Working the Fields
As the nation sits down to another Thanksgiving dinner, and our appreciation for all things becomes keener, I often think of all the labor that goes into our food supply long before it reaches our table.
As a young Chicana growing up in Wyoming, farm work is close to my heart. My grandmother, aunt’s and uncle’s all “worked the fields” as they say. My grandmother told me stories of how she would fill a potato sack larger than she was full of tomatoes for 2 cents.
She Thought the U.S. Was Worth The Struggle
When you ask my grandmother why she chose to live in Wyoming, she said because she didn’t want to keep moving as a migrant and deprive her children of an education. She would tell us she felt the sugar factories there would provide enough fieldwork to sustain her and her six children.
During the winters she would launder clothes for the bachelor businessmen in her small town and as my aunts and uncles got older they began cleaning businesses. She called this surviving, many call this entrepreneurialism.
How the U.S. Pulled Out of The Great Depression
This was during the time of the Bracero Program. This program was an agreement between the U.S. and Mexico to allow Mexicans to travel legally through the U.S. each year to do “bracero” work or manual labor, mostly building railroads and farmwork.
The program was ultimately shut down in the 1960s after much criticism, including one of the most notable quotes by US Labor Executive Lee G. Williams who oversaw the program and called it, “Nothing short of slavery, a way for big corporate farms to get a cheap labor supply from México under government sponsorship, and a money-grabbing scheme by the corporate farms and sugar interests.”
No Migrants, Just Tumbleweeds
So when I first became a paralegal with Legal Aid of Nebraska and I was offered the chance to work on the Migrant Farmworkers Project, I was elated. However, I was confused.
It was 2005. I have always had my eye on the pulse of Latinos in the Midwest and I knew there had been a huge decline of migrant workers coming to the area since Monsanto had begun producing their “Ready Roundup” seeds.
Those seeds not only caused a lot of health problems, but they also eliminated the need for a lot of weeding. Which is the work migrants did.
Tejano Summer Love
By this time I rarely saw any migrant workers. As a kid, every summer the small towns across the rural Wyoming/Nebraska area would swell up with what many people called “Tejanos,” which means Texans.
Although most of them were from Mexico. They would travel all the way through Texas, up to Nebraska, Wyoming and then as far north as Washington. Then back down through Idaho and into California following the harvests. Cultivating the food that keeps our country alive.
Legal Aid of Nebraska Is the Homie
But in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was a lot of exposure done for the abuse that migrant workers were facing. And Legal Aid of Nebraska was determined to make sure that the horror stories that had plagued these fields for generations were no longer happening.
So a few years into the project, under the direction of one of Legal Aid’s great leaders Dave Pantos, I designed a Migrant Farmworkers Handbook. It was a small calendar and had a place for farmworkers to log their hours and add important contacts.
It was in English and Spanish and was filled with information about their rights. From enrolling their children in school to their right to remain silent, it had a lot of substantive information for them. I was very proud of the product.
Some interns updated the handbook in 2011 and took out all of the information about interactions with police and ICE and most of the pages that were designed for migrants to log their hours. After those edits, people stopped using them, but that’s the only version I could find online to link to. Dave Pantos was cool enough to add my name to the production notes of the version I created.
Ricardo Ariza, Great Chicano Civil Rights Activist
A group of students from Creighton and their fearless leader Ricardo Ariza liked my version of the handbook too. Along with them we set out on foot to the fields to distribute the handbooks and educate the farmworkers about their civil rights.
At first, it was difficult to find them. And once we found them, although they seemed touched by our concerns to fight for their rights, they were more interested in remaining employed than filing any complaints.
Don’t Make No Waves
Many of them reminded us that these gigs were hard to come by now and they had been working for the same farmers for decades and would never disrespect them by demanding things such as clean water and breaks that are aligned with US labor laws.
We were all frustrated. We wanted them to fight but who were we to insist. I didn’t learn anything new. So many times I have seen other Latinos silent at times that they could have argued that their rights were being trampled on. But I could understand their need to stay employed and their appreciation for any opportunity that allows them to feed and care for their families.
Return of the Omak
Years later in 2012, I had to pick up a family member that was working the fields in Washington. I drove all the way from Omaha, Nebraska to Omak, Washington.
I drove all night and as I pulled up to the farmworker’s camp at 4 AM they were already awake and cheerful, starting their day. The savory aroma of Mexican breakfast filled the air as I jumped out of my vehicle to the soft dew of Eastern Washington’s mornings. It was poetic.
We stayed there for almost two weeks. It was a cinder block area of about four or five rooms the size of small garages. There was a communal bathroom with a shower on the side. The rooms almost resembled jail cells with their metal bed frames that had no mattresses. Despite our extremely humble conditions, my youngest daughter asked if we could move there.
Taking It Easy Living the Hard Life
I know why she felt that way. There was magic in the air. We would eat dinner early together with no TV. Instead, we would gather around the one guy who could play the guitar and we would talk about our dreams, about owning our own farms and what it’s like in different states.
The photo in this blog is the only one I took while we were up there. This is one of my favorite photos because the camera seemed to have caught some kind of an aura. This was the one day I went and picked cherries with them. I was, as I always am, still working.
Paralegal Power’s Always On Duty
I still had to open up my computer every day while my family members were gently removing the cherries from the trees, as to ensure the buds remained so the trees continue to bear fruit, I drafted pleadings. It reminded me where my work ethic comes from. It reminded me of the loyalty and royalty inside my DNA.
Timothy Ferriss Is Kinda Smart
When I made it home I started reading The Four Hour Work Week, by Timothy Ferriss. I highly recommend the book, although I didn’t finish it. I made it to the part where he questions Western civilizations’ poor laid retirement plans that involve a person working their entire lives and then reserving retirement to the very end of our lives when our physical health is deteriorating.
He suggests taking mini-vacations through life so we can enjoy things now but he got me thinking… “If I have a virtual paralegal firm, why can’t I live exactly where I want to retire now.” And there is no place I would rather be than the Evergreen State. At that moment I started planning to move back to the beautiful state of Washington.
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About the Author
Valentina Zapata Harris
Mother | Advocate | Blogger
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