Book highlights farm workers’ struggles, accomplishments
For quite some time, author and journalist Gabriel Thompson said he had thought of farm workers as universally miserable, forced to toil under back-breaking labor conditions that failed to provide any sense of dignity.
That all changed when the Oakland-based writer spent a year working alongside of them as part of research for a book released in 2011, entitled “Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs (Most) Americans Won’t Do.”
His first day on the job picking lettuce in Arizona got underway with impromptu guitar and accordion playing from two workers, an act that compelled co-workers to dance, and which also helped dispel Thompson’s earlier preconceptions about farm workers.
“I learned for the first time just how difficult and how beautiful it can be to work in an agricultural field,” Thompson said recently during a visit to El Centro to promote his latest book.
“Many times the fields act as a second family.”
Thompson’s latest book, “Chasing the Harvest: Migrant Workers in California Agriculture,” seeks to highlight the experiences and histories of 17 migrant farm workers, including one Calexico resident and former union organizer whose exploits repeatedly – and unashamedly – landed her in jail in the mid-1970s.
While his former book was a mix of personal narrative and investigative reporting, his latter book is an oral history which allows those featured to share their lives and experiences in their own words.
“The book is a way to lift the voices of those that are often invisible and forgotten and be reminded of their significance,” Thompson said. “It is a modest effort to provide a platform for them to share their stories.”
Amid the nation’s current backdrop of heated anti-immigrant rhetoric, Thompson’s book of oral histories allows readers the intimate opportunity to hear migrant farm workers speak directly about their experiences, however mundane or compelling they may be.
Recently, Thompson had gathered in El Centro with three of those featured in his book, including Rosario “Chayo” Pelayo, a longtime Calexico resident and farm worker who joined the United Farm Workers union shortly after meeting Cesar Chavez in Calexico.
When it came time to introduce Pelayo, Mario Bustamante, whose El Centro home served as the venue for the book presentation and who also figures largely in UFW history, told the large crowd gathered that Pelayo had displayed more courage than most men he had ever met.
“She never backed down, and fought tirelessly for the rights of farm workers,” Bustamante said, in Spanish, about his longtime friend.
In recounting her past, Pelayo made sure to credit God and her family’s support for all that she was able to accomplish for the benefit of farm workers.
She also assured those gathered that the stories she was about to impart, and which are highlighted in Thompson’s book, really took place, despite their sounding incredible.
But in place of expressing doubt, those gathered laughed and cheered as Pelayo reminisced about a 1974 lettuce strike in the Valley when she had intervened and accosted a sheriff’s deputy who she had allegedly observed striking female farm workers with a baton.
At one point, Pelayo said, she had the deputy by the hair and was able to force him to the ground, before two other deputies intervened and subsequently got a similar taste of Pelayo’s righteous indignation.
“I slapped all three of them,” Pelayo said in Spanish, all while maintaining that what she did, although technically illegal, was not wrong.
That incident resulted in one of Pelayo’s many trips to jail, and remains a source of pride to this day.
“I had faith that we had to win, that we needed a union and that we had to fight with all of our hearts,” she said. “I still feel thanks in my heart and motivation to keep fighting.”
A common theme present throughout the oral histories in Thompson’s book is how the migrant farm workers responded to the perceived injustices in their respective lives with dignity and resilience and sought corrective action.
Riverside County resident Jose Saldivar, who also spoke during the El Centro gathering on May 31, spoke about his and others’ efforts to prevent Riverside County officials from applying code enforcement regulations in a discriminatory manner that disproportionately targeted Latinos.
It finally took a federal lawsuit in 1997 to prompt county officials to spend $21 million on new mobile home parks, replacing aging mobile homes with new ones, constructing additional low income housing and a farm worker service center.
The terms of the county’s settlement with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development were completed in the fall 2015, with the opening of the $1.2 million Mecca Comfort Station, which provides showers, restrooms and laundry service for migrant farm workers.
Saldivar said that he specifically fought for showers and laundry services to help prevent farm workers from bathing and washing clothes in the region’s canals that often contain contaminants from agricultural pesticides.
“You see a lot of things that are wrong, but little by little we’re moving forward,” Saldivar said in Spanish.