por David Bacon
New America Media
Indigenous Oaxacan strawberry workers take the boxes they’ve picked to the checker, who checks the quality of the berries, weighs them, and punches the ticket that keeps a record of their work and how much they’ll be paid. (PHOTO BY DAVID BACON)
Three bills now making their way through Sacramento promise to dramatically improve conditions for California farmworkers, including one that requires overtime pay for shifts above eight hours. The overtime benefits bill is currently awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature.
SANTA MARIA, CA — Growing up in a farmworking family — well, it’s everything I ever knew. Whenever I got out of school, it was straight to the fields to get a little bit of money and help the family out. That’s pretty much the only job I ever knew. In general we would work on the weekends and in the summers. When I was younger it would be right after school, and then during vacations.
My sister Teresa slept in the living room and one night when I was doing my homework at the table, I could hear her crying because she had so much pain in her hands. My mother and my other sister complained about how much their backs hurt. My brother talked about his back pain as well. It’s pretty sad. I always hear my family talk about how much they’re in pain and how’s it’s impossible for me to help them. I always moved. In my high school years, I moved six times. In junior high I moved three times and in elementary school I’m not sure. I went to six different elementary schools.
For a while we went to Washington to work, but aside from that it’s always been in Santa Maria. We’d move because the lease ended and we couldn’t afford the rent, so we tried to look for a cheaper place. We always lived with other families. The first time I can remember we lived with four other families. The second house we lived with five families.
Each family gets their own room and does their own cooking. They get their own space in the kitchen cabinets and the refrigerator. When they cook in the morning before work it gets pretty chaotic in there.
The first time I worked in the fields was when I was seven, in Washington, where I picked cucumbers. It was summer. We didn’t go to school in Washington [but] the foremen never said anything because my brother knew them. He worked in the crew, so the foremen were OK with it. There were other kids there as well. It wasn’t a huge company, just a small rancher.
When they paid by the hour we couldn’t work. If [workers] were paid by the hour and they were slow, the foreman would send them home and not let them work anymore. They would only let kids work if they were doing piece rate. We were actually really slow because we were only in third or fourth grade.
The first [paycheck I received] was for $40. I was crying because I counted my boxes that day and I knew how much I had earned that week. When the foreman gave me my pay he said I hadn’t worked [more than that]. I was in fourth grade. I was crying because I had worked and really wanted my money. I wanted to buy something with it. Finally he paid me my money in a white envelope. I was pretty happy.
When we got older, we did get more money. We got to earn our own money because before then my mother would take everything we earned. As we got older we had more interest in money, so we would keep half of it. We were getting our own pay, and my older siblings would ask us to give half.
The biggest problem was working in the vineyards. I worked for three months in the summer and it was the hardest work I’ve ever done. They gave us clippers to clip the vines, and that’s what you did all day. Clip them and pull the grapes off. When I got home my hands hurt so much I couldn’t make a fist or hold a cup or anything. I would just lie down since the pain just stayed. In the morning there was nothing else I could do, just go out there and work again.
In the weekends in elementary school it was pretty easy working on the weekends and going to school during the week. They didn’t give us much work and school came pretty easy. II would like to think that I am a good student. I took predominately AP and Honors classes, and got good grades — mostly A’s and B’s. I never got any C’s.
When I worked in the tomatoes recently, [some workers] stole four boxes from me. I told my family to report it to the Labor Department, [but] to them it’s inevitable. They think we should just put up with it and be grateful that we have a job. [They] also fear losing their job if they make a complaint. That’s pretty much how it is. They would make fun of my dad because he would complain a lot. They’d say, “That’s why your dad is like that and never gets jobs.”
I’m proud of what my mom and older siblings did in order to get the family here and survive. That was my motivation for choosing only AP classes. My sister didn’t get an education. None of my older sisters could go to school. I really want fairness and equality in schools. I want the discrimination against indigenous kids to stop in elementary schools. That’s where it starts. They affiliate themselves with gangs, to get it to stop. That’s the only reason.
I didn’t want to learn Spanish, because I didn’t want to lose my Mixteco language. I try to keep in touch with my indigenous roots. Whenever I cut my hair I always bury it. I asked my mother why we did that, and she says it’s because you fertilize the earth.
When it rains, I get a bowl and fill it with rainwater and drink it. I would talk with her as our bowls filled up. When I visit my dad I ask him to tell me folktales. When I have a dream I ask him to tell me what it means. I want to write down my language before it gets lost. So many students are choosing to not speak it and many parents don’t want to teach their kids. I want to teach my kids.
