There are just three of seven Hispanic council members. Race issues still exist, but they don't dominate the discussion among community leaders. Once the frozen food capital of the world, Watsonville has never recovered from the loss of Green Giant and the Watsonville Canning and Produce Co. in the late 1980s. Both outfits moved to Mexico in search of cheaper labor. Ten years later, while the rest of the state enjoys one of the best economies ever, unemployment in Watsonville is between 15 and 20 percent.
Wages are low and poverty is more common than it is even in nearby communities.
And with that poverty has come a number of social, economic and educational challenges. For example, the annual per capita income for Hispanics in Watsonville is less than 40 percent of the county's annual per capita income, according to the authors of a study of Watsonville's economic health. Because of the large Hispanic population, there is a temptation among some in the white community to blame the immigrants, but Murphy and others pin the blame instead on the very thing that has given Watsonville life - its fertile crop land. Although farming has always provided a good number of jobs, they have tended to be low-wage and seasonal. Watsonville may be plagued by low wages, not enough houses and a serious problem keeping its young people from moving away as soon as they graduate from high school, but Murphy says those things aren't much different now than they were in 1948 when she moved to Watsonville as a young newlywed.