Hidden among the neat, clean, suburban hilltop housing developments of booming North San Diego County, a community exists, down in the canyons and wooden gullies, where hundreds of shanty encampments stretch up the coast to Rainbow and as far east at the Pauma Valley. Here, more than 15,000 Mexicans, Oaxacans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans call these settlements home. Often located within shouting distance of million-dollar mansions, these provisional communities form the largest single concentration of immigrant squatters anywhere in California, perhaps the entire country. The camps are full of things outsiders would never expect to find in such places. Here, out of nothing – twigs, branches, plastic, garbage, packing pallets, and pure determination – the poorest of the poor newcomers to the United States organize survival communities, maintain networks of friendship, and do the hard work fueling the growth of San Diego Country. Two of the largest of these settlements are Rancho de Los Diablos (Devil’s Camp), so named after the two growers who employ most who live there, and Rancho Yasecoche, in the middle of Camp Pendleton Marine Base. When I began photographing among the immigrant canyon campers, my approach was that of the gringo fly on the wall. I simply moved in, helped men build shelters, drove them to and from appointments, and translated documents. During my first few weeks I never took out my camera. Eventually someone would ask me to take a picture. The resulting images are more collaborations than work of photojournalism. They show a different side of life in these communities. Canyon campers are hard-working, dignified, honest people. They possess every quality we admire and cultivate in ourselves. Honest, essential, productive labor – picking tomatoes and strawberries, hefting roof tiles – dominates camp life.
