Pictures of lush tropical gardens are taped to the walls of the modest trailer that Trinidad shares with her husband and 7-month-old son in Milbridge.

The soft-spoken 20-year-old said the pictures remind her of Honduras and the home she left almost a year ago.

“But at home, they suffer a lot, ” Trinidad said through an interpreter. “There is no work.”

Trinidad and her husband, Willis, are among 60 Hispanic migrants who spend their days bent over tables at Cherry Point Products Inc., cutting open sea cucumbers and scooping out the meat for Chinese and Korean markets.

And the plant they work in – constructed by Drusilla and Lawrence Ray in 1995 – has changed the makeup of this small town in western Washington County.

According to the 2000 Census, Milbridge’s population of 1,279 is only 92 percent white, making it the third most diverse community in Maine after Limestone and Portland.

The vast majority of the nonwhites are Mexican or Honduran.

Most work for Cherry Point Products. Like Trinidad and her family, they live in one of the 13 trailers the Rays provide rent-free in a compound behind the plant. The residents pay their utility bills.

Trinidad said she was waitressing in Atlanta and her husband was laying pipe when someone told Willis about the jobs in Milbridge.

That was seven months ago and the couple now works from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday. Trinidad said a neighbor watches the baby.

Picking out sea cucumbers is labor-intensive, and Trinidad said she is tired when she finishes. But she has no complaints.

” The work is hard, but that’s why we come – to work hard,” she said.

Juan Perez, the owner of The Mexican Store in nearby Harrington, said Spanish people like to work hard.

“They like the money,” said Perez. “They send money home and sometimes they go to see the families.”

Perez first came to Washington County to rake blueberries in 1989 and moved to Milbridge with his wife and two daughters five years ago.

He opened his store last May and plans to add a lunch counter this year and sell tamales and burritos. Perez said his wife runs the store in the winter while he works at Cherry Point Products.

“We figured out the Spanish people needed food products,” Perez said.

Born on the border between Guatemala and Mexico, Perez said he would never go back to Guatemala because of “the killing.”

But he might move back to Mexico someday, he said.

“Some days, I think we have to leave here because it is too cold,” he said. “On other days, it is nice. I am very happy. It is very quiet – not too much traffic like big cities.”

Tranquil is a term the migrants frequently use to describe Milbridge, according to Dana Pratt, a plan manager with the Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker Project. The program is part of the job training and career services offered by the federally funded Training and Development Corp.

“They prefer Milbridge to places like California and Florida, but the tranquillity and safety also mean they are far away from services,” Pratt said. “They are a relatively small group of people who are isolated from other people like themselves.”

Pratt said the Milbridge migrants have encountered some hostility, but many in the community have made them feel welcome. Of the people she’s involved with, the welcoming feeling is greater, Pratt said.

“But these people are extremely polite and humble – it is a part of their culture,” she said.

Pratt said the Hispanics are in Milbridge because there is work and if there were more work, there would be more migrants.

“These are people who will do work that Maine people choose not to do for the rate of pay that is offered,” she said. “I think this is going to be a growing population, and more small towns in Maine are going to be like Milbridge.”

Jack Frost, the director of TDC’s Farmworker Assistance Program, said Stinson Seafood Co. in Prospect Harbor, 40 minutes away, expressed interest in hiring migrants last summer when Cherry Point shut down during July, August and September because of new state regulations attempting to keep sea cucumbers from being overharvested. But Stinson doesn’t have adequate housing, particularly for families that have six to 10 people, Frost said.

The company closed again for the month of January. Such events create problems for some of the migrants who are supporting other members of their families by mailing money home, said Frost.

In the mid-1990s when Cherry Point opened, the migrants could work a 50- to 52-week year, he said.

Juan Perez-Febles, the director of Maine’s Division of Migrant and Immigrant Services, said the reason that so many people from Central America have settled in Milbridge is because “Drusilla Ray has made it very nice to be there.”

Ray has provided good housing for her workers and has worked with the school board to assure that the children have what they need, Perez-Febles said.

Hispanics initially were drawn to the area because of the blueberry harvest where rakers can earn $1,200 a week, he said.

Large blueberry companies recruited the workers -sometimes through labor contractors. But, now, word of the jobs in Washington County is spread by word of mouth and Milbridge has a good reputation among migrants, he said.

“The community has been very receptive to them,” Perez-Febles said. “Employers love the Hispanics because of their work ethic, and the workers like Milbridge because they like to see their children treated well and prospering.”

Milbridge Elementary School has 125 pupils, and about a dozen children have English as a second language, according to Principal Jody Strout.

Strout said she was a first-grade teacher when the first migrant families moved into Milbridge in the mid-1990s.

The period of adjustment at Milbridge Elementary went very smoothly, she said.

“The families moved in in small increments and they are so friendly and cooperative,” Strout said. “The students work very hard and they are a wonderful addition to the school.”

Strout said a good relationship between local students and the migrant children was fostered by teachers, who saw an opportunity for children to learn about another culture.

The school sponsored international dinners and Hispanic parents were invited into the classroom to explain their holidays and teach children the Spanish renditions of songs such as “Happy Birthday,” Strout said.

“And the mothers came and read to the younger children so they could hear the music of another language,” she said. ” I really admire these children. They are so resilient in the face of such a new experience.”

Cherry Point employs approximately 80 full-time workers, and 60 to 65 are migrants – quite an increase from the 12 to 15 employees the plant had when it first opened, said Drusilla Ray.

Employees are paid $1.50 for each pound of sea cucumber meat they harvest and some can remove 80 to 90 pounds a day, she said.

“The year before last, I had one family that made $50,000 between the two of them,” she said.