{"id":67300,"date":"2025-08-14T12:54:42","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T19:54:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eltecolote.org\/content\/?p=67300"},"modified":"2025-08-19T17:56:23","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T00:56:23","slug":"sf-immigrant-worker-disability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eltecolote.org\/content\/en\/sf-immigrant-worker-disability\/","title":{"rendered":"An immigrant came to San Francisco for work. One injury changed everything"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Jacento B. sits quietly on a folding stool on Mission Street, his crutches leaned against the wall. A Giants cap rests on his lap, scattered with coins. A stranger hands him a warm bag of pupusas. He thanks them and tucks it into his black bag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel guilty doing this because I\u2019m not used to this kind of life,\u201d said Jacento, who otherwise had worked his whole life. \u201cBut sometimes the need forces you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jacento came to San Francisco chasing steady work. He joined the ranks of the city\u2019s day laborers: men who wait on street corners for painting, demolition or landscaping jobs. They are the unseen backbone of the city\u2019s economy, taking on its most dangerous and least protected work.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Jacento B., 35, shows his prosthetic leg inside the kitchen of his home in San Mateo, Calif., on May 20, 2025. Jacento lost his left leg after a major accident, and has been unable to work due to lingering pain from multiple amputations. Photo: Pablo Unzueta for El Tecolote\/CatchLight Local<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cThese are people who we know have experienced and continue to experience a lot of traumas,\u201d said Ana Miguel, a program coordinator with Border Angels. Miguel says day laborers are rarely given proper training or safety equipment. \u201cThese are jobs that are not certified and a huge issue that we see a lot of times is the issue of wage theft, too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fragile stability of these informal gigs collapsed for Jacento in October 2022. He had taken an under-the-table moving job for $200. While loading a truck, a heavy machine fell on him, crushing his left leg and the phone in his pocket. \u201cI remember them telling me \u2018don\u2019t go to sleep, don\u2019t go to sleep.\u2019\u201d He barely survived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to researcher C\u00e9sar Leonardo Pinz\u00f3n G\u00f3mez of The Center for Health Promotion and Prevention, many Latin American people migrate for better job opportunities and safer working conditions but arrive to \u201ca different set of stressors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Jacento B., 35, sits on the bustling Mission Street sidewalk panhandling for spare change in San Francisco, Calif., on May 16, 2025. \u201cWhat I want now is to look straight ahead, help my brother with food and rent,\u201d he said. \u201cThen with my prosthetic leg, I can start walking and working again\u2014that\u2019s my best dream.\u201d Photo: Pablo Unzueta for El Tecolote\/CatchLight Local<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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Jacento B., 35, sits on the bustling Mission Street sidewalk panhandling for spare change in San Francisco, Calif. on May 16, 2025. Photo: Pablo Unzueta for El Tecolote\/CatchLight Local<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For Jacento, those pressures began in Guatemala. His parents were displaced during the country\u2019s 36-year civil war, when the government seized their land. After the 1996 Peace Accords, the family received a small plot from the European Union and started a coffee farm in Chimaltenango. Jacento worked alongside his father from age 10, growing most of their own food and attending school with help from a small inheritance from his grandfather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in Guatemala, education rarely guarantees decent-paying work. By his twenties, Jacento was taking whatever jobs he could in markets and on farms, earning around $130 a month. \u201cWe always wanted to have a house, to buy a car. So fighting for a better life in Guatemala was difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n