This is Alaska, the coldest state in the United States, on the edge of the Arctic Circle, and what they offer me for lunch are tacos and tortillas.
At this fish processing plant in Cordova, a small, isolated fishing town along the Copper River delta in the Gulf of Alaska, most of the workers are Mexican and that determines the menu.
“Today we have fish tacos; Don’t you want to try?” asks Rosa, the affable cook, also Mexican, who is in charge of feeding them. Like them, he travels here every summer to work during the fishing season.
Here life spends most of the year cornered by icewith temperatures below zero, rain or snow more than 200 days a year, and in winter nights that last weeks.
But in summer the climate grants a few months of respite and many of its little more than 2,000 inhabitants go fishing for wild Alaskan salmon and other species that live in the Copper River delta and its estuary.
You work piecework. You have to capture everything you can in the short time that the weather allows, which triggers a flurry of activity crucial for a town where, according to data from the Department of Labor, more than half of the Jobs depend on fishing.
Even in the summer, there is little else to do in Cordova other than fish and work. There are no cinemas or shopping centers, and on days when the weather prevents them from fishing, which happens often, the fishermen drink and play pool in the only bar in town, a place with the air of a London pub that for some reason Nobody remembers that the facade sign is upside down.
Today more than 18,000 kilos of cod arrived that need to be processed, so Edgar is busy handling the two knives with which he extracts the bones, blood and other impurities from each fish.
It cannot fail. They must arrive clean at the other end of the belt so that other workers can weigh and package them.
It is a well-paid, but hard and monotonous job, with days that often start at dawn and last 18 hours or more.; an essential task so that the fish reaches the consumer with freshness and quality.
After a while, the smell of fish and humidity is felt almost in the bones, but Edgar works happily.
With what you earn in these months in Cordova you will be able to live comfortably the rest of the year in Mexicalia border city in the Mexican department of Baja California where four children are waiting for him.
Your dollars go a long way there. “The money I earn here is worth twice as much in Mexicali,” he says.
The statistics seem to prove him right. According to the OECD, the average income of a Mexican household is just over US$16,000 a year. He receives quite a bit more than that in a few months.
Outside of it, the leisure offer is limited to walking through the surrounding mountains, always being careful not to run into any of the bears with unpredictable behavior that reign there.
Every year workers from all over the world come here to fill positions for which local labor is not enough.
They are Ukrainians, Turks, Peruvians, Filipinos… and Mexicans, many Mexicans.
There is a reason.
“Last year I made US$27,000 clean in four months”Edgar Vega García explains to me, while filleting one after another the fish that parade before him on a conveyor belt that never stops.
“We need foreigners here”
Edgar started coming to Alaska 18 years ago. It was his mother, Rosa, who encouraged him.
After working for several companies, for three summers they have both worked for North 60 Seafoods, the company of Rich Wheeler, an American who is delighted with them and his compatriots.
“It has been fantastic to meet the Mexicans; They have given my business the stability it needed. and we hadn’t been able to find it,” he tells me in the plant office, a messy room with a deer head and a bear skin hanging from its damp wooden walls.
“Honestly, if it weren’t for Mexicans, my business would not exist.”
According to Weeler, he had many problems in the past with American employees, such as drug use at work, unexcused absences and fights.
“I don’t think we would have done the same without the Mexicans,” he adds. “They are always punctual, and I know I can expect them to work hard and professionally every day. I am really grateful to you,” Rich praises them.
Now that the United States is experiencing a tense electoral campaign and the candidate donald trump raises fear of an “invasion” of illegal immigrants who are coming to take jobs from Americans, In this remote corner of the country, foreigners are essential in the fish processing industry, which is the pillar of the region’s economy..
César Méndez, also from Mexicali, has been working there for 14 years. He makes “good profits” and returns to Mexico, where he supplements his income with a business selling tools.
“Alaska has given me a lot; “It has allowed me to have a good quality of life and I have always felt that they are grateful for the work we do here,” he says.
The mayor of Cordova, David Allisonknows that migrants play a critical role in his city, where he estimates that 50% of households depend on fishing.
“Fish is not processed if there are no hands to do it and if it were not for fishing this would probably be a ghost town”he tells me at the local government headquarters.
Allison does not have an office and worked for years in the fish processing industry, where she learned that “if you put an ad in an Alaska newspaper saying you need 250 workers, you will not receive more than 20 applications.”
The local population of just 2,600 inhabitants triples in summer with the arrival of foreigners, but Mayor Allison says that in Cordova there have been no problems with coexistence. “Generally they come with their papers in order, they work during the season and thus support their families.”
Cordova is just a small sample of the importance of fishing to the local economy. According to the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, the seafood industry produces 2,268 tons of fish per year, more than half of the total in the United States, and generates the most jobs in the entire state.
Large corporations such as Ocean Beauty Seafoods and Trident process the catch in hundreds of plants spread across regions of Alaska such as Bristol Bay, Valdez, and the Copper Delta.
To do this they need people from outside. In 2022, the last year for which there is official data, more than 80% of the total workers were foreigners.
It was the requests of these companies and state congressmen that have led the government of Joe Biden to significantly increase the visas that many of these migrants use to work legally in the United States. From the 66,000 available in 2022, it increased to almost double in 2023 and 2024.
The demand for personnel in this industry explains why it offers good pay and other advantages.
Companies provide accommodation and three meals a day for the duration of the contract, so workers can save almost everything they earn.
Added to this is that Alaska law requires paying 50% more for overtime, and they are common in such an intensive and seasonal activity, especially when the season is good. With the latest approved increases, a processor receives a salary of US$18.06 per hour, which rises to US$27.09 in overtime.
The companies also cover the trip so farwhich is especially important in such an isolated and distant place.
A highway once led from Cordova to other towns in Prince William Sound, but a storm years ago destroyed the bridge that crossed the Copper River and the town was left without a land connection to the rest of civilization.
The only way to get there now is by plane or boat that leaves from the town of Whittier when weather permits, and takes seven hours to arrive.
A very different place from Mexico
At 67 years old, Rosa Vega, Edgar’s mother, has been on a long journey for years to join her position. From Mexicali to San Diego by road. Then, three flights: San Diego-Seattle, Seattle-Anchorage, Anchorage-Cordova.
Travel days to work in a place very different from your home where you spend 5 to 6 months.
“Mexicali is very hot. Right now it’s 52 degrees and you can cook an egg on top of a lid,” he says when he talks to me one day in July. Their city has been identified as one of the hottest places on Earth.
“Just like people who go to Mexicali have to get used to the heat, I had to get used to the cold in Alaska.”
And even though the salary is good, there is no room for luxuries here.
Rosa and the rest of the workers share four-person rooms and two bunk beds in a container set up as a home in which they have to manage to store several months’ worth of belongings in a small locker.
In the dining room, the only social area, the younger ones entertain themselves by playing video games, while Rosa tries to communicate with her mother. Of what she leaves behind each year in Mexicali, she is what matters most to her.
“She is very old and lately she has been asking me not to come,” he says. She is not the only one who says that, Much more than the cold, the rain or the discomforts of a country life, what weighs most each year is being separated from loved ones for so long.
The deep footprint of the Spanish in Cordova
Although Tagalog and English are also spoken, Spanish is the language most heard on a walk around the small port of Cordova.
In reality, it has been present since its origins.
It was the Spanish explorer Salvador Fidalgo who named this place Puerto Cordova when he arrived here in 1790 sent by the crown.
Since then, People from diverse backgrounds have arrived in Alaska willing to endure its inclemencies in order to exploit its abundant resources. natural.
The Russians made it their own and throughout the 19th century they dedicated themselves to hunting otters to sell their prized skin.
In 1867, Tsarist Russia sold it to the United States and from 1957 onwards the discovery of large oil deposits accelerated development and caused many environmental problems.
In Cordova they still remember when the Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran aground in 1989 and spilled thousands of tons of crude oil into the sea. It was considered the worst ecological disaster in American history and endangered the local way of life.
In it, salmon is king. They call it King Salmon for a reason.
Vital for the bears that inhabit the delta and for the fishermen of Cordova, local salmon, in its different varieties, is not only an essential raw material but a badge of pride.
As Greg Olsen, Human Resources and Production Manager at North 60 Seafoods, explains to me, “The cleanliness and low temperatures of the water explain the extraordinary quality of the Copper River salmon”.
In some of the best restaurants in Japan they prepare sushi with salmon caught in the Copper Delta.
Although they are born in rivers, salmon then swim to open water and live for years in the ocean, returning to spawn and die exactly where they were born.
One of those who best knows their routes and customs is fisherman Bret Bradford, who has been making a living chasing them through the Copper Estuary for years.
At the helm of his small fishing boat, named after the scientific name of one of the local varieties of salmon, he holds a pipe with a gnawed mouthpiece in his teeth, and shows me the sea lions, seals and other creatures he encounters every day. job.
A messy cabin that barely fits him and his cot reveals that he usually sails alone.
Bret remembers that “in the United States, except for the native peoples, we are all descendants of immigrants, but there is a process.”
He believes in legal immigration. He knows that his family’s livelihood depends on foreigners who process the fish he catches on land.
Back in Mexicali
At the end of September, after another tough season, Rosa and Edgar, mother and son, are back in Mexicali.
He is already looking to make profitable what he has earned from the sale of a lot of used cars that he has just purchased.
She got an unpleasant surprise as soon as she returned from Alaska.
His mother has just suffered a brain accident and had to be hospitalized.
As soon as he gets off the plane, without stopping by the house, he goes to visit her.
“I know that any day she can leave and it could happen when I’m in Alaska,” Rosa reflects, reassuring that she is in good spirits despite being bedridden.
He knows that taking care of her will be his main task now that she is back.
He was planning to share with her some of the salmon he brought from Alaska in a large cardboard box, but that will have to wait.
“Now I have to start everything here again. The first thing I want to do with the time my mother leaves me is to fix my garden,” he says, while checking the plants that have dried up in the months that he has not been home.
It is a beautiful one-story building, with a colonial air and a large patio with yellow walls, which occupies an entire block and stands out among the rest of the buildings in the Mexicali neighborhood where it lives.
Now, free from work, he can dedicate himself to himself and his plants.
“I hope to get the garden back… Until I have to go back to Alaska next year.”
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