Migrant Architecture : Housing: Necessity is the mother of inventiveness and survival for immigrant laborers in North County who must live off the land.

Along the banks of the San Luis Rey River, migrant laborers craft makeshift dwellings with bamboo plucked from the shoreline, scrap wood culled from dumps and plastic sheeting scavenged from nearby strawberry farms--bound together not with nails but with strips of agricultural string and hoses.

A few miles away, in Vista, immigrants scoop out bunker-like holes on a brush-covered hillside, concealing their homesteads with branches--the better to evade detection from a nearby road and $300,000 homes.

The lack of affordable immigrant housing in northern San Diego County has generated a thriving, endlessly inventive network of immigrant home-builders, whose ingenuity is evident in their creative use of whatever material may be available to fashion a temporary means of survival.

The squatters, who experts say represent the largest concentration of homeless immigrant field hands and day-laborers found anywhere in California if not the nation, are now arriving by the hundreds each day in anticipation of spring work in farms, nurseries, construction sites, private gardens, homes and wherever else they might be needed. Camp residents say they are acutely aware of the widespread community opposition to their presence in the hills and canyons, but they say that prohibitive housing costs leave them little choice about their residential venue.

Learning from others, members of this subculture quickly make use of abandoned vehicles, shipping crates, cardboard, felled timber, discarded signs and a wide range of material, much of it cast off by homeowners, growers and contractors. They have been known to live in tree houses, multistory dwellings, holes, and plastic tents staked below the groves.

“This is Mexican science,” jokes Victor Francisco Rodriguez Torres, pointing to a friend’s scrap-wood canton (as the dwellings are often known), which is wedged against some camouflaging brush almost atop a Vista hillside. “This is the architecture we use here,” explains Rodriguez, a native of the Mexican state of San Luis Potosi, as he and his friend, Felipe Arriega, play cards on a carpet placed on the ground outside the modest home.

The imaginative techniques extend beyond housing. Residents also fashion brooms and other implements from the brush, use everything from old bird cages to 55-gallon drums to construct open-fire cooking hearths and grills, slice aluminum cans into candle-holders, arrange strings of metal into makeshift alarms, construct instruments from bamboo and string, and carve branches into rabbit-hunting slingshots.

Central to the camps’ existence is the presence of food-catering trucks--known as fayucas, a word more commonly associated with junk and contraband in the Mexican interior--that stop along roadsides accessible to the squatters. Many purchase all their foodstuffs and other basic necessities from the vehicles’ Spanish-speaking crews, despite the inflationary prices and less-than nutritious array of prefabricated sandwiches, canned beans, potato chips and the like. Many residents receive mail at stores that cater to their business.

Haphazard as the camps may seem to outsiders, most are in fact quite purposely situated close to job sites or street-corner hiring areas, or, alternately, near bus routes that provide convenient transport. Dwellings themselves are build according to physical and strategic concerns--the availability of wood and other building materials, the need for concealment and protection, the access to water, roads and central paths.

Felipe Arriega’s home--roughly square-shaped, about 6 feet long by 6 feet wide, about 4 feet in height--is in many ways a prototype migrant dwelling in North County, although the variety is so great that it is difficult to generalize. Mostly, Arriega says, he used timber and plastic discarded by growers, homeowners and builders. Like most dwellings, his was constructed in less than a day, though he is constantly adding touches--such as the planned chimney (for venting smoke) and a crafty heating system, which involved running a 6-foot length of pipe from the camp fire underground to a spot inside his shack.

“We use everything we can find,” Arriega, 20, a native of the central Mexican city of Cuernavaca, explains, escorting a visitor inside. Junked gold-color carpets cover the floor; books, a writing tablet and letters hang from the rafters. “North Americans throw a lot of things away.”

The residence, like many others, is basically composed of plastic sheets draped over a frame of wood posts, combined with strong metal and plastic tubes that provide additional reinforcement. Agricultural string and hosing, tied in knots, is used to bind the plastic sheet to the structure’s frame and to lash together the many beams. Arriega used a junked shovel to dig out a rough foundation. An old mattress, found in a dump, serves as bed for him and his roommate.

He and other nearby squatters obtain water from an agricultural faucet, lugging plastic buckets to the site every time they need to fill up. That is the usual scenario in North County’s camps. Residents inevitably relieve themselves in the brush, although some camps have portable toilets nearby.

The front entrance to Arriega’s dwelling faces the main road, about 500 yards downhill. This configuration, Arriega explains, is partly aesthetic, but largely practical: The wind and rain tend to blow from the hills to the rear. And, more importantly, he has a good view of trouble approaching from the roadway below.

“If I see la migra, I’m up in the hills right away,” Arriega explains, using the common term for U.S. immigration authorities.

To facilitate rapid flight, Arriega and his roommate have constructed an emergency rear exit, only used when the delicacy of the moment dictates. “They don’t even see me go,” Arriega explains of his escape abilities.

Aside from la migra, Arriega says, nimble departures are helpful during the presence of another adversary-- “las gangas,” as he says, an adulterated form of the English word gangs. Thugs routinely rob camp residents, migrants say.

The area surrounding Arriega’s dwelling provides a glimpse of a cross section of migrant housing techniques, amid clumps of California lilac, pungent sage, sumac, oak saplings and wild grasses, now proliferating after recent rains. Indeed, trudging about the hillsides and arroyos is somewhat akin to visiting an archeological site, as the caved-in vestiges of former hooches and bunkers are almost everywhere, often alongside lived-in sites.

Down the hill perhaps 200 meters, a group of four young men from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca live in what outsiders here refer to as a “spider hole”--an underground dwelling excavated out of the earth, its roof covered with boards and plastic, branches placed atop that for cover.

“We came here and saw the way others built their homes, so we just did the same,” Carlos Avendano, 18, explains as he and the others sit around the campfire outside the entrance to their home, listening to a battery-operated radio-cassette player--a ubiquitous and seemingly indispensable item, the sole luxury found at most camp sites.

The four, all from the rural town of Ejutla de Crespo in Oaxaca state, say they arrived in San Diego together in early January, after leaving their homes Dec. 26, after Christmas celebrations, and making their way on land to the border, which they crossed clandestinely. “The older men told us there was work here, but we haven’t found much,” notes Avendano, expressing a complaint that is voiced with frequency now in the fields of North County.

They opted for an underground-type dwelling, they said, because it seemed the best-concealed, and the easiest to construct. (Their front door also faces the road, enabling them to see approaching immigration agents.)

Using their hands and a shovel they say they found in the area, the four dug out a hole about 10 feet long by 12 feet wide into the side of the hill. Inside, it is from 3 to 4 feet high, sloping downhill to divert rain; they also excavated a small ditch around the perimeter to channel the runoff.

“It’s not too cold inside at night,” says Adrian Gonzalez, 20, who, like the others, was most bemused that a non-Mexican would care to inquire. “We have lots of blankets,” he continues, noting that the earthen wall tends to insulate the place. The men sleep on several mattresses spirited, like the blankets, from waste bins and dumps.

A half-mile away, along a creek hidden beneath a stand of eucalyptus and oak, Carlos Perez shows a visitor his singular home: the graffiti-glazed shell of a late-model Dodge van, lodged into the now-muddy soil of the waterway’s bank. Both sides of the vehicle are pocked with bullet holes, the legacy of its former use.

“It’s just a place God gave us to live in,” Perez, a 23-year-old native of the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa, says with a smile, explaining that he inherited the unusual home site from some friends who have since moved further north.

“If I had papers, of course I wouldn’t live like this,” Perez, who is an undocumented immigrant, continues, showing a visitor the van’s interior, where he has placed a mattress (found in a dump) and several candles (the almost-universal source of indoor camp lighting, despite the obvious hazard. Candle-related fires have cost the lives of several immigrant laborers in the San Diego area in recent years.

“It’s difficult, but one always has to be in the forefront of life, benefiting from one’s experiences,” Perez says, smiling, displaying a philosophical bent often found among camp residents. “I’ve heard of some people who have lived outdoors like this for 10 years,” he continues, adding that his seven-month stint seems close to his personal limit. “Maybe with this free trade agreement things will be better in Mexico, and we won’t have to come here anymore. What do you think?”

This evening, he and friends are sharing a communal meal of goat meat cooked on an open fire, along with beans and tortillas. They pool their resources to buy the food: The fortunate ones who have found work help support those who haven’t.

Near the campsite, several men live in an upside-down plastic tent scavenged from a trash bin. The men explain that it seems to work better “in reverse.”

A few yards away, Jesus Alvarez is fixing items inside a hollowed-out part of an oak, where camp residents have built a makeshift shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe, the much-revered patroness of Mexico and Latin America. There were flowers, a greeting card, a Christmas garland, a child’s toy and a horseshoe, among other items.

“People come here and pray that someone will protect us from immigration, and from the cholos, “ Alvarez explains, referring, respectively, to the U.S. Border Patrol and area thieves. “Some pray that they’ll find work.”

A few miles to the north, in rural Bonsall, one of the region’s largest encampments has sprung up alongside the San Luis Rey River. Here, home to perhaps 200 residents, there is a rather extensive infrastructure: During recent rains, workers were out in force digging ditches to channel the runoff away from the homes.

“The rain has made things difficult,” says Mario Suarez, a father of 6 from Oaxaca, as he labors to place a plastic cover over an eating area shared by him and other men from his hometown of Silacayoapan.

Here, where wood is plentiful, most homes are built of a frame consisting of chopped willow tree stakes and bamboo, bound together with agricultural string and hosing. Many have also built small sleeping cubicles of scrap timber, using hammer and nails--and even hinges, although others, unable to buy hinges, utilize hoses instead. For foundations, some use crushed soda cans, placed below the posts. Former metal signs--one advertises “Fresh Fruits and Vegetables”--do duty as walls. Plastic fertilizer bags dot the roofs. Clotheslines crisscross a common wash area.

In many cases, former neighbors from Mexico have encircled their common compounds with bamboo walls, threaded together with string. The compounds including an eating and cooking area.

“We built our place big, because we’re expecting more of our friends from home in Mexico,” explains Roberto Correo, 22, who shares a spacious shack with four others from his hometown in Mexico’s Puebla state.

His neighbors have constructed a volleyball net of wood and metal posts and agricultural string.

Outside, a neighbor seeking dry kindling uses a 15-foot long bamboo pole to knock down dead branches from willow trees.

One entrepreneur has set up an outdoor barber shop, using a truck mirror and a car seat as his stand. Several women serve meals to others.

In another area of the camp, Gonzalo Lopez is busy constructing a small hut where firewood can be stored beneath plastic sheets. The enterprising youth has also built a basketball goal out of bamboo stalks, agricultural string and hosing. He and nine others--including a 1-year-old infant who is his cousin--share a crude, tent-like structure beneath the trees. They sleep on scrap mattresses placed on old carpet.

“The river rose and washed us all out last night,” says Gonzalo’s mother, Alejandra Lopez, who is 28. “We try to make do with what we have.”