[Dryerase] The Alarm!--Local con man swindles Chatino Indians

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Local con man swindles Chatino Indians
Organizations seek donations to help them recover

By Maryanne Schiffman
The Alarm! Newspaper Contributor

On July 10, the Citizenship Project in Salinas had just opened its 
offices for the day when a group of nine short, dark-skinned men and 
women arrived, speaking in broken Spanish and looking apprehensive. “We 
have been robbed” they told staff members, “by a guy who said he would 
help us find work.”

Thus began the struggle of a group of indigenous people from Mexico to 
recover the money stolen from them, and the police pursuit of a local 
con artist who preys on migrants from indigenous communities of Southern 
Mexico. The victims in this case, all young adults between the ages of 
seventeen and twenty-two, had arrived in the area in search of work in 
the fields and packing houses around Salinas. In total the group of 
eight men and one woman were scammed of almost $5,000, robbed of all of 
their personal belongings and left homeless. The investigation has led 
to the arrest of one suspect.

The migrants come from a Chatino community in the Mexican state of 
Oaxaca. Chatinos are an indigenous group with a distinct ethnic and 
linguistic identity who have been arriving in the Salinas and Greenfield 
areas in increasing numbers to work in the produce industry. According 
to Juan Aguirre, business agent for the Teamsters Local 890 in Salinas 
and a former field worker himself, the migrants arrive via networks of 
family and friends, and cross the border illegally, often in trucks 
hired by produce industry subcontractors. “They [immigration officers] 
know what’s going on at the border,” he said. “It isn’t a coincidence 
which trucks get stopped and which don’t.” He added that because these 
indigenous migrants come from such small communities and often don’t 
even speak Spanish, they are extremely dependent on these networks, and 
sometimes even the contractor, for their survival.

In this case, the victims had the bad luck to meet—through a mutual 
friend—a man who called himself “Raymundo.” Tony Acosta, Program 
Director of the Citizenship Project, explained how this man was able to 
cheat these young people out of so much money. “First he drove them to a 
housing construction project in North Salinas and showed them around the 
site, saying that it was his own business enterprise,” Acosta said. 
“Next he told them that if they paid him to secure the ‘necessary 
documents,’ they could work for him there legally—and for as much as $14 
an hour.” Convinced by this charade, the Chatinos paid “Raymundo” $300 
to $500 each for Social Security and Permanent Resident cards (“green 
cards”), turning over to him almost all of the money they had.

Yet the swindle did not end there. “Raymundo” told the young people that 
they could also rent rooms from him in his own house for $100 a month. 
He helped them to gather their belongings and to bring them to his home, 
where they would stay that night after paying him a total of $900 for 
the next month’s rent. Raymundo even went as far as to take some of the 
men to the YMCA where he gave them a “fitness test” to assess their 
capacity for the job—a test for which he charged them another $100. “The 
guy is a real actor” Acosta said, “and he’s got a good imagination.”

The Chatinos found out how well-developed Raymundo’s imagination really 
was. The morning after the Chatinos moved into the house, Raymundo 
informed them that the migra (The INS) was coming, and that they would 
have to leave or they would be discovered and deported. Later that 
evening, when they returned to the house to see if the coast was clear, 
they found that Raymundo had locked them out and refused to open the 
door. “He wouldn’t even give us our belongings back” one of the men 
said. “Not even our clothes.” The group was literally left with nothing 
but the clothes on their backs.

Sadly, this story is just another incident in a long history of abuse 
and exploitation of migrant field workers on the Central Coast. 
According to Fritz Conle, labor organizer from the Teamsters 890 in 
Salinas, “This is the latest wave of desperately poor workers being 
imported to satisfy California agribusiness’ demands for sub-minimum 
wage labor. Throughout the last 150 years growers have brought in 
different ethnic groups to work in agriculture, and keep wages low. 
Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans and Philipinos have all been played against 
each other, and indigenous groups from Southern Mexico are only the 
newest group,” Conle added. “Many speak no Spanish, and none speak 
English. Most know nothing about minimum wage laws and other rights we 
take for granted. All are eager to work very hard to earn enough to 
support their families. They are the perfect target for con artists and 
unscrupulous employers.” Conle continued, “Many are undocumented, wary 
of the police and without driver’s licenses or bank accounts. For all of 
these reasons they are targets for all kinds of crimes: Friday night 
muggings, the sale of lemon cars and scams like this one.”

Jonathon Fox, Chair of the Department of Latin American and Latino 
Studies at UC Santa Cruz, is a specialist in Mexican indigenous 
migration to the US. According to Professor Fox, “Indigenous Mexican 
migrants have a long history in California, starting with Mixtecos and 
Zapotecos from Oaxaca, as well as Purepechas from the state of 
Michoacan.” He added that, “Although their waves of immigration date 
back to the Bracero Program of the 1940s and 1950s, their numbers grew 
significantly in the 1980s and 1990s as the Mexican government turned to 
free trade instead of supporting family farming.” Fox noted that, more 
recently, “Indigenous migrants from other ethnic groups in Oaxaca are 
coming, such as the Triquis and the Chatinos, as well as people from 
other states, including Mayans from the Yucatan and Chiapas.” Fox 
stressed that the situation of Chatino migrants is especially dire: 
“Chatinos come from communities in the Southern Sierra of Oaxaca, an 
area with alarming levels of poverty and violence.”

After hearing the migrants’ story, the Citizenship Project contacted 
Dennine Guy, Deputy District Attorney at the Salinas District Attorney’s 
office, who sent over Detective Henry Gómez to take depositions from the 
victims. Upon further investigation, the Salinas Police Department 
discovered that the scam artist’s name was not Raymundo, but rather José 
Raucho Martínez, a 36-year old Salinas resident with an outstanding 
$10,000 misdemeanor warrant for his arrest and a history of 
participation in unsavory activities in the Salinas area.

Salinas police located Martínez and booked him on six counts of 
suspicion of grand theft, three counts of theft, and violation of 
probation in addition to the outstanding warrant. Detective Gómez says 
that after the word made its way around the community, five more men 
came forward to reveal that Martínez had played the same scam on them. 
Three of the victims were men from an indigenous community in Chiapas. 
Another five women who had been scammed by Martínez returned to the 
house with a local priest, who confronted Martínez and insisted that he 
return their money. Martínez did return a smaller amount of money, but 
refused to give the women back their clothes. These women and three of 
the men mentioned above have declined to press charges. Deputy Attorney 
Guy said that Martínez was to be arraigned and have his bail set on 
Wednesday, August 14. The charge will be criminal felony.

While the good news is that one more scam artist is off the streets—at 
least temporarily—Deputy Attorney Guy says the incidents of fraud 
against immigrants are growing. In addition, the Chatino group has been 
left penniless, homeless and fleeced of their personal belongings. 
According to Acosta of the Citizenship Project, “Right now all eight of 
these guys are staying together in one room that’s the size of my 
[small] office, without blankets, no beds to sleep in, with nothing.”

Friday, August 9, local television affiliate Univisión KSMS Channel 67 
Monterey-Salinas,  aired a report on the story of the Chatinos and asked 
the community to contribute clothes, money, food or whatever they can to 
help the group out. So far $200 has been collected, along with some 
clothing.

The Chatinos say that they would like to warn other migrants to be aware 
of people like “Raymundo” who seek to take advantage of them because of 
their limited Spanish and English language skills and unfamiliarity 
with “the system.” But they also urge those who have been exploited to 
come forward to help the police get these thieves off the streets. Says 
Acosta of the Citizenship Project, “The point here is that everybody in 
this country has rights and no one should be treated like this.”

Detective Gómez of the Salinas Police Department and Deputy District 
Attorney Guy are asking anyone who has dealt with Martínez to please 
come forward with information. Both officials want to assure the 
immigrant community that they should not fear speaking with their 
offices. According to Detective Gómez, “Anyone who comes to me” he 
said, “will not be questioned about their immigration status or asked to 
show an ID. That’s not what we’re doing here.” Deputy Attorney Guy 
assures the community that her office shares the police’s focus, and 
adds that the receptionists at her office are all bilingual. In Santa 
Cruz, Assistant District Attorney Don Gartner asks anyone who has been 
the victim of crime to please come forward to his office. “The last 
thing we want is people not reporting crimes out of fear for their 
immigration status” he said. “Documentation is not what we are concerned 
with.”

Detective Gómez can be contacted at (831) 758-7226. The number for the 
District Attorney’s Office in Salinas is (831) 755-5070. Spanish 
speaking residents of Santa Cruz who have been victims of crime should 
contact Chief Inspector Henry Flores directly at (831) 454-2572. Spanish 
speaking Watsonville residents should contact Santa Cruz Assistant 
District Attorney Don Gartner at (831) 454-2400. All of these contacts 
assure immigrant residents that they will maintain confidentiality.

If you would like to help the Chatinos with donations of sleeping bags, 
clothing (especially men’s clothing) or shoes (especially men’s size 8), 
household items (such as dishes and cushions to sleep on) or money, 
please contact Tony or María at the Citizenship Project, (831) 424-2713, 
or by email at citizenship at newcitizen.org. The Citizenship Project, the 
organization that has assisted the migrants in their effort to bring 
this situation to light, is a labor-led Mexican immigrant 
community-based organization dedicated to a radical vision of expanded 
citizenship, broadly defined.
 
  All content Copyleft © 2002 by The Alarm! Newspaper. Except where 
noted otherwise, this material may be copied and distributed freely in 
whole or in part by anyone except where used for commercial purposes or 
by government agencies.

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