Painter commutes to San Antonio each week

ALAMO - Sixteen years after leaving the migrant fields of Montana and Wisconsin behind, Juan Esparza must once again look north for work.

The 40-year-old father built a successful career painting residential and commercial buildings over nearly two decades, eventually heading his own crew and striking out into business for himself.

But as the national economy has faltered, new construction - even in the growing Rio Grande Valley - has tapered.

He now travels to San Antonio six days a week just to find enough work to make ends meet.

"He started working in the fields as a migrant," his wife, Sandra, said. "Now, it feels like he's a migrant worker all over again."

A GOOD JOB

Esparza, a Mexican national and legal U.S. resident now living in Alamo, explains his current work situation in the matter-of-fact style of a man who has always done what needed doing, no matter the circumstances.

Bills have to be paid.

He has to ensure his children have enough to eat.

On a recent evening - his only night in the Valley that week - he enjoyed some family time with his wife and four children at a fast-food restaurant.

His two youngest crawled over, under and through his legs as he laid out his financial situation.

"I've got a family to support," he said. "You've got to take what you can get."

It was for his children that he decided he needed to leave the migrant farm industry nearly two decades ago.

Esparza grew up picking beets and peppers with his father, an immigrant from Mexicali, B.C.N., Mexico.

But when his wife became pregnant with their first child, Esparza took a job with a painting contractor that would keep him closer to home.

The work was tiring but he picked it up quickly - and in the residential building boom years after NAFTA there were plenty of blank, white walls in need of a fresh coat of paint.

Eventually, however, he found the world of construction contracting differed little from that of the migrant farm worker. Bosses rarely asked his co-workers about their legal status to work and most jobs were paid under the table.

While this meant there was no money taken out for taxes, it also made it easier for the subcontractors to stiff their employees come pay day, he said.

"It was good for me at the time because I was trying to learn a trade," he said. "But you try to move up and they keep taking your legs down. I was trying to get what I need."

DOWNTURN

So Esparza struck out on his own. He hit the market at just the right time.

Just as he was putting together his own crew in 2000, explosive growth in the Valley brought dozens of local and outside developers looking to capitalize on a nationwide real estate boom.

From 2000 to 2006, Hidalgo County alone saw an almost 40 percent increase in the number of building permits issued for single-family homes, according to Texas A&M University's Real Estate Center. Building permits in Cameron County increased 65 percent between 1999 and 2002.

The costs of hiring labor and investing in painting equipment were quickly covered by dozens of new jobs coming in every month.

"When I started getting my own jobs, I was always thinking I was going to pay my workers what they need to be paid," he said. "But it got to the point where I had to turn away work (because) there was so much."

These days, though, that picture has changed.

A collapsing real estate bubble has thrown the national economy into crisis. And although the Valley has so far been spared the worst effects, builders are still hesitant to invest in what appears to be a shrinking market.

The number of single family home permits issued in 2007 shrunk 26 percent when compared to the year before.

Esparza says he is still able to find some work in the Valley, but builders here are no longer willing to pay at the rates to which he was once accustomed.

"I know I can do the job better," he said. "But if I take what they pay, I'll only be breaking even."

A NEW NORMAL

In September, Esparza began taking his crew to San Antonio each week in search of work.

On travel days, he and his crew of four men gather around his truck in the pre-dawn fog. To get to worksites by 8 a.m., they must leave the Valley at three in the morning.

"Sometimes you lose your head that early," he said.

But the trip is worth it. While the city is experiencing a building slump of its own, the painter has found contractors there generally more willing to pay competitive rates.

With fewer illegal workers to compete with and a greater fear of worksite inspection, builders don't try to complete jobs on the cheap, he said.

But earning that money comes with sacrifices.

Esparza only spends one day a week at home with his family. His teenage daughter, Aranza, has just started her junior year of high school.

Little ones - Sophia, 6, and O.J., 3, - are growing up before his eyes.

The family has considered moving to another city for good, but with the kids in school and his wife, Sandra, having spent most of her life in the Valley, the idea of starting over somewhere else is daunting.

"You just feel safe here," she said. "We lived in Wisconsin for awhile and it didn't feel like home."

The family's economic prospects have changed for now, but Esparza remains hopeful that his return to migrant work isn't permanent.

"It will probably turn around next year," he said. "But the way things are now - you take what you can get."