Goleta

In Goleta, Bernardo Garcia became part of the migrant workforce harvesting many of the agricultural products, he also worked at times as a ranch hand and, during the mid-1940s, as a crew chief in Ellwood’s POW camp where he took crews of German prisoners to harvest walnuts. He also took crews in the Bracero program to other agricultural harvesting activities as well as in planting large fields of tomato plants. Later in life he worked in the then vibrant Goleta More Mesa Flower Industry where he harvested and packed flowers for shipment to markets. His final job before retirement was as a gardener at a wealthy Hope Ranch estate.

The family lived in a neighborhood infused by the culture and ethos of the campesino life that they had had in Mexico – with the centrality of Catholicism, a commitment to hard work, strong family core values and migrant community ties.

Gil and his siblings attended local schools, and Gil remembers his first immersion in an English-language environment as an experience of culture shock.