><http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-treetrimmer26oct26,1,3947516.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage>http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-treetrimmer26oct26,1,3947516.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage
>
>Perils among the palms
>
>By Sam Quinones
>Times Staff Writer
>
>October 26, 2006
>
>LIKE many of the immigrant men from his Mexican village, Gerardo
>Rodriguez was a Los Angeles gardener. But few from his village had
>done so much so young.
>
>The 19-year-old, who came to the United States illegally, was
>already his own boss. He had his own truck, tools and a small gardening route.
>
>Plus, he was learning to prune palm trees. He hadn't scaled many,
>but he told his friends that he liked it. Palms paid more, required
>more nerve and made him the focus of other men's awe.
>
>On an April afternoon in East Los Angeles, as he yanked away dead
>fronds halfway up a 50-foot palm, the tallest he'd ever scaled,
>Gerardo Rodriguez had reason to feel the world spinning his way.
>
>Then he pulled the wrong frond. Suddenly, a thick ring of them came
>loose and plunged on top of him. It pinned him back against the belt
>that held him to the tree. He gulped its dust as he battled it like
>a beast. But it weighed too much.
>
>A coroner's report found that he was asphyxiated in that tree, just
>out of reach of his friends.
>
>The story of how Gerardo Rodriguez died is part of a larger tale
>about Southern California's changing "green industry," the gardening
>and tree-trimming trades. Once a path to a middle-class life
>embraced by skilled Japanese American entrepreneurs, the industry
>has come to resemble a Third World factory: low-wage, low-skill,
>under-the-table, fiercely competitive and at times dangerous.
[....]