Mexican Immigrant Family Sells Fruit,
Pursues Dream on San Pablo Avenue

EMERYVILLE -- For 14-year old Liliana Lares, the family business is a sleek black Dodge pick-up truck parked in Emeryville on the corner of San Pablo Avenue and 47th Street, bed brimming with swollen, green watermelons.

The youngest daughter of Mexican immigrants who crossed the border in the mid 1980’s, Liliana, a freshman at Castlemont High in East Oakland, has never known the hopeless poverty that brought her parents, Salvatore and Maria Lares to America.

“I’m lucky. I grew up in a house,” says Lares, leaning casually against a cardboard sign screaming “FRESH WATERMELONS” in garish crimson paint.

Liliana glances down at her cousin, 11-year old Melina Puentez, who has been helping to sell fruit since she was a toddler. “If it hadn’t been for the fruit stand, we would probably still be very poor,” says Liliana.

Salvatore and Maria Lares bought their first truckload of fruit from a Sacramento farmer in 1988 when Liliana was only six months old, says Maria Lares. As custodial workers at UC Berkeley the young couple earned a meager living that barely fed themselves and their three children.

Like many new immigrants, they shared an apartment in Oakland with friends and family members with sometimes as many as 20 people living in the same space.

“My parents found out that they could make $2,000 for selling a truckload of watermelons that only cost $300 to buy from a farmer,” says Liliana.

“Pretty soon the whole family was selling watermelons in the summer and oranges and cherries the rest of the year. Now we all own houses.”

And not just here in the U.S., according to Maria Lares. “We also own a house in Mexico and we take a trip there every year,” she says. “We are living the American dream.”

September is the last month of watermelon season and with Labor Day approaching, business is good. Customers ease onto the shoulder of San Pablo Avenue and climb out to survey the selection.

“All watermelons, four dollars and up!” Liliana exclaims, smiling cheerfully. She hopes to make at least $200 for the day.

Melina smiles too, around a mouthful of braces, as she scampers up the mountain of emerald melons to grab an enormous one on top. Lares deftly taps the watermelon with a clenched fist.

“This is a good watermelon,” she says. “It’s not too hollow. Just right.” Her customer requests five.

For Liliana, a full day of work means selling fruit every weekend on the side of the road from noon to dusk, when her mother will pick her up and drive the truckload of leftover melons home.

It is not hard work, according to Lares, but she knows that she could not do it for a living.

“My dad says we should be happy to sell watermelons. He says ‘How do you think we got this house?’” says Lares, “but I want to make something of myself. I want to get my education and I want to be a first grade teacher some day.”