country and deporting them.
Perdue Farms fired workers who could not verify their legal status. “They hated to do it,” Kiesel said, “because they were good workers, and it’s hard work.”
Since then, two new groups of workers have appeared in Daviess County. Now, there are Hispanics — with documentation — who are arriving from California, and there are Burmese refugees.
The Burmese have been brought from Asia to Indianapolis through a resettlement agency called Exodus. At first, Perdue Farms employed about 30 Burmese workers, “and then there were 80, and they are hoping to have about 200 before long,” Kiesel said.
The majority of the workers arrive in Washington on Sunday night, spend the week there, and then head back to Indianapolis on Friday night. Lynne Kiesel predicts that their commuter status will eventually change. “I feel they will eventually move down to this community.”
As these two groups of immigrants — Hispanic and Burmese — continue to move into and work in the Washington area, Lynne says the “flavor” of the town is changing.
She cites the appearance of both a Mexican and a Salvadoran restaurant on Main Street, and the fact that the local Wal-Mart has begun to stock food that “the Burmese like.”
She sees those as the positive things that are happening in her community. She has also seen the personal toll that the ICE deportation policy has had on the community. When asked about Estaquio “Taco” Revolorio, the Washington Catholic High School assistant soccer coach who was deported in October of 2008, she says, “Everyone loved him.
“He was deported because he missed an immigration hearing, and he was on a list.” His wife, who is “legal,” and his young children were allowed to stay in the country, but he was sent back to Guatemala.
In her work as director of the Spanish-speaking ministry in the Diocese of Evansville, Benedictine Sister Karen Durliat has also seen many Hispanics come to the area — and then leave.
She has seen them bring their strengths and their talents to southern Indiana, but many of them have left the area for two reasons: they can’t find work here and they can’t get driver’s licenses.
Most recently, there was a man named Victor Chavarria who brought many skills with him when he arrived in the Washington area. “He left his wife and children back in Guatemala,” she said, and came to the United States “to make money to send back.”
He was in the area for five or six years, and recently decided to return to Central America “because it wasn’t worth it. It was time to go back.”
Sister Karen said that because Victor was in the United States illegally “he couldn’t find work — in construction or in gardening — and he couldn’t get a license.”
He was trained as a cook, and was very involved in the cooking and language classes held for parishioners in Washington. He also played the guitar at the bilingual and Spanish Masses at Our Lady of Hope Church in Washington.
Although his English language skills were not good, he became a “bridge” between the Anglo and Hispanic communities there. “Because of his personality, he could connect with people without language. He was a good ‘bridge’ person between the cultures.”
Kiesel’s job at the Latino Community Learning Center is to teach English and computer classes, and she says her goal is to “help” the immigrants “adapt to the community so they can be part of the community.”
“I think that’s why the learning center is so well received,” she added.
She stresses that the mayor and the community leaders in Washington are “fully aware that if the immigrant workers pack up, Daviess County would be brought to its financial knees.
“They cannot survive without the immigrants. They could not get along without them.”