I Found Out What Happened to Los Tres Hermanos Grocery

I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia.  When I was a teenager, it seemed as though there was a Mexican grocery store in practically every neighborhood.  Atlanta had many Hispanic communities, so it made sense that these chains of grocery stores were so successful.  I moved out of Atlanta in 2009 to go to college.  I rarely went home during my first year away from my motherland.  Honestly, I didn't start feeling homesick until 2011.  During my frequent visits to Atlanta in 2011, I gradually realized that former Mexican grocery stores were no longer in business.  I always assumed that they had lost their markets or given way to competitors, but I recently found out that there's a more complicated reason for the closure of Los Tres Hermanos groceries.  It involves the Tyson corporation and exploitation of human workers in industrial food manufacturing.  Naturally, I was intrigued.

Steve Striffler explained the history behind Los Tres Hermanos in Chicken: the dangerous transformation of America's favorite food.  To understand why the groceries closed, you must know a little bit about food production in the USA.  Amador Anchondo-Rascon is a Mexican immigrant who slipped the border to pursue agricultural work in California.  Finding season work and high living expenses, he eventually moved to Florida where married and became a US citizen.  In 1990, he began working for the Tyson corporation in Shelbyville, Tennessee.  Shelbyville experienced a boom in its Hispanic population in following years.

Amador opened the first Los Tres Hermanos in Shelbyville.  In addition to selling groceries, he sold illegal documents for immigrants.  Striffler says, "If a town's Latino population is large enough to support a Los Tres Hermanos, then it is almost certain that this sort of store will either provide these kinds of services or know where to arrange for them."   His business was so successful that he became a wealthy man who owned 5 homes, until some of the false documents caught the attention of local authorities.  He sold illegal documents to undercover INS agents.  Subsequently, he cooperated with the authorities and confided that Tyson offered him up to $200 "recruitment fees" if he furnished illegal workers with false documents.  In a sting, a Tyson executive asked Amador and an undercover agent to provide 2,000 illegal Guatemalans with documents.  They were offered either $100 or $200 per head.

According to United States Justice Department, 15 Tyson plants conspired to smuggle and provide illegal documentation for Mexican immigrants.  They exploited the workers' fear of deportation to force them to work intolerable conditions for low wages.  A meat-packing supervisor even expressed that he preferred his workers "right off the bus."  Initially, the senior vice president of the Tyson corporation denied the company's involvement with immigrant smuggling.  Three Tyson managers eventually confessed, and one committed suicide.  Ultimately the case passed without much distinction.  Although the company was caught paying for large numbers of illegals workers (fortified by 3 confessions), the highest levels of management were able to evade the accusations.

Ultimately, small business owners like Amador pay the price for the corruption of the Tyson corporation.  The case and publicity force small businesses to close, an additional grievance on top of the exploitation of immigrant workers.  However, I would be willing to bet that you didn't hear about Tyson's transgressions in the news nor did their business suffer as result of their actions.