When María del Carmen Castellanos sold her popular Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles seven years ago, she joined the steady stream of Latino families who have sought the gentler pace of life in rural Iowa.
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Her plan was to spend more time with her children and grandchildren, but the coronavirus disrupted all her plans, turning her life into an endless rollercoaster ride.
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Her husband of 42 years, Salvador Ortega, spent almost seven weeks in the hospital battling the coronavirus, as the disease attacked three generations of his family in the small town of Columbus Junction, whose main source of income comes from the meat processing industry.
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“It’s my half. He has been my co-worker all my life. Always together for everywhere. Because I’ve always been leaning on what I like to do … the kitchen, “he said.
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Carmen’s story is typical of many Latino families in Iowa, the nation’s largest pork producer and the heart of her meat processing industry with countless processing plants spread across her vast plains.
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About 11,000 cases of coronavirus are linked to the meat processing industry, according to an analysis of public records of the newspaper The Washington Post. At least 45 workers have died.
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It is also representative of the dramatic demographic change in Southeast Iowa, which has a Latino population that dates back more than 150 years, and which has been growing rapidly in the past two decades thanks, in large part to the processing industry, of meat.
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Last month, the covid-19 outbreak in Tyson’s meat processing plant at Columbus Junction, made Louisa County one of the largest points of infection per capita in the country.
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The plant closed on April 6 after 166 workers tested positive for the virus. Two died later.
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The 287 cases in Louisa County (with a population of 11,000 residents) put its contagion rate above that of New York City.
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First came Carmen’s son-in-law, a worker at Tyson’s local meat processing plant, who fell ill. Then, quickly, his daughter, Maria, and his six children followed. José’s parents also fell ill.
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Carmen’s niece, Lourdes, who works at a meat-processing plant in the nearby city of West Liberty, was also infected.
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After contracting the virus, Salvador’s situation rapidly deteriorated, aggravated by his diabetes. He was rushed to the hospital on April 13 and they put him on a respirator the next day.
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In the moments when she wasn’t on the phone with the hospital, Carmen kept preparing meals at the Mexican restaurant, Antojitos CarmenThe couple opened at Columbus Junction shortly after moving there.
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“The situation is difficult here … it is very hard. There is no business, there is nothing,” he said earlier this month, even trying to put on his best face while talking about his last video call with Salvador, at the Iowa City hospital, at about 40 minutes north by car. “He can’t move anything. I don’t know if he understands what’s going on. We don’t understand either,” he said.
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Columbus Junction
In the 1850s, before Columbus Junction to become a city, Hispanic ranchers settled in the area. But the presence of immigrants has grown significantly in the last two decades.
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“There are many towns now where Hispanics are a big presence,” he says. Rafael Morataya, director of the Eastern Iowa Labor Justice Center. “All the towns now have tacos. There are pupusas in Ottumwa“added Morataya, who is originally from El Salvador.
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Iowa’s economy struggled to weather the 2008 recession, and its recovery is attributed to the Hispanic influx.
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“When we see Carmen and her family, three generations, we see a family that has helped rebuild Iowa after the recession“, said Joe Henry, Iowa political director for the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC, for its acronym in English). “We could not have done it without diversity,” he added.
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Although Iowa continues to be one of the states with the largest number of white populations in the country, since Hispanics represent only 6.4% of the population, Columbus Junction is perhaps the way of the future. Almost all of the company signs are in Spanish, and this rural city of less than 2,000 people, some 230 kilometers west of Chicago, has four taquerias.
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At the local school, 400 of the 698 students are Hispanic, according to school board data.
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Nearly a third of local businesses are Latino-owned, according to the local community development center. “The tacos are delicious, the quinceañera dresses are beautiful and there are always fresh mangoes, avocados, and jalapeños,” she says on her website.
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There is also a growing community of refugees from Myanmar (Burma).
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Antojitos Carmen
After opening her store on Main Street, Antojitos Carmen quickly became one of the most popular places in the city, inspired by the successful restaurant with the same name that Carmen had in the Boyle Heights neighborhood on the eastern outskirts of downtown The Angels.
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Carmen left Michoacán 30 years ago with her husband and three children, and brought her recipes and her mother’s love for cooking with her.
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She became famous in Los Angeles for preparing street food outdoors in the 1980s, before launching her restaurant on César Chávez Avenue. In the process, it received rave reviews for its traditional Mexican dishes, such as tacos al pastor, gorditas, and quesadillas.
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Her wet burrito “became famous,” she recalls.
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In the walls, Carmen hung photos of the town of Yurécuaro, in the northwest of Michoacán, where she and Salvador come from and where her 90-year-old mother lives, also a cook.
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“We are 10 brothers, all cooks,” she says. Three live in Alberta, Canada, two in California, and one in Mexico City.
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Carmen has memories of Michoacán tattooed on her arms, including the famous monarch butterflies that migrate to their forests in winter.
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Carmen moved to Iowa after her son-in-law Jose lost his job during the 2008 recession and went east looking for a job.
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José and his wife got jobs at the Tyson plant in Columbus Junction, which employs about 1,400 people.
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“A cozy little town”
When Carmen came to visit Iowa on vacation, fell in love with peace and quiet, compared to all the noise from police sirens in Los Angeles. “I came to visit, to rest,” he says.
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Tired of standing up all day, she decided to sell the restaurant and move to Iowa forever about seven years ago. “Columbus is a cozy little town. Pure fresh, very green. You could just hear the rabbits running,” she says.
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He didn’t plan to go back to business, but soon he got bored of doing nothing. “I said to my husband, I am not going to put up with it here. We do nothing, it is desperate to be like this, bored,” he adds.
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When he found out about an empty place on the main street, he launched himself again, and opened his second Antojitos Carmen, with the same menu and photos of Michoacán on the walls.
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The sign outside says’ Authentic Mexican food. Home style ‘. Soon had people queuing outside, many of them workers at the Tyson plant.
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So, he bought the adjoining location and opened an arch that joins both locations, creating space for 30 tables. The place was crowded, especially on the weekends.
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“Many of the people who work at the plant, we cooked for them. They call to make the order and we have their order,” said Carmen.
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All of this was suddenly paralyzed when the virus arrived in late March.
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The virus attacks
After the businesses were ordered to close, Carmen tried to keep the restaurant open to offer delivery services.
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“But the time came when the same virus stopped us from working. Well, we couldn’t anymore, it’s a body ache, everything, “he said.
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Carmen believes that a client may have infected her. I was sitting at a table with someone who had just come out of the doctor. “I asked her if she had done the test and she said that the doctor had told her that it was just a flu. She already had that virus,” he said.
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In the restaurant they took all necessary precautions, they cleaned the tables and put on face masks. After her daughter’s family became ill, she cooked and distributed meals for the eight people.
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“We try to carry things as well as possible,” he said. “They were all lying on the bed. With teas, with Tylenol,” he said. The bigger ones hit harder. Her son-in-law’s mother was hospitalized for a week.
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The most serious was her husband. “Apart from everything we did to make us well, it hit him very hard”, she said.
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Separation
Under the hospital’s coronavirus treatment policy, she was unable to stay with him, or even visit him. They communicated through Zoom with the help of Salvador’s nurses. Salvador was sedated for several weeks, and all the nurses could do was show photos and videos and try to explain his situation to the family.
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After 42 years together, the separation was the most difficult part. ” It is a very hard thing to separate, in this situation“she said, lowering her head and suppressing her emotions.
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Salvador took over the business. He had the keys. He had the restaurant’s computer password, the ATM PIN code.
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“Now I have to do all the things. I carry all the keys. But now I forget things. I am with the mind … it is for the pain,” she says.
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Dr. Zabner
But Carmen was relieved to discover that her husband was in good hands. At first, he discovered that one of his doctors was a customer of the restaurant.
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“One day he asked me, ‘where are you from?’ I said ‘from Columbus Junction’, and he replied, ‘I often go to Columbus Junction to eat at a Mexican restaurant, Antojitos Carmen.’ “
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To which Carmen replied: “Do you know who you are talking to? With Carmen, the one who cooks in Antojitos”.
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“I said to him, out of confidence, encargo I entrust my husband a lot, because I want him to come out soon and to go well. ‘He told me;‘ I will take care of your husband as if he were my dad, and that gave me peace of mind because I know he is in good hands. “
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When he found out who his doctor was, Salvador liked the idea of his roles being reversed.
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“My husband liked it. He said,‘ that person, whenever he goes he eats at table two‘”he said to Carmen.
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In an interview, Dr. Joseph Zabner, director of the lung care department at the University of Iowa HospitalHe said he became a fan of the first Antojitos Carmen when he read a review in the Los Angeles Times.
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Once he realized who Carmen was, “we created a good empathy between the two of us.”
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When patients started arriving in March, Zabner said hospital staff quickly noticed that many were Latinos from meat-processing plants.
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“In the lung department we have many Latinos and we agreed for us to call the relatives of the patients every day to give you a report of how your family member was in intensive care, “he said.
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Some non-Spanish speaking staff had trouble communicating with family members of Latino patients. “But when we explained to them, they understood what was happening … we could give them a certain degree of optimism, at the same time telling them the severity of this disease,” he said.
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Zabner said that when Salvador entered the hospital on April 13, he was already in poor condition. “He had kidney failure and he needed a lot of oxygen.” The next day, the day Salvador turned 64, they put him on a respirator.
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When Salvador recovered enough to breathe without the aid of the machine, he suffered a setback the next day and had to undergo a tracheostomy, a surgical procedure in which a tube is inserted into your neck to help you breathe.
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“He was very luckyZabner said. “Patients of this severity have very high mortality. In several places in the United States they have reported mortality of 80%, 90%. And in our university mortality is much lower. But still he has been very lucky to have come out of this disease alive, “he said.
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How a Mexican restaurant in Iowa survived the coronavirus
‘Essential workers’
The Columbus Junction plant has regained full capacity since production gradually resumed on April 21.
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Carmen’s son-in-law is among those who have returned to work.
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After more plants were forced to shut down across the country, on April 28, President Donald Trump issued an executive order listing meat processing plants as “critical infrastructure” to secure meat supply for the nation.
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Critics warned of a continuing risk to workers’ health unless new safety measures were introduced on the production line.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the recommended guidelines, but the White House declined to make them mandatory.
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” Plants have become incubators for the virus because workers have been forced to work closely with each other, with very little time for breaks, “said Joe Henry, LULAC’s political director in Iowa.
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“Who’s going to pay the medical bills for all the people who get sick?” He added, noting that workers at meat-processing plants barely earn $ 40,000 a year.
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Tyson does not mean how many of his workers have become ill.
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“The health and safety of our team members, their families and communities is our top priority, and we take this responsibility very seriously,” the company said in a statement.
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The company said “social distancing protection measures” have been implemented that meet the guidelines set by the CDC.
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That includes temperature controls before each shift, face shields and plexiglass barriers for workstations, and selective covid-19 testing.
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“They are doing good measures so that people continue working,” Carmen acknowledged. But, like many, he wonders if they could have done it sooner.
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“As the saying goes; ‘After drowned child, they cover the well“, said.
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“People have to work “
As a result, his family and many others may have suffered unnecessarily.
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“Actually, it hurts a lot,” said Carmen. “It was very bad that they have not taken the security measures, knowing that the people maintain this plant,” he added.
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Some Politicians have blamed meat industry workers for spreading the virus, saying they took him from their homes to the plant. “We believe that 99% of what is happening now did not occur on-site,” he said. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem. “It was more at home where these employees went and spread part of the virus because many of them live in the same community, the same building, sometimes in the same department,” he added.
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Comments like this are not well received by workers, local community leaders or Dr. Zabner, A 58-year-old Venezuelan immigrant who came to the United States 30 years ago, around the same time as Carmen.
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“It is sad to hear certain politicians say this is a problem for Latinos. It is blaming the victims,” he said. ” We have not seen a coronavirus epidemic in Latinos, only Latinos who work at the Tyson plant“he added.
In fact, the truth is more likely to be the opposite of what the governor said.
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“Epidemiologically, it is very likely that the place of contact was at the plant,” Zabner said. “Meat processing plants are places where there are a lot of people working very close to each other, the temperature is low, and the patients that we saw,” he adds.
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In addition, the first hospital patients from meat processing plants did not receive protective equipment nor were they told to comply with social distancing measures, he said.
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Some sick workers may have gone to work, out of ignorance or concern about losing wages, and because of the extra hours many families depend on to make ends meet and save a little.
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” People have to workCarmen said. “We Latinos are like this. We want to work, work, work, at whatever cost,” he added.
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“No one was prepared“
Without a doubt, although many say that Tyson could have taken action before To test the virus for workers and introduce social distancing measures, the company is not entirely at fault.
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” I do not blame the plant, because the virus is an invisible enemy the truth is not known where it comes from, “said María, Carmen’s daughter, who also worked seven years at the plant.
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“I think that if I had known what was going to happen … the plant would have protected its workers long before. Maybe they took the appropriate measures a little late,” he added.
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Many in the city share that view and are unwilling to put all the blame on Tyson. “No one was prepared. It wasn’t just Tyson, it wasn’t Columbus, it was the whole world, “he said. María Gómez, vice president of the Columbus Community School District, a Mexican immigrant from Guanajuato.
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Gómez, 34, is married to a former Mexican-born meat processing worker and knows the plant well from his visits to teach citizenship classes there.
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He recently visited the plant to see what security measures Tyson has implemented. He described the thermal imaging cameras at the entrance whose goal is to check the temperature of the workers. Two large tents were erected for Dako to expand the rest area. The company increased the distance between the microwaves in the dining rooms.
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“I don’t think anyone was as prepared as they probably should be for this,” he said. Frank Best, 51, a city councilman that he paid for his college career with his job at the Tyson plant.
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“It’s difficult for balers. They have lines [de producción] they have to move at a certain speed because they have to meet the demands of the market, “he added.
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Best and others say that meat packers deserve more recognition for the essential work they must now do. Like many former workers, Best described the grueling working conditions that leave many meat packers with permanent injuries.
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“Some mornings I couldn’t open my fists because they were sore and swollen,” he said, remembering how he dipped his hands in hot wax before starting his shift. “You put your hands in to relax the muscles,” he said.
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Return to a normal life
Carmen reopened the restaurant on May 15, although for now she is only allowed to operate at 50% capacity under public health guidelines in the face of the covid-19 epidemic.
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Salvador finally returned home on Friday.
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Carmen and María spent the last days organizing their room; a second-hand height-adjustable electric bed, an oxygen tank. Maria plans to let him use his Netflix account so that he can see his favorite movie, ‘Coco’, Disney’s animated adventure about a Mexican boy who travels to the Land of the Dead and has to fight to return to his family.
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“I want him to be as entertaining as possible, and as comfortable as he can be so that he recovers soon and we can make our normal lives as before,” said Maria.
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