The Sweet Fruit Of Harsh Conditions

Alvaro dropped out of school this year and didn't have much else to do. A few pesos in his pocket would be nice, he figured, so he hopped a bus with his mother and stepfather.

The harvesters work in two-person teams. Alvaro pairs up with another teenager, a giggly 16-year-old with sleepy eyes. But Aide Espinosa always works with her husband.

They start a new row at 8:45. Luis Espinosa, 30, walks to the end, leaving the soft soil pocked beneath his boots. Aide Espinosa unfolds a metal stand and places on top of it a box decorated with pictures of grapes and the words "Sonora Queen" in cheerful script. Next to that, she puts up a tall metal post with prongs to hold zipper-locking produce bags. The bags are stamped with PLU codes -- the "price-look up" numbers used by grocery stores -- and are ready to go straight to the shelves once they arrive in the United States.

Luis Espinosa fills a tub and drops it at his wife's feet. She stoops and inspects a bunch of grapes. Deftly, she twirls the bunch in her left hand and painstakingly clips off half a dozen green grapes from an otherwise perfectly ripened bunch. The bunches go into the bag, followed by another and another. Once the bag is full, she plops it into the cardboard Sonora Queen box. Ten bags fill a box, and pickers earn the equivalent of $1 per box. In their first hour of work, husband and wife have made $7.

A friend, weary and needing a break, strolls up.

"You going to Caborca?" Aide Espinosa asks, referring to the next stop in the harvest cycle.

"Don't know," the woman says.

"Oh, come on, please come," Espinosa pleads.

She likes the company of the other women. They help fill the hours in the bunkhouses after work. Sometimes they pray together in the mornings -- Espinosa always strings a rosary around her neck.

At 9:45, the Espinosas are ready to move on to the next row. They gather their things and start a long trudge, passing more than a dozen rows occupied by other crews. Alvaro and his buddy walk alongside.

"Ay," Alvaro says. "My sunglasses. I left them."

Luis Espinosa stops.

"You know what?" he says. "I forgot the plastic bags."

Aide Espinosa shakes her head.

"Burritos," she calls after them, a word here that means "little donkeys," not a menu item.

A truck rolls by as she waits. Up in the trailer, a man with a creased face, a veteran of many harvests, smiles and breaks out in song -- a familiar Mexican peasant anthem.

"With money or without money," he warbles, his voice fading as the truck moves on, "I am always the king."