After a long flight and a rugged overland journey, Julio Hernandez and dairy farmer Stan Linder approach the Hernandez family home in Mexico. | Photo by Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner
TEPANZACUALCO, Mexico — Julio Hernandez wasn’t even a year old when he first visited this tiny mountain village in the Mexican state of Veracruz.
He doesn’t remember the trip he took with his mom, to attend his father’s funeral.
At the end of January, the 21-year-old finally returned. This time his mom stayed at home and he was accompanied by Stan Linder, 83, a dairy farmer his father Federico once worked for in Pepin County.
For the last 24 years, Linder has made an annual trek to Tepanzacualco to visit the Hernández family, which has sent a procession of relatives up North to work on Linder’s farm. This year he was determined to bring Julio along.
Like most dairy farmers in Wisconsin and Minnesota, Linder relies heavily on Mexican workers. The decades-long relationship of interdependence between rural Midwesterners and rural Mexicans has fostered not just economic but also social ties. Nowhere is the strength of those ties more visible than in the life of Julio Hernandez.
Julio’s father, Federico, met and married Julio’s mother, a local woman whose family had lived in Wisconsin for generations, while he was working for Linder. One day in 2003, Federico went swimming with some friends in Lake George and drowned. It was Linder who showed up to tell Julio’s mother that her husband was gone.
Fawn Hernandez, 42, remembers when Linder came to her door. “He said, ‘I got some news,’ and I was like, ‘What? Is Federico in trouble?’ And he said, ‘No, he passed away — drowned.’”
“I was married, widowed and had a kid all at the age of 21,” Fawn said.
Federico Hernández’ brothers and cousins chipped in to have his body sent home. Fawn remembers the difficulty of getting to the funeral. “They had to carry the casket down a hill on a goat trail, because the road washed out just before we got there.”
For the last 20 years Fawn has worked at the same McDonald’s restaurant in Menominee, raising Julio and taking care of her mother, both of whom live with her in a mobile home in Cedar Falls. Julio went to high school in nearby Colfax. He attended the community college in Chippewa Falls for three months before dropping out. Now he works summers on a crew pouring cement for the Pember Company in Menominee.
He knows some of his father’s family members who’ve put down roots in Wisconsin, including his cousin Emanuel Montalvo Tzanahua, who married a U.S. citizen and runs a successful barbershop in Arcadia. Another cousin still works on Linder’s farm and has two teenage sons both born in the U.S. (who plan to go to college in Minnesota). But he was nervous about the trip to meet his family in Mexico. It was the first plane ride he remembered, and the steep mountain roads alarmed him. In the back of the pickup truck on the rugged ride up the mountain to Tepanzacualco on a winding dirt road, he started to panic.
“I’m not comfortable. I want to get out and walk. I don’t like this,” he said. Linder pounded on the truck until the driver stopped and dairy farmer John Rosenow came back and switched places with Hernandez, so he could ride the rest of the way in the front.
In Tepanzacualco, Hernandez and Linder hiked the last half mile up a steep footpath to the family home. The view was spectacular, with the sun shining on the valley below, cows and burros grazing in the fields and huge bunches of calla lilies sprouting along the path, as if plucked from a Diego Rivera painting.
As they drew close to the house, Julio’s grandmother, Paula Montalvo Cervantes Hernández, came out to embrace her grandson. “Mi hijo, mi hijo,” (My son, my son) she said, taking Julio’s face in her hands to gaze at him and then hugging him over and over.
One of his aunts said he looked just like his father.
Inside the house, a sign on the wall said “Bienvenidos” (“welcome”). Julio’s aunts and cousins were preparing a big meal, patting out handmade tortillas and cooking them on a wood-burning stove, alongside breaded fried chicken, green salsa and Spanish rice.
Julio sat at the table next to his grandmother and put his head on her shoulder. “My son, thank you for remembering us,” she said in Spanish.
“How could I forget?” he replied in English.
One of his aunts, Aurelia Hernández, commented approvingly, “His hair is very black. He doesn’t look like a gringo.”
Her husband, Juan, came in and greeted Linder. He had worked on Linder’s farm for four years.
Julio handed his grandmother and aunt a baby picture of himself. They produced a large, framed photo of him from when he was a toddler and passed it around.
Julio said to everyone: “I’m glad to meet you and grateful to be part of your family.”
Linder translated.
“Gracias, gracias — mucho thank you!” said Julio’s grandmother, smiling broadly and patting his arm.
Julio began to cry. “Why is he sad?” his grandmother asked.
“I feel like I’m home. I’m with my family,” Julio said through his tears.
Everyone listened to the translation, then responded in a chorus, “Awwww!”
When Julio asked if the family had anything of his father’s, one of the cousins went to another room and fetched an enormous suitcase Federico had used when he traveled to the U.S.
Julio and each of the family members took turns posing for pictures with the suitcase.
Arnulfo, Julio’s 86-year-old grandfather, who came up to the house when Julio arrived from working in the fields, said, “Tell him I’ll give him some land to build his house, just choose where.”
“You can send money and they’ll build it for you,” Linder told Julio. That’s what many family members have done, saving up from their U.S. jobs and sending money home to build houses on the family’s property.
For Julio, who works during the summers in Wisconsin at his construction job, the idea of building a house to spend at least part of the year in the place where his father grew up, though surprising, didn’t sound that far-fetched. He turned it over in his head for the rest of the trip.
A house in Mexico can cost between $25,000 and $35,000 to build, workers told the Examiner. That’s a lot more reachable than in Wisconsin, where, according to the Wisconsin Realtors Association, the median home price in January was $293,000.
But the most striking thing for Julio about his trip, he said, was the unexpected feeling of being so welcomed by his father’s family. “I didn’t think they’d love me so much,” he said.
After lunch the family went outside and took photos in front of the ruins of an ancient pyramid which sits directly behind the house on the family’s land, never excavated by the Mexican government. Then Julio and Linder walked down the mountain to a house being built by Julio’s cousin who still works for Linder. She has been building it for the past two decades. In a couple of years, when her sons graduate from high school, Linder said, she intends to finally move back to Mexico. “That’s when I’ll retire,” he said.
Recently, Linder brought her sons down to meet the family for the first time. Like Julio, they were warmly embraced.
Since he didn’t speak a word of Spanish, Julio relied on Linder and a translation app on his phone, to help him communicate during his visit. “I feel like I’m missing a part of myself because I can’t speak the language,” he said.
On the second day of his visit, the whole family took a trip to the cemetery in San Juan Texhuacán where his father is buried. Julio laid flowers on the grave.
Julio returns
After three days with his family, Julio and Linder met up in Zongolica with the rest of a group from the U.S. led by Mercedes Falk, a translator on dairy farms in Wisconsin and Minnesota and director of the nonprofit Puentes/Bridges, which organized the trip. The whole extended family came along for a protracted, tearful goodbye.
“The thing I learned the most is they like it the way they have it,” Julio said, reflecting on the visit. “They care so much about family, they want to stay where they are. They’re willing to live on top of each other just to be with family. And for me, to be part of it? It’s something that will change my life forever.”
He wants to bring his mom to visit next year.
After taking a tour of the town and learning about the pre-Columbian history of Zongolica, Julio marveled, “They’ve been here for so long. Like longer than the United States – I like that.” He wished he’d asked more questions about the pyramid behind the Hernández family home.
Back in Wisconsin, after the trip was over, Julio was starting to lift weights to get in shape for the construction season. It’s hard work, he said. But now he has a new sense of purpose. After working summers in construction, he’d like to spend winters in Mexico.
He’s been staying in touch with his cousins on WhatsApp and using DuoLingo to try to learn Spanish. “I honestly thought about giving up, it’s been so difficult,” he said. “But I know I have to do it to be able to communicate with my family.”
This story is Part Two in a series. Read Part One: Amid Trump’s threats to deport workers, Wisconsin dairy farmers travel to Mexico.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.