Americans object to the idea of child laborers in Third World sweatshops. But how often do we consider who is picking the fruits and vegetables in our own American fields? In California's Central Valley, young migrants work eight to ten hour days for low wages and sleep under the trees. PNS associate editor David Bacon writes about immigration and labor. ( First of a two parts.) For photographs illustrating this story, please call Pacific News Service.

WATSONVILLE, CA. -- Americans who won't buy blouses hemmed by 12-year-olds in Honduras or rugs woven by eight-year-olds in Pakistan might consider who picked the strawberries on their ice cream this summer.

At the end of the day, the road beside the Jose Rocha strawberry field near Watsonville, Ca., is lined with teenagers. Their hands are sticky from the juice of bright red berries. The dirt of the field and the sweet liquid have made a shiny patina on the knees of their pants, and their shirtcuffs and elbows.

They are all short and dark-skinned. When they call out to each other, or talk softly in little groups, some speak Spanish, but others the indigenous languages of Oaxaca and southern Mexico.

No one seems to be going anywhere. There isn't anywhere to go.

"The pollero left me here this morning," says Roberto, when asked what he's waiting for. Polleros, or coyotes, smuggle immigrants across the border from Mexico. Felix, standing next to Roberto, says he got to the field a few days ago. He points down the road, which bisects the strawberry rows, and then disappears into a clump of trees a half-mile inside the field.

"We'll sleep in there again tonight," Felix says.

The little camp under the trees is a pretty lonely place. Half-hidden trails lead to it among the tall reeds, across marshy spots where dark mud oozes up through broken plastic crates used for packing strawberries. Each path ends in a few little spaces where the bullrushes have been flattened down by the pressure of sleeping bodies. A tattered shirt, pair of pants, and castoff plastic food wrappers reveal that this a bedroom.

Hills covered with a seemingly endless sea of strawberry plants rise from the hollow which shelters the little camp. Beyond the hills are the lights of town, the outskirts of Salinas, vegetable capital of the world.

Both Roberto and Felix are Mixtecs, one of the indigenous peoples of Oaxaca. Workers like Roberto and Felix have been following a migrant labor cycle inside Mexico already for years. "It took me a year just to save the money to cross the border," Roberto says. He earned it in the tomato and strawberry fields of the northern state of Sinaloa, and the Valley of San Quintin on the Baja California peninsula.

Roberto is 14 years old. He began to travel with his father when he was ten. "We came up every year to San Quintin and Ensenada. We worked like dogs. Sometimes we only had enough at the end of the season to pay the foreman for the ride back to Aguaxutla (his home town in Oaxaca)."

This year, after working with his father in Sinaloa, instead of going on to San Quintin Roberto got a ride with friends to Tijuana. There they found a pollero who agreed to take them across the border to Watsonville for $500. On the morning they crossed over, the group was robbed. "Three men jumped out at us, with pistols in their hands," Roberto says. "I had been warned about robbers, so I put some pesos and a ladatel card (Mexican telephone credit card) in my jacket pocket. They took my jacket and the money, too."

A young woman was also traveling with their group, and Roberto says the robbers took her away. "That's why I will never take any of my sisters here," he says.

A few of the young men head down to the highway to look for a ride into town. They've been here for a few weeks. While they started out sleeping under the trees, now they stay in motel rooms in town. One worker, who declines to give his name, says he pays $140 a month for a room he shares with five other men.

Today, on Roberto's first day in the strawberry field, he thinks he made about $20 -- he won't know for sure until the end of the week. (The grower pays a piece rate in this field, the most common way workers are paid.) It's a lot lower than some of the other young men who've been here longer, but it's a week's wage in San Quintin. Tomorrow, he says, he'll be able to work a lot faster, and earn more.