Email this page

Work Camps in Mexico

Village girls helping us with "la mangera".

Tiburón Island, located in the Gulf of California near Hermosillo, Mexico, was established as a game preserve in 1965. In the 1940s, however, Tiburón was home to several hundred Seri Indians. It is a harsh environment where inhabitants suffered extreme cold in the winter, and summers as dry as the Sonora Desert, only miles away on the mainland. The straight separating the two, El Infiernillo (Little Hell), is known for its treacherous and unpredictable currents. The Seri fished the ocean, and were forced to cross El Infiernillo to the mainland in order to hunt small game and get drinking water.

Life was already a challenge for the Seri, so when neighbors on the mainland began commercial fishing enterprises, harvesting fish in Seri territory, conflict grew over control of the straight and of Seri fishing grounds. By 1950 the old ways of the Seri could no longer exist on Tiburón Island. Those who remained were barely surviving on the bottom rungs of the mainland fishing enterprises. It was in this dire setting that a remarkable relationship was forged between a college student on summer break and the Seri Indians.

Norman Krekler, a young Quaker from Ohio, first attended Earlham College in Indiana where he heard about the AFSC Mexico work camps from his professors. In 1948, at the end of his second year, Norman transferred to the University of New Mexico, where he and his school buddies made regular vacation trips to Chihuahua, Mexico. Norman grew to love Mexico and quickly picked up the language. He remembered his Earlham professors talking about the AFSC work camps and applied to a language camp in Saltillo, Cuahiula. No other AFSC work camp was set up for learning language, and, unlike many work camps, Saltillo was a larger city where students were required find employment for themselves. Being a biology student, Norman found work in a biology lab and immersed himself in the everyday life of Saltillo. After the camp ended, Norman traveled by train and bus along the Pacific Coast of Mexico, where there were no paved roads, exploring the rural countryside and rustic villages, promising himself that he would return to Mexico to live.

The fall after his work camp and traveling experience, Norman transferred to Whittier College, where he met Friends who were involved with the American Friends Service Committee in Pasadena, California. One day Norman and a Quaker friend attended a talk about the environmental and economic struggles of Seri Indians on Tiburón. Intrigued by the possibility of offering help, Norman approached the AFSC about visiting the Seri. There were no funds available to sponsor him, but the AFSC agreed to give Norman a minute of support in exchange for a report. He had planned to take the bus to Hermosillo and hitchhike or walk. Tiburón Island was beyond the desert with no paved roads, and a lot of the roads had no travelers on them for days at a time. Norman recalls, "I had my pack and a big canteen ready to go, and a cousin of mine in Tucson said he knew of an American airplane pilot who was buying shark livers from that tribe for making vitamins, and he introduced me to him. He said, 'I'm going tomorrow. It's my last trip, if you want to ride along.'" Norman took him up on the offer, and spent the entire summer on Tiburón Island with the Seri. He was taken in by a Seri family, learned their ways of living, and became a part of their community.

Working together on the painting of a rural school, valley of Santiago-Nayarit. 1950

Norman found that the Seris needed a school and a teacher. They also needed blankets and clothing, as the winters on Tiburón Island were very cold, and they were losing their children through exposure to the elements. He returned to California and wrote a report to the AFSC, but unfortunately there were no funds to assist in filling the requests. Norman, by now a college senior and only 21 years old, devised a plan with two of his friends. "We got together at Halloween and dressed up like Seri Indians and went around knocking on doors all over Whittier, collecting clothing and blankets." The young men collected a hundred blankets and two bales of clothing, and they raised the interest of a doctor who volunteered himself and his nurse for the trip. They had no vehicle large enough to handle the donations, so they ran an ad in the paper, calling Tiburón Island a fisherman's paradise and offering a free trip for anyone who owned a two-ton truck, in exchange for hauling the material donations. A World War I veteran from the American Legion responded to the ad. Norman remembers, "We told him that we were Quakers, and we were pacifists, and we were going down to these Indians. And he said, 'Well, fine. I'm not a pacifist, I don't believe in it, but sounds good to me anyhow. Let's go.'" And so they did. Every Seri received a coat and a blanket that fall.

Norman and his friends made several more trips to the Seris that winter, making more distributions, and finally capturing the attention of the Pasadena AFSC office. The Service Committee agreed to send two representatives, Ed Duckles and Herberto Sein, to Tiburón Island along with Norman and his friend. They arrived in the dead of winter, with a storm brewing. By the time they reached the island, the storm was in full force and there was no way to leave that night. Nobody had thought to bring blankets for themselves, so a hut and two blankets were given to Ed and Herberto, and Norman and his friend stayed with Norman's adopted family. Norman tells us, "We crawled in between our Indian brothers by the campfire, and thirteen dogs piled on top. They kept the dogs especially to climb on top in the winter to keep them warm. We slept under the dogs by the fire all night. About four in the morning, the coldest time of the morning, the owner of the boat come in and says, 'The wind has died; it's calm. It'll rise again after sunup. We've got to go.' We took off, with waves breaking in the boat. One little Indian boy [was] in the boat with us, and I remember Ed Duckles and Herberto Sein sitting there by the side of him, helping him bail, all through the night, the waves breaking over us, drenching us."

Summer 1984 Grupo de amigos Bermúdez, Chihuahua, Mexico Squatting in front: Eric Krekler Front row (left to right): Mary Galvan; Lauri Duncan; Martha Dunn; Andrea Packard; Betsy Matt Middle row (l to r): Laura Kerr; Diego Ruíz R.; Ruth Ann Wright; Amy Thornton; Traci Hjelt; Ricardo Ayala S. Back row (l to r): Frede Johnson; Grace Johnson; Marc Killinger

Norman's compassion and youthful determination led him first to help improve the lives of the Seri Indians. In partnership with his wife Exelee, his love for Mexico and the Seri people grew into a lifetime of service. Together they coordinated volunteer opportunities for hundreds of young people in rural Mexico, the ripples of which have been felt far beyond Tiburón Island.

Excerpt from December 1950 Memorandum on the Visit to the Seri Indians by Heberto Sein.

Excerpt from 1952 letter about AFSC work with the Seri Indians by Ed Duckles.

Researched and written by Joan Lowe, Assistant Archivist of the American Friends Service Committee

NOTE: The AFSC/Intermountain Yearly Meeting Joint Service Projects continue to run work camps in Mexico today.

^ Top of page