Faces of the Front Range: Denver immigrant janitor-poet reflects on labor activism, meeting Obama

After 20 years cleaning metro Denver offices and now the massive Coors brewery, janitor-poet Juan Manuel Patraca is planning a return to impoverished rural Mexico — reversing the traditional immigrant flow.

He earns $17.20 an hour and has published four books.

He inspired other janitors in a movement that led to increased wages.

He spoke outside Congress and met with President Barack Obama in the White House.

“We’re human beings, not animals, and it is hard to live without justice,” Patraca, 57, said recently before riding a bus to his late shift at Coors.

But despite his successes, he’ll return to Mexico because an elderly uncle no longer can manage the farm he left as a boy. And Patraca for two decades hasn’t seen his daughter, now 28, or met his granddaughter, due to his fear that U.S. authorities wouldn’t re-admit him — the plight of millions of immigrant workers who aren’t legal residents.

“It’s been a huge sacrifice,” he said, “but life is formed with continuous separations and I’ve always maintained the hope that — someday — we’re going to gather together.”

He plans to leave in March 2023, instead of trying to become a legal U.S. resident, and revive the 20-acre farm, at Paso De La Venta, near Veracruz. He’ll grow chilis, tomatoes, lemons, mangoes and tamarinds to sell in local markets, he said. He also plans to produce a new book of poems called, “Without Borders,” about his travels looking for work.

Patraca is “emblematic of a pattern we are seeing with Mexicans choosing to leave the United States,” said Michelle Mittelstadt, spokeswoman for the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. The institute’s latest analysis of federal data shows that the 10.9 million Mexico-born population in the United States has decreased over the past decade by 780,000 as many voluntarily return to communities they left years ago to earn money.

He had no formal schooling. His father died when he was 5, forcing his mother to leave the farm with him to work in Veracruz. Her friend taught him to read and write, he said, and at 8 he wrote his first poem.

He worked for a blacksmith in Veracruz fanning flames. He shined shoes. He moved to Acapulco where, for seven years, he sold auto parts. He eventually moved north to a factory just south of the U.S. border, where he began to speak up as an activist.

“I love my country,” he said. “But the wages there are nothing.”

Factory colleagues helped him obtain a tourist visa. He entered the United States at Eagle Pass, Texas. “They gave me six months.” That was 2002.

At first in Denver, he hauled materials at a construction site. Then he settled into janitorial work.

He wrote poetry on bus rides from a $550-a-month apartment in Aurora to and from buildings he cleaned. He married, and later separated from his spouse, without securing his U.S. residency status. When landlords raised his rent to $1,200, he moved to the basement of a southwest Denver bungalow owned by a retired Denver Public Schools teacher. This accommodation, for $300 combined with chores such as snow shoveling, shortened his bus commute to 32 minutes.

For the past five years, he’s been cleaning and waxing the floors of the historic Coors brewery, established in 1873 by Adolph Coors — more than 1 million square feet, one of the largest breweries in the world.

It’s so big that it takes three months for his contractor-run team to clean all the floors before starting again. They scrub using a chemical stripper, vacuum, mop, dry and wax.

He tried to organize fellow janitors at the brewery to join the Service Employees International Union that, representing about 3,000 janitors around Denver, has pressed for higher wages, sick pay and vacation. They voted against unionizing, and Patraca said managers then voluntarily improved working conditions.

He writes in Spanish about workers and migrants. One poem that drew attention, “Justice for Janitors,” appeared in the first of his books, which were published by Icaro Editores in Spanish with translations into English. The poem celebrates the United States as “a beacon of social justice and peace” but with “a suspended dream waiting to be grasped.” It laments how “each time we pause,” owners of companies seemingly “invent new ways to work us harder.”

Other poems address people he met, detained migrants, and civil rights leaders including Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. His books, sold over the internet, have earned about $4,000 in royalties, he said.

Labor union leaders invited him to “justice for janitors” rallies in Washington, D.C. He remembers how, reading his poems in conference halls, he hoped to awaken workers’ emotions. Instead, when fellow janitors stood up applauding before he had finished, “they triggered emotions in me.”

Those rallies led to a White House visit on the first day of spring 2010. Patraca carries a small photo of himself with Obama. “He put my book in the Library of Congress.”

His labor activist colleagues and workers who attend his periodic readings ask for guidance.

“He has inspired me to do a good job helping people and be humble,” said Pedro Carillo, 51, a union organizer and friend for 12 years.

Patraca advises education, particularly on the civil rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

“The best labor fight is when workers know their rights before confronting company owners,” he said. “With knowledge, there can be freedom.”

This story is part of The Denver Post’s Faces of the Front Range project, highlighting Coloradans with a unique story to share. Read more from this series here.