Media Beat:
Book Review
An immigrant laborer’s American dream dies with him on a construction site

Eduardo Gutierrez was a shy young man who grew up in a small town in Mexico, worked in a brickyard and courted a young woman named Silvia.

Like so many others, Eduardo took the long, dangerous trip to the United States to find work and send money home to his family. And like so many other immigrant laborers, he ended up in a cramped apartment with half a dozen comrades, afraid to go out for fear of being deported, but seeking work on the street-corner job markets.

Eduardo Gutierrez died at 21 working at a construction site in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg section. When a floor collapsed, he fell two stories and drowned in a 3-foot pile of cement. The contractor had been cited numerous times for violations, here and at other projects. But he had connections with the Giuliani administration and could ignore safety precautions.

Many contractors who hire immigrant laborers violate wage and hour laws by working them 70 and more hours a week, for less than the legal minimum wage, with no overtime pay — and then often cheat them of even the promised pay rates. The immigrants are afraid to complain to the authorities for fear of being deported.

We also know of the risks they take to cross the border in search of work. The death toll rises as the Immigration and Naturalization Service closes off the easy entry points because of the flood of Mexican immigrants that the North American Free Trade Agreement has created.

In “The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez,” Jimmy Breslin presents Gutierrez and other immigrants as real people. Breslin tells his story in a lyrical style — from his birth in a small Mexican town to his horrible death in a city that didn’t care enough to enforce its safety laws. The book interweaves Eduardo’s tale with those of the countless Mexican immigrant laborers we see everywhere — the “other New Yorkers” whose stories are seldom reported. Published by Crown in 2002, it sells for $12 in paperback and is available in our library at DC 37.

The Immigrant Workers’ Freedom Ride — culminating Oct. 4 in a mass rally in Flushing Meadows Park — is a historic chance to bring these stories to a national audience and change the policies that cause such misery.

— Ken Nash
Ed Fund Library, Room 211