Hispanics Build a Solid Base

Immigrants Change Makeup of Construction Crews

Edvin Osorio's alarm clock echoes through his tiny Landover Hills basement apartment. It is 3:45 a.m. He and his roommates, all from the same town in Guatemala, rouse themselves quickly, dress and head to Osorio's white Chevrolet van.

Osorio climbs into the van with two of his three roommates and flips the radio to WHFS 99.1 FM "El Zol." "That's bachata ," Osorio says, smiling as the Dominican music fills the van.

They cruise down New York Avenue through the dark, sipping coffee from Dunkin' Donuts. Osorio pulls up to Sixth and F streets NW and parks at a meter, then waits for the six-foot-tall metal gate to open so they can enter the construction site of the Shakespeare Theatre.

The 35-year-old Osorio is one of tens of thousands of Hispanic construction workers who have been pouring the concrete and erecting the steel beams of the scores of buildings going up around the region. He and others are part of a historic shift to Hispanic from white construction workers that has brought prosperity to some immigrants and helped support the region's building boom.

Osorio came here illegally 13 years ago, and his first job was pulling weeds. Now he is here legally and makes $24.05 an hour. Each day, he shuttles between two worlds. As a construction worker, he deals with American bosses and translates their instructions for his co-workers who do not understand English. After hours, he eats food from home, listens to Spanish-language radio, watches television shows beamed in from Latin America and hangs out with friends from Guatemala and El Salvador.

"We like where we're from, our people and our ways," Osorio says.

His immigrant dream is not to have a big house in the American suburbs, but to earn enough money to return to Guatemala and start a business with his brother. That's partly because he misses Guatemala and partly because the U.S. crackdown on illegal immigrants makes him angry.

Osorio is particularly upset about a law recently passed by Congress that will make it more complicated for undocumented workers to get drivers licenses. That, he says, will hurt construction companies, which need these workers, as well as the immigrants, who are here simply to earn money to support their family.

"It's not fair," he says.

Humble Beginnings

Osorio and at least a dozen of his co-workers are from Chiquimula, a town in the eastern region of Guatemala -- near the Honduran border -- filled largely with farmers who earn $6 a day growing beans and corn on small plots of land. Most families live in shacks with tin roofs and walls and no indoor plumbing, and they get around the hilly area by donkey or on foot.

His father, a farmer, is well known in the community because he helps serve Communion at his church and because his eldest son, Edvin, can help local men get jobs in the United States.

Osorio, who has a sixth-grade education, came to the United States with two cousins, an uncle and a friend. He rattles off the date his journey started the way others recite their anniversary or birthday: March 5, 1992. He paid a coyote, or guide, $2,400 to get him to California.