For him, all roads in California lead to farmworkers
Santiago Nieto has walked across the state raising awareness for those in the fields.
When I think of Santiago Nieto and his walks, I imagine him as the knight from “Don Quixote de la Mancha,” who, in his crazy wanderings around the world, mistakes windmills for menacing giants. But Nieto isn’t crazy, actually; he’s painfully sane and has decided to put his time and effort into helping California farmworkers.
His way of calling attention to the impoverished conditions in which hundreds of thousands of farmworkers, the vast majority of them migrants from Mexico and Central America, live is through his campaign “Por ti campesino, yo camino” (“For you, farmworker, I walk”), which leads him through mountains, rivers and deserts. He walks in the rain as well as in the 115degree heat of the Central Valley.
On his last walk, for which he traveled a total of 530 miles and crossed 27 cities on his way from Los Angeles to Sacramento, he was looking to raise $100,000 to give to Cirugía Sin Fronteras, which at that time needed support to continue to help the working families hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The coronavirus was cruel to the poorest, to the marginalized, to those who had nothing,” Nieto tells me, recalling that 2020 march, which began Sept. 16 (Mexican Independence Day) and ended Oct. 16.
After 320 miles and 23 days on the road, I interviewed Nieto once again. I found him skinny, sunburned and thirsty.
“Of the $100,000 we wanted to raise, we only got $22,000,” he told me, in a voice between disgusted and disappointed.
“It’s like farmworkers and their families don’t exist, like nobody cares what happens to them,” he said, speaking out of both frustration and courageous determination as he rubbed his blistered feet.
It touched me to see him enter dusty towns surrounded by strawberry fields with a dozen followers at his side. He reminded me of the scene where Forrest Gump starts running across the country. But unlike Tom Hanks’ character, Nieto does have a cause, and a very specific one: to raise funds for Cirugía Sin Fronteras, whose mission is to help low-income people without health insurance obtain low-cost surgeries.
Based in Bakersfield, Cirugía Sin Fronteras says it has provided access to healthcare for more than 3,500 people, more than 900 food baskets to families in need, economic relief to 49 families through its COVID-19 emergency aid program, and linked more than 4,500 families with community resources and provided preventive health education and chronic disease management to more than 6,000 people.
Knowing and seeing Santiago on these journeys has had a profound impact on me, because he has always given me the impression that there is a supernatural force behind him.
“It’s simple solidarity,” he tells me as we chat on the side of a dusty road in Tulare County. As he rests, dozens of workers can be seen in the distance, hunched over a field dotted with strawberries.
“When I feel like I can’t take it anymore, I think of Don Abraham, a 73-year-old man, and I think that he should be playing with his grandchildren instead of continuing to pick strawberries at 107-degree temperatures. When I remember the image of him, I feel bad, because I realize that the subject is like the elephant that is in the room and that nobody wants to turn around to see.”
Nieto speaks slowly as he tries on a new pair of sneakers. “Everyone prefers to turn the other way, even though they have sacrificed their families to put food on our tables. I think we have to put food and health in their homes.”
He pauses as he watches a plane drop insecticide from a very low altitude.
“Do you think that doesn’t make them sick?” he asks, staring at the aircraft passing overhead.
‘No one turns to look at their workers’
According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, one-third of the vegetables and twothirds of the fruits and nuts produced in the U.S. are grown in the Golden State. To get an idea of the profits this sector generated in 2021, it is enough to say that counting only the top 10 agricultural products — among them, dairy, grapes, almonds, strawberries, pistachios, lettuce, tomatoes, nuts and rice — California farmers took in more than $32 billion. In total, the state’s farms and ranches generated $51.1 billion in 2021.
But this economic prosperity does not reach the more than 420,000 workers who make this gigantic production possible. Farmworkers in California earn an average of $26,000 per year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Center for Farmworker Families estimates that 75% of California farmworkers are undocumented. Approximately one-third of the agricultural labor force are women, ranging in age from the teens to the 60s. Farmworkers are often subjected to sexual insults, groping, threats, beatings and even rape in the fields. In California, 80% say they have experienced sexual harassment.
“Yes, California is a rich state, but no one turns to look at their workers,” Nieto says as he prepares to resume his march.
So far, Nieto has made five walks through the state and is preparing a sixth, which will start from the Mexican Consulate on Sept. 15 and will try to reach Bakersfield seven days later. On that occasion, he’ll be seeking to raise not money but awareness about the poverty in which hundreds of thousands of farmworkers live in the richest state in the United States.
‘I knew in my heart that this was what I had to do’
Originally from Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Nieto began his professional career at KAMA, El Paso’s first Spanish-language radio station.
“That’s when I learned that to keep radio listeners, you have to do a circus and theater,” says Nieto, recalling the events he held to entertain audiences while helping the neediest.
“I would do radio marathons to get orthopedic shoes for children with mobility problems, broadcast day and night on the roof of 7-Eleven stores to raise funds for numerous causes. On another occasion, when we needed to give away a van to a nursing home, we put a vehicle on a crane that lowered a few inches each time someone donated something.”
But all this was done for the wrong reasons, admits Nieto, who is the son of a well-known Mexican politician. “I wanted fame, I wanted popularity, I wanted to feed my ego.”
Back in Los Angeles, where he was coordinator of the “Don Cheto al Aire” radio network, Nieto was approached by the Cirugía Sin Fronteras Foundation, asking that Don Cheto, one of the most popular characters on Spanish-language radio, make a public service announcement to raise awareness of Cirugía.
Nieto managed to get not only Don Cheto but celebrities such as Rosie Rivera, Larry Hernández, Ana Bárbara, Omar Chaparro and Juan Rivera to record videos and public service announcements. But that did not fulfill his aspirations to do something more.
“One night I was sitting watching the movie ‘The Way,’ about the famous Camino de Santiago, and I felt that this was my call, that I had to do something like that … so I ran downstairs and told my wife what I was thinking, and she said, ‘You’re crazy.’ ”
But the idea stuck in his head. “I knew in my heart that this was what I had to do, but not because of fame, popularity or ratings, but because that was my calling,” says Nieto, who confesses that he is moved not by religious sentiments but by the feeling that among the faces of the men and women he sees working could be those of your mother, your sister, your aunts, your grandmothers or your brothers.
“They are the faces of our people, and I cannot ignore that.”