Waterville - Nearly 10 years spent as a migrant worker in the Maine woods had taught Mexican-born Roberto Cruz to be wary of officials. So when Priscilla Doel, a Spanish-speaking woman from Waterville, turned up in Jackman last year, Cruz and his co-workers reserved judgement. "When I first met her, I said: 'I don't know. She's probably one of the people from the Department of Labor.'" Cruz said last week in Portland, readying for a trip home to Sonora in Western Mexico. "I didn't really know about her. After we got to know her better, we realized that she wasn't trying to get any benefit from us."
She still isn't. Doel, who has taught Spanish language and literature at Colby College since 1965, has over the past three years been drawn into a Latino community that is growing quietly and steadily. These are the migrant forestry workers, men who work for contractors hired by paper companies. Citizens of Honduras, Panama, Mexico or Guatemala, the workers spend months trimming and planting in the woods around Jackman, Greenville, and Millinocket. Though their numbers have increased drastically‹from 100 to about 600 in the past three years‹they go unnoticed by most Mainers, even by those who are aware of the migrant workers who harvest the state's crops. "We expect blueberries and broccoli and apples." Doel said in an interview last week at her Colby office.
But forest workers? "I never even knew they existed," she said. Doel's introduction came when she was asked to translate for a Hispanic migrant worker who was a defendant in a traffic case at District Court in Waterville. She saw a need for someone to advocate for men who spoke little or no English, did not know their rights under Maine law and sometimes were at the mercy of a legal system they did not understand. "They can't ask themselves," Doel said. "They can't call workers' compensation. They can't call a lawyer. They can't call a doctor." But Doel, raised in Massachusetts, schooled in New York and fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, could call on their behalf. And she did. As Doel's name and phone number began to circulate in the migrant forest-worker community, she soon saw her involvement go beyond translation and telephone calls. When they were told of a man who had been injured in the woods in northwestern Maine, Doel and her husband, a retired professor of sociology at Colby, jumped in their truck and drove to Stratton, near the Canadian border at Coburn-Gore. They were introduced to a Mexican man who had lost a finger in a tree-thinning accident. "He was getting a little scared," Doel recalled. "He was living in this old dingy house with all these guys in Stratton. He was not getting proper treatment. Bob and I brought him home with us." They then assisted the man as he navigated the labyrinth of workers' compensation insurance benefits, which he had not been receiving. After a stay at the YMCA in Portland, the man received the pay to which he was entitled and returned to Mexico. Doel went on to the next case.
After decades spent in the shelter of a college campus, the Fairfield resident has interpreted for Spanish-speaking defendants in courts as far away as Millinocket. She has visited inmates in jails. She has worked on behalf of a Honduran man accused of‹and ultimately convicted of‹sexual assault. Doel still believes the man was not able to defend himself in court. Her advocacy runs the gamut, from translating labor laws into Spanish to assisting a Honduran woman with the birth of her child in Maine. Doel was at the woman's side when the child was born. He is now two. Doel keeps his photograph in an album, along with others of her acquaintances and friends from Mexico and Central America. "Oh let me tell you about this guy," she said eagerly, flipping the album open on her desk. A young man is shown with his wife in Jackman. He was in Honduras when hurricane Mitch devastated the country. The wife was notified that he had drowned. Several days later, the man called her in Maine. "He had walked 10 miles to find a telephone," Doel said. There was a photograph of an older couple with solemn, work-lined faces. Their Honduran son is in a Maine prison; they wrote to tell Doel they could not afford to repay her for her help‹except with their prayers. There were photos of campgrounds, where migrant workers lived in tents and the Doels stayed in their camper. A photograph of Cruz, the Mexican who is now an American citizen. He recently sought advice from Doel about how to get a teaching degree in the United States. Another set of photos shows workers waiting for what was for some their first medical check-up ever. Doel recruited doctors and nurses for a day-long clinic in Jackman, a project she calls "my pride and joy." Doel is looking for volunteer physicians and nurses to take part in a similar clinic next summer. To support that effort and others, she has formed a nonprofit corporation: Maine Service Advocates in Foreign Languages and English Inc. Her hope is to recruit others to duplicate her services.
But not to back away. Though she teaches a full course load at Colby, on the day that she was interviewed, Doel, 58 and energetic, had managed to get to Millinocket to interpret for a defendant in court. When she was called a couple of days later, she was on her way to Augusta to meet with an assistant attorney general and the state monitor-advocate for migrant workers, Juan Perez-Febles. Perez-Febles, in a telephone interview from his Portland office, said he has worked with other advocates, but Doel stands out‹and is effective‹because of her sincere desire to help migrant workers. "She doesn't have an agenda of her own," he said.
Not even an academic one. Doel, who has published a book about Portuguese cod fishermen, said she would like to write a book about the Latino forestry workers someday. But if she does, she said, it will be a compilation of oral histories, the men's stories in their words. She said academic colleagues have suggested she has the perfect opportunity for some sort of study, but she bristles at the thought of turning these men into subjects for a scholarly paper. "Not my friends," Doel said. "I don't even want to be put in a position where I would betray that trust." Assisting workers while they work in the Maine woods is enough of a reward, she said. "I'm helping a group of people that was really ignored and forgotten." --- The Morning Sentinel. November 29, 1998.
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