Fernandez, living at this time in Brawley, California, was a Mexican farmworker in the Imperial Valley of California. He was born on the 24th of September, 1901, in Rayón, Sonora, Mexico. His father was also born in Rayón, but he was not sure of his mother's birthplace and did not know his grandparents. He had one brother and five sisters. After sticking out the ravages of the Mexican Revolution, in 1918 he and two others joined railroad worker gangs ("renganches") brought to the United States, and his family relocated to the States in 1919, bringing a mule-drawn wagon to Tolleson, Arizona. In 1923, the family moved to Los Angeles and picked grapes every summer near Fresno. The following year they moved to the Imperial Valley, where they had heard there were jobs for women. Families who couldn't support themselves were deported to Mexico. Braceros (migrants brought in) were preferred by farm owners, making work for local people hard to get. Fernandez bought a bar vacated by Japanese people facing internment and began to grow his own crops. This oral history was done for Richard Griswold del Castillo's American Southwest History Class "in cooperation with Steve Colston of the San Diego History Research Center." It was digitized by the California Audiovisual Preservation Project (CAVPP). The interview was conducted in Spanish but the transcript is available in Spanish and English. Names mentioned during the interview include: Pascual Orozco Vazquez and Coronel Sergio Enrique Jirón.
