THERMAL, CALIF. — Here in the sprawling, forlorn trailer park called Duroville, hope is as fleeting as the wind and fragile as a butterfly. It can arise suddenly, only to be crushed beneath the daily cares and fears of a people isolated by geography, language and discrimination.
For Leobardo Jimenez, hope came with the recent birth of a son, a boy he prays can live a different life, one unbound from endless toil for a meager salary and a stark horizon of grapevines, lemons and desert.
"I want him to be somebody important," Jimenez said, sitting inside his stuffy trailer, 3-week-old Estaban peering up from a swing. "I would like my children to become lawyers who can speak directly to people and defend those like us who can't defend themselves."
In the Coachella Valley, where the chasm between rich and poor is especially wide, Jimenez occupies the economic ladder's lowest rung. He is a Purepecha, an indigenous Indian from the Mexican state of Michoacan.
In the 1970s, Purepechas began leaving the cool volcanic highlands of the Mexican city of Ocumicho for the parched town of Mecca, a few miles from the Salton Sea. They brought little more than strong backs and a powerful Roman Catholic faith. Few could speak Spanish or English. And their lack of education and tendency to marry as young as 13 helped ensure lives of poverty.
As time went on, more and more moved into the notoriously run-down Duroville on the Torres Martinez Reservation in Thermal. The park gradually became a sort of regional capital for the Purepecha.
But its future is in doubt.
The federal government has asked a District Court judge to close the park because of the owner's repeated violations of health and safety codes. A decision is expected today.
That troubles Sister Gabriella Williams, a nun who works closely with the indigenous group.
"They are the poorest of the poor," she said. "But this is the center of Purepecha life, and they like it here."
The Purepecha are an ancient people with unknown origins and a language unrelated to any other, experts say. They built a highly militarized empire, the only one to fend off the rapacious Aztecs. Like other Mesoamericans, they erected stone temples and worshiped an elaborate pantheon of deities.
The Spaniards crushed their empire around 1530, impoverishing and enslaving them. Yet attempts to extinguish the culture failed.
