Imperial (131 page)

Chapter 144

MARKET PRICES (1975)

Life is better . . . in Imperial Valley, California

• Where the Action Is!

• Where the People Are!

• Where the Scenery Is!

• Where the Profits Are!

—Imperial Valley Development Agency, 1974

S
laughter steers were going for thirty-nine to forty dollars per cwt.; I found no mention of Imperial, but Stockton and Dixon were ready for you, especially if you wanted hogs and lambs. Cotton was available from the Fresno spot market. Where was Imperial cotton on the fourteenth of March, 1975? You’ll have to ask God. As a matter of fact, cotton would end up being number nine on Imperial County’s roster of million-dollar crops, which just goes to show that, as my mother says, you never, never know.
²⁴⁹
Meanwhile, here was something
today
from our favorite Wonderland of Factories:
Asparagus—loose, large crates. Imperial Valley District 15.00.
A year ago this crop had sold for eleven dollars; a month ago it ranged between sixteen and seventeen. Today, fortunately or unfortunately, Stockton Delta District asparagus was two dollars cheaper than the Imperial kind. I wonder which variety the grocery store middlemen went for? (As a wise woman from Imperial laid it out for me: How does a farmer make a million dollars farming? Start out with two million.) Actually, asparagus would be the tenth-place million-dollar crop.

(Does that sound good to you? I regret to inform you that by the beginning of the 1970s, the California Asparagus Association was already worrying about a planetary glut!
We all feel quite strongly that doing further research
on mechanized labor
will only allow other areas, both within the state of California and outside the state of
California, the United States and foreign countries to start producing asparagus, and thereby really affect our markets to the extent that we may have to go for a production marketing order to hold it down.
)

Broccoli was coming in from the Ocean District and Salinas, cabbage from Oxnard. What about Imperial? It wasn’t going to show up anywhere in the Agricultural Commissioner’s report except for poor Category B: mixed vegetables, whose total combined value was the merest two point seven million. But on the fourteenth of March I saw
carrots—48 1-lb. film bags. Imperial-Coachella Valley District 6.50.
(Carrots would do much better than broccoli, but they had no hopes of qualifying for million-dollar status.) I saw
citrus—f.o.b. plant, shipper’s 1st grade cartons:
to be specific, lemons from the Southern California District, oranges from the same; and then
Tangelos—Minneolas, large, Coachella Vly Dist. 2.25-2.50. Grapefruit—Marsh Seedless, 32s, Coach. Vly Dist. 3.00-3.25.
In the Imperial County portion of that valley, grapefruits, lemons, Valencia oranges and tangerines each did far worse than mixed vegetables that year. But let’s end with more good news:
Lettuce—2 dozen heads, cartons. Imperial Valley District 2.00-2.25. Palo Verde District 2.50-3.00.
Indeed, lettuce was going to be the number-one million-dollar crop!

Sugar beets were number three; but, unfortunately, our world was just too fertile in 1975; there was too much sugar on the market! Imperial had to live with lower prices for that commodity.

In the end, the Commissioner was forced to sum up 1975 with all too typical agricultural irony:

The 1975 gross income from agricultural production in Imperial County exceeded the half billion mark for the second time in history, but the high prices received in 1974 disappeared in 1975. With a ten percent decrease in gross income and a continued increase in cost of production, the profit posture of our agricultural industry returned to the historic struggle of making ends meet.

Chapter 145

SAN DIEGO (1975)

Based on the research and analysis conducted for this report—including
that generated during prior studies in San Diego—the key conclusion of
Ashley Economic Services, Inc., is that under most circumstances, growth
does pay for itself . . .

—A report sponsored by the California Builders Council, 1973

“REVENUES WILL BE RISING DUE TO INCREASED ASSESSED VALUES”

By now, San Diego County has become almost as crowded as a barbershop in San Luis Río Colorado late on a Sunday morning. In 1970 the population was one point two million. In 1980 it will be one point eight million. What will they all drink? How will their excrement get flushed away? How will they all play golf? An academic expert warns:
Today, the county as a whole is about 90 percent dependent on imported water supplies, and that figure will most likely increase in the future.
Fortunately;
WATER IS HERE
. In 1973 we added Pipeline Number Four,
this one again about as large as all previous ones combined;
and
it is hoped,
at least by our academic expert,
that this new line will be sufficient to handle the county’s water needs until at least the 1990s;
all the same, in 1982 we’ll see fit to add Pipeline Number Five, which, so I’m proudly informed,
brought the Water Authority’s total pipeline capacity to about 1 million acre-feet per year, roughly 15 times more than the capacity of the first pipeline alone, which had been built only 35 years earlier.

Why exactly does San Diego feel compelled to grow so much? Well, you see, all the housing developments examined by Ashley Economic Services, Inc., generate
an overall surplus of cash revenues (including taxes, fees, and other user charges) over expenses for the governing cities or counties.

At the same time, a detailed study on the rapidly shrinking coastal area between Los Angeles and San Diego concludes:
Urbanization of this strip is now well underway and clearly will result in an incoherent pattern of undifferentiated and environmentally disastrous sprawl unless some logical control is exerted.

Unquestionably,
agrees Ashley Economic Services, Inc.,
it is entirely possible that an individual residential development could represent a financial drain to the city if the average assessed valuation per household were extremely low combined with high service cost.
What if, for instance (and this is my instance), there existed a zone of low-salaried service personnel or fluctuating-salaried agricultural workers, who happened to need welfare, schools, health care?
Among all developments surveyed for this report, the only one registering a deficit with the local school district was a rental apartment project with numerous children.
I myself have seen several such places in El Centro and Calexico, not to mention Mexican Imperial. Happily, Ashley Economic Services, Inc., has a solution: Throw in enough high-income housing to pay for the low-income housing.

Ashley Economic Services, Inc., asserts that police and fire services comprise a city’s two biggest expenses. (I wonder if they’d like to do away with those?)

Beverly Hills doesn’t need to grow much more because
the appreciation of value on existing real estate has more than provided for the increased municipal service cost each year.
In other words, Beverly Hills is a nice, rich place.

But why not build a hundred-and-six-acre commercial center in north San Diego? Ashley Economic Services, Inc., doesn’t see any reason why not.
It should be noted that both the city and school district will receive a net surplus of revenues in every year of development. Further, it is not until 1983 that the school district will have any costs resulting from this project, as residential development is not anticipated until this time. In the meantime, revenues will be rising due to increased assessed values.
Besides, who cares about 1983?

MIRACLES

In San Diego, you see, and indeed in all these United States, we believe in miracles. Between 1963 and 1974, San Diego County’s agricultural acreage has increased by only one and a half percent, while agricultural income has increased by two hundred and twenty-three percent. If we could only do the same with water . . . !

PARENTHETICALLY

Parenthetically,
advises Ashley Economic Services, Inc.,
in the absence of new growth, short of a serious cutback in the quality and quantity of municipal services, existing property owners and residents would have been burdened with $11 million in added expenses which they would have to bear alone.
More than two and a half million of that eleven million buys Colorado River water. Why bear that alone? Well, I guess that San Diego is stuck with growing.

Unfortunately, San Diego has junior priority to receive Colorado River water.
Luckily, by the 1970s there was a new source for imported water: water from Northern California.

Chapter 146

MEXICALI (1975)

Water has been the key to Mexicali’s growth ...The result is an agricultural empire in the middle of the desert, served by a proud city with modern commercial and industrial complexes . . . Permeating the Mexicali of the 1970s is a distinct aura of prosperity and vitality.

—Automobile Club of Southern California, 1976

S
an Diego was growing, to be sure; so was everywhere else, especially Southside. In the middle decade of the twentieth century, the overall population of Mexico rose by thirty-four percent—and in Mexican Imperial, the increase was over eighty-three percent. Well, why not? The winner of the 1970 presidential campaign assured his electorate that they could make their families as large as they wished. He himself had eight children. And between 1910 and 1975, the number of people in Mexicali went up a thousandfold.

Indeed, a Northside historian writes that as the end of the twentieth century approached, Mexico had grown far away from Cárdenas’s revolutionary goal, with the microcosm being no longer the
ejido,
but Mexico City itself.

Squatters continued to arrive in Mexicali, building shacks in the obscenely named Colonia Chorizo just south of the line—and what could be more dusty and unclean than the dirt road that ran through that place in 2006, paralleling both the border wall and a stinking greenwater ditch that once used to and perhaps still did receive the excess
aguas negras
of the Río Nuevo?—or going east of the city, or southeast, or south, or southwest—anywhere but north, of course. (There had been squatters even back in Andrade’s time; the Colorado River Land Company evicted them as courteously as was practicable.)—In 2004, a lady named Señora Socorr0 Ramírez said to me: About twenty years ago the invasions started, more or less. When Xicotencatl Leyva Mortera was governor, that is when there were many invasions. But his successor put a stop to it.

Nowadays, I asked her, in places such as Colonia Chorizo, how often do they just invade the land and how often do they buy outright?

About twelve years ago it became illegal to squat, because politicians got involved and they moved people to these places, to get votes and positions.

But I’m sure that people still do it, correct?

No, she insisted. If they do it, they go to prison.

But in 2004 they were still doing it, all right, from Mexicali to Tijuana . . .

Swelling like a ripe orange on a tree at Rancho Roa, Mexicali continued nonetheless to be much the same. I am not saying that history left no marks on the fruit: In 1975 sixteen cases of screwworm were reported in Mexicali livestock, and C. Armando Gallego Moreno was Mayor, and the girls were in their low-cut sundresses, and an old Mexican cowboy limped along all in white, drinking from a white plastic cup; I saw him or his son in 1999; what would he have drunk from in 1975? In 1975 three withered palm trees guarded a vacant lot, and the vendor was nodding over his lemon-boiled corn.