Novel Project Aids Rural Area Latino Elderly : Community services: Five Oregon agencies team up to spread information on state and federal resources.

HILLSBORO, Ore. —  Living in rural communities throughout the United States are the elderly Latino men and women who once picked the cabbages, apples and strawberries for your table.

Most of them don’t speak English and can’t read Spanish. They can’t drive or use the bus system. They have health problems and no insurance. And they have no access to Social Security benefits, Medicaid or food stamps.

“It’s like living in a little bubble inside of a larger world,” said Gloria Musquiz, resource development director for the Washington County Department of Aging Services in northwestern Oregon.

The agency tried to find a model for a program to help the growing population of Latino older people in the county, which is ripe with vineyards and orchards.

“For 2 1/2 years, I’ve been making phone calls into Texas, into California, and all over where you’d expect that they’ve got huge numbers of farm workers,” Musquiz said.

“And for the most part, we have not found that there are any programs or any special projects that are designed with the older farm worker in mind.”

Unique in the nation, the Hispanic Elder Project involves five agencies that serve Spanish-speaking families: the Virginia Garcia Health Clinic, Oregon Legal Services, the Oregon Human Development Corp., Centro Cultural and the Washington County Community Action Organization.

Using a $300,000 grant, agency workers began an eight-month training course in June to learn about the process of aging, geriatric health, and the available state and federal services. They also will undergo cultural and sensitivity training, Musquiz said.

Ten volunteers from the Latino community also will take the course. They eventually will go to homes, churches and other places where elders gather to introduce them to the assistance program.

The agency began planning the Hispanic Elder Project after a VISTA volunteer conducted a survey of Latino elders in the county in 1988-89.

Results shattered the myth of the migrant farm worker.

“Ninety-one percent of the people that we interviewed are here legally,” Musquiz said. “Fifty-one percent of these people in Washington County have been residents of our county at least 10 years, if not all their lives.”

Margarita R. Garza speaks only a few words in English. Her grandparents came to the United States from Mexico. She was born in 1921 in San Marcos, Tex., and has always lived in this country. Her father and husband were ranch hands in Texas.

But her husband’s work could not support seven children. He began coming to Oregon during the summer to work in the fields. And in 1966, the family moved to Washington County, where the children could work after school.

“Strawberries, beans, cucumbers, walnuts--one work would end and another would begin,” she said.

Garza’s husband died in 1980. Her children grown, she lives in her own home in Cornelius. Unlike many others, she receives Social Security benefits, supplemental security income, food stamps and Medicare.

When her husband became ill, he started getting Social Security benefits, and that’s how she became involved in the system, she said. Many older people in her situation never interact with the system of benefits and as a result no one seems to pay them much attention.

The House Select Committee on Aging estimated at a 1990 hearing that the number of Latino farm workers falls somewhere between 3.5 million and 5 million. But no one knows for sure, and even government workers say census statistics on the population are unreliable.

Garza said she does not feel isolated from American society. But, she added, she “feels Mexican--of that culture, of those values,” and many new arrivals feel distanced from life in this country.

Negotiating their way through American society is particularly difficult for those who are uneducated.

Garza went to a Spanish-language school through the third grade, but when she changed to an English-speaking school, they put her back in first grade. She was 13 and lost interest, she said.

In Washington County, the agency’s survey found 82% of Latino elders are illiterate.

The survey found 51% of Latino elders lack Medicare coverage or other health care coverage. “We’ve always thought that they’ve had as much access as anybody else and I think this is a typical perception on the part of an institution such as ours,” said Mary Lou Ritter, director of the county Department of Aging Services.

“We were out there. We spread the word around. We put out our brochures. We’ve got senior centers out there,” Ritter said.