Leah Millis

Without Water, Without Work

In the third and fourth years of California's punishing drought, a shantytown grew in a dried-up canal bed on the outskirts of Mendota. The town is home to many farm workers who depend on the agriculture industry for income. As farmers fallowed more land, jobs dried up. A homeless encampment that began with only a handful of structures grew to nearly 30 at its peak during the spring and summer of 2015.  

  • Ernestina {quote}Carolina{quote} Sandoval hangs up her wet clothing on a line outside of a makeshift home she has lived in for the past four months in a shantytown on Westlands Water District land outside of Mendota, Calif. Sandoval says she worked in the fields for 25 years but after she got cancer, she can no longer work.
  • While trying to shelter from triple digit heat, Martín Hernandez Mena, 50, smokes a cigarette as he stands in the doorway of the home he built in the shantytown. Mena has lived for a year and a half in the canal bed. He moved after he could no longer afford rent in town because work was becoming more and more scarce.
  • Martín Hernandez Mena, 50, dives into an irrigation canal in June near the shantytown he lives in located in a dried up canal bed on Westlands Water District land outside of Mendota, Calif.
  • Mena examines a keychain he carries around with him featuring the Virgin Mary and crosses as he tries to avoid the sweltering heat by staying inside his home. His calloused hands bear scars accumulated from years of hard field work and carpentry. Mena used to have steady farm work, starting with water melons, cantaloupes, grapes, tomatoes and pomegranate. The last few years he worked in pistachios and almonds and it was five years ago that he last had steady work as an employee. Since then, he says, it has been harder to find work.
  • A collection of donated tomatoes lay strewn about a cooking area next to a folded sign from the landowners warning people to stay off the land outside of Mario Rodriguez's home in the shantytown. More than 40 percent of about 11,500 people in Mendota live below the poverty line.
  • Mena sleeps inside of his home in the cold, early morning as he waits for the police to show up to evict him and other residents from the shantytown. Westlands Water District, the owners of the land, served the residents eviction notices at the beginning of the summer. In late November, after months of litigation, the Fresno County Sheriff's Office moved in to evict those still living in the encampment.
  • As evening falls in the shantytown, Edgar Torres Castro, 40, paints the outside of his home. Castro likes to save books from the trash and also plants various fruit trees around the encampment. He says that God told him to live out in the shantytown.
  • Sandoval washes her face and hair in the nearby irrigation canal. The canal is the only source of water for the shantytown residents if they want to bathe, cool down, or wash their clothing. They have to buy water from a nearby store in town for drinking and cooking.
  • Mena sits in the chilly air inside of his home as he waits for the police to show up to evict him and the other residents from the shantytown. {quote}I keep thinking and hoping of finding ways to get out of this canal. Once I’m free from that, I can focus on other things.” Mena said in Spanish. “All your energy goes to just getting by here.{quote}
  • Maricela Montejano, 49, center, and Gerardo “Gerry{quote} Anzorena, both residents of the shantytown, clutch their belongings as they are directed by Fresno County Sheriff's officers out of a temporary fence line surrounding the encampment during the eviction.
  • Maria Hernandez, 55, wipes away tears as she gives out lunch made up of arroz con leche, sandwiches, pan dulce and sodas to the remaining residents of the shantytown hours before the police are expected to evict them from the dried up canal bed. Hernandez has been feeding the homeless located in the canal for about nine years and knows every resident. She makes rosaries and sells them, then she uses the money to pay for the food she gives away.
  • Mena walks down a road away from his home and the shantytown with a few belongings thirty minutes before police are expected to show up to evict him and the other residents. Mena ended up staying with his nephew in Mendota, trying to get work trimming trees in nearby pistachio orchards.
  • Discarded items are seen on the cracked road that runs through the shantytown. “When you’re out there, you start to think that you can make it on your own, that if you just find work, you’ll survive,” Mena later said. “But it’s no life out there.”
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