1-1 Premeier Issue FINAL PROOF.pdf Mar. 2014 | Page 8

GIVING H

By Anora McGaha & Photography by Martha Manning

Ascary Arias

The Man Who Didn’t Forget

A

scary grew up in Mexico, in the countryside, very poor. His mother was a
migrant worker in the US. At 10, Ascary was working the fields with his grandmother. At 12 a neighbor paid him to manage
6 acres of corn and tomatoes.

When he first came to the States
as a young adult, he worked in tobacco
barns. [Slight of build, he wasn’t well suited to the hot heavy work, easier though
it was than picking tobacco, where workers often get sick from the p