THE NEW ALASKEROS              
Subhead         A WAVE OF HISPANIC IMMIGRANTS
TAKING FISH-PROCESSING JOBS IN KODIAK IS CHANGING THE FACE OF THE CITY   

Run Date        10/11/1998     
Day     Sunday 
Page    E1     
Section         Lifestyles       
Dateline        Kodiak Island    
Photo By Jim Lavrakas Daily News Photographer  
Story Byline    By Sandi Gerjevic Daily News Reporter       

      The stench of ripe fish swept the deserted dock overlooking St. Paul
Harbor. On a late summer afternoon, most of the fish processing workers had gone
home. Carmen Argueta-Mendes, 24, was still on the job. In thick, rubber gloves,
she swiftly plucked the decayed flesh of octopus from steel hooks, sharp as
knife points, and stabbed on fresh chunks of bait. The hooks were spaced about a
foot apart and attached to a heavy line, which the young woman fed into a
bucket, never pausing. Her dark, braided hair snaked down over a plaid shirt and
rain overalls. She spoke, reluctantly, through an interpreter. Mendes said she'd
been on her feet since early morning and would work well into the evening --
maybe 13 or 14 hours that day. She was earning $12 an hour, but the next day the
job would be over. It was a slimy, tedious assignment, one of the lousiest on
the docks. She was grateful to have it. TX: Life, Mendes said, is ''100 percent
better'' since she came to Kodiak illegally from her home in El Salvador in
1993. She is among an increasing number of Hispanic immigrants settling in this
fishing mecca of 6,700 people. According to the Alaska Department of Labor,
people of Hispanic origin nearly doubled in Kodiak between 1990 and 1996, up
from 5 percent to an estimated 8 percent of the population. Last year, a
nationwide study named Kodiak one of America's hot spots for its escalating
immigrant population. Spanish is heard commonly on street corners and in fish
processing plants. Even the local supermarket caters to Hispanics, with foods
like papayas and cactus pads. The newest arrivals are from El Salvador, Mexico,
Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala. Many buy one-way tickets to town, certain
they'll land work in the fishing industry, work that a decade ago was held
mainly by Filipinos. The poverty and violence at home that newcomers escape make
even slime-line work attractive. Here, they take the worst jobs for the worst
pay. Lone men work as much overtime as they can and sometimes moonlight to
support families they haven't seen in years. Newcomers jam into small
apartments, sharing rent. Multiple families, not always connected by blood,
might occupy a single house. What's happening on Kodiak is a microcosm of an old
American story -- one wave of immigrants riding the coattails of the next,
integrating into a larger society. ''(Hispanics) live like how the Filipino
lived the first time they got here,'' said Bernie Ballao, a former city
councilman and past president of the Filipino American Association in Kodiak.
''That's how we started, and that's how they are starting.''  THE ALASKEROS 
Before the Latinos, there were the Pinoys. While the term is no longer used, and
now may even be considered derogatory, Pinoy was a common name for Filipino
immigrants to America at the turn of the century, particularly men. Those who
worked in the salmon canneries in Alaska called themselves ''Alaskeros.'' From
1898 until 1934, Filipinos migrated to the United States without restriction.
Some came directly from the Philippines, to earn money for an education, while
others were migrant workers in Pacific coast states who spent summers in Alaska.
In towns like Juneau, Cordova and Ketchikan, Alaskeros provided cheap labor,
replacing Chinese and Japanese workers, whose immigration became restricted by
law. The wages the Filipinos could earn in the Alaska canneries were a fortune
back home, even while language and cultural differences allowed labor
contractors and canneries to exploit them. At the turn of the century, the
common wage of Alaskeros was $25 a month, with 10 cents an hour overtime after
12 hours. Filipinos worked grueling shifts, and sometimes contractors left town
without paying up, according to Thelma Buchholdt, a former Alaska state
representative and author of ''Filipinos in Alaska: 1788-1958.'' Filipinos were
discriminated against in other ways, Buchholdt wrote. In the canneries, they ate
rice and fish while American workers were given beef, milk and potatoes.
Filipinos slept on cheap mattresses in old bunkhouses while whites had new
buildings and bedding. A ''company store'' credit system kept workers in endless
debt. ''At the end of each season, the Alaskeros promised themselves they would
never work at a cannery again,'' Buchholdt wrote. ''But season after season,
(they) returned. ...'' Following this tradition, Filipinos began to migrate to
Kodiak in the early 1970s. Remie Canete came in 1971. Like most who followed
him, he started in the canneries. Later, he drove a cab and delivered pizza
before opening a small Asian grocery. Canete didn't know it at the time, but
he'd found his home. Jessie Vizcocho, who came 20 years later, tells a similar
story. One of the first things he did after arriving in Kodiak in 1991 was
report to Job Services. Vizcocho had worked as a community-relations specialist
in the Philippines. In Kodiak, he started on the slime line. His ambitions
extend beyond that, however, and, at age 37, Vizcocho has served on the city
council, once ran for borough assembly seat and works for the school district's
Newcomer Program, designed to acclimate immigrants. ''The more I help people,
the more I'm making this place better for my family,'' he said. ''That's my line
of thinking.'' Young Filipinos still come to Kodiak each summer to work the
processor jobs, but a shift that began about 15 years ago has created a stable
community, said Ballao, who came to Kodiak in 1972 with the U.S. Coast Guard.
Now retired, he works at the American Legion. Ballao ticks off a list of
Filipinos who were just passing through, but now own property and businesses on
the island. ''The successful ones are the ones who take the risk and invest,''
he said.  LIFE WITHOUT DAD  One Sunday evening, dark-eyed girls in lace-edged
dresses played in the aisles of St. Mary's Catholic Church while their parents
accepted communion. In a warm and lyrical voice, Father Michael Parisi, a U.S.
Navy chaplain stationed with the Coast Guard on Kodiak, celebrated Mass in
Spanish, as he does late every Sunday, to accommodate the fish processors'
schedule. Several women and children were joined late in the service by husbands
and fathers. Hispanic Catholics are a vital part of St. Mary's, said Sister
Peggy Griffin, who helps newcomers learn English, write letters and fill out
legal paperwork. Some are steady members of the congregation, while others come
for a while, then disappear. Even Griffin has trouble gaining their trust.
According to Griffin and others, many Hispanics living on Kodiak keep a low
profile, shy of notoriety, wary of authority. Some tell harrowing tales. With a
serene backdrop of sky and harbor behind her, Carmen Argueta-Mendes, the dock
worker, explained how she and her husband, Juan, traveled by bus and walked
overland five years ago from her home in El Salvador. She said they crossed
borders, dodging authorities, sometimes going days without eating or resting.
Mendes said her father was shot and her uncle and cousin murdered in violence
that followed civil war in her country. Despite leaving behind her immediate
family, Mendes said she will never return. Marrying Juan, a legal immigrant,
allowed her to apply for permanent legal residency in the United States -- her
status is pending. No one disputes the existence of an illegal underground on
Kodiak, although no agency could provide an estimate of undocumented aliens. The
U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service completed a study of Kodiak this
summer and anticipates opening a bureau on the island, said Pete Gordon, deputy
district director for the agency in Anchorage. A Kodiak office will allow legal
immigrants to obtain benefits and information, he said, and make it easier for
INS to detect illegal aliens. The majority of legal newcomers, he said, are
joining family members who already have permanent resident status. Others may be
seeking political asylum or waiting on paperwork that will allow them to extend
a work visa. ''I don't particularly care what (their) status is,'' said Monte
Hawver, director of the Brother Francis Shelter on Kodiak. The 40-bed shelter
for men, women and children is the first stop for many of what Hawver called
''itinerant homeless.'' ''When they get to Kodiak, in many cases, they have
nothing. I mean literally nothing,'' he said. At the shelter, Hawver hands out
coats to those who arrive from equatorial climates. He provides a hot meal and
even helps newcomers find first jobs. While they're allowed to stay in the
shelter 30 days, most are gone in a week. ''Kodiak has a long history of
providing work for anybody that wants to work,'' Hawver said. The majority of
immigrants seeking shelter are men, he said. After finding a job, they feel
lucky to crowd into shared housing. ''You're going to have a hard time telling
(an immigrant) he's living a miserable life, when he comes out of extreme
poverty,'' Hawver said. ''So he's living with 15 people. It doesn't make any
difference to him. Nobody's trying to kill him.'' With a job and housing, lone
men here begin a cycle of work, frugality and loneliness that sometimes never
ends. Arnulfo Rios, of Mexico, picked apples in Washington before coming to
Kodiak five years ago. He knew no one on the island. For a month, he slept in a
garage, the only housing he could afford. Now, he pays $150 a month to share a
small apartment with several other men. His life on Kodiak revolves around his
job. He keeps in touch with his family in Mexico by telephone and mail and last
saw them two years ago, when he returned for a visit. ''I cried because I didn't
know when I come back,'' Rios said. Florentino Morataya, 44, works every shift
he can at a processor and saves his money to bring his family to Kodiak from
Guatemala. ''They go home every two to three years,'' Hawver said. ''Some of
them ... find the pain of reconciliation and then leaving again is so great,
they choose not to.'' The starting salary for cannery workers is $6.10 an hour,
while a top wage is about $9. In a good season, workers earn ample overtime. If
a man can send just $5,000 a year back home, his family instantly enters the
middle class, Hawver said. The wife left behind may not be willing to leave a
network of relatives to join a husband in America, only to start over at the
bottom. ''They learn to live without Dad,'' he said. In a way, these men are
trapped by their own good fortune. Their families never follow, and to return
home means their children go hungry. Hawver has worked at the shelter eight
years. Often, he said, immigrant men simply begin new families here, while
continuing to support a wife and children at home. For every 100 immigrants that
come and go from the island, a handful are determined to make it home. Enrique
Perez is one of them.  'THEY LIVE IN PEACE'  Down on the docks, Perez stepped
inside a work hut where rain gear hung on pegs and rubber boots lined the walls.
He'd been unloading a salmon tender all morning in a downpour. After a hardy
handshake, he tossed water off his shoulders and made a fresh pot of coffee. He
said he hadn't had a day off since January. Outside, men drove forklifts up and
down the dock in the rain, their jaws set to the work. Perez, tall, lean and
energetic, arrived at the beginning of the Hispanic wave in Kodiak. He came from
California in 1980 after hearing about the fortune that could be made in
Alaska's canneries. His first job was butchering crabs for $5.35 an hour. Perez
originally is from central Mexico. He entered the United States illegally in the
1970s and changed his name. He said he received amnesty under a 1986 immigration
program. Perez has a wife and two children. The family rents an apartment in a
company bunkhouse for $400 a month, for which there is a lengthy waiting list.
Like Vizcocho and Ballao, Perez is community-minded. He rides horses in a local
rodeo and heads up Kodiak's Organization of Latino Americans. The club helps
Hispanics in trouble and promotes community spirit, although few people show up
at meetings. They're too busy working, Perez said. According to Gabriel Saravia,
a personnel supervisor at Western Alaska Fisheries, 90 percent of immigrants say
they come to America for political reasons. In his opinion, 90 percent come for
economic gain. What they find in Kodiak, he said, is a better life. ''Here, they
live in peace,'' he said. Saravia is an immigrant success story. He arrived in
Kodiak almost 20 years ago with nothing. Now, his two children attend private
school at St. Mary's. Saravia has built a house back home in Mexico and steadily
sends his mother a portion of his pay. While he maintains strong connections to
his home country, Saravia considers himself American. ''I believe the country
that feeds you, that supports you, is your country,'' he said. Yet by Hawver's
account, immigrants from poor nations never truly sever the ties to home.
''There's always one more person to help,'' he said. 

CUTLINE Western Alaska Fisheries dock
foreman Enrique Perez, originally from central Mexico, is leader of the
Organization of Latino Americans in Kodiak.  Rafael Argueta, left, and Arnulfo
Rios work in heavily insulated clothes while packing frozen flatfish at the
Western Alaska Fisheries plant in Kodiak.  Florentino Morataya works every shift
he can at Western Alaska Fisheries. He saves his money and hopes one day to
bring his family to Alaska from his native Guatemala.  Gabriel Saravia, a
personnel supervisor at the Western Alaska Fisheries plant in Kodiak, arrived in
Kodiak almost 20 years ago.  Employees process fish at work stations inside the
Western Alaska Fisheries plant in Kodiak. For many Hispanic immigrants, the
benefits of working in Kodiak are more than financial. Some escape violence in
their home countries.