Roots of Change

When Diego* was two years old, he immigrated to the United States with his parents from Oaxaca, Mexico. When he was 12 years old, he began working in the fields of North Carolina picking blueberries at five dollars per bucket. Years later, Diego’s family and countless others remain part of an industry with a long history of exploiting disenfranchised workers.

19 percent of North Carolina’s annual income—about $74 billion—comes from the agricultural industry, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Yet farmworkers remain one of the most economically disadvantaged and legally vulnerable. According to a 2006 study, half of farmworker households in North Carolina could not afford enough food for their families. And on the job, workers are susceptible to falls, heat stress, dehydration and pesticide poisoning, yet are not covered by the same federal safety laws that protect workers in other industries.

“People don’t actually know what is going on,” said Diego, now a high school senior. “People don’t see it because they don’t live it—they just see the food [at stores] ready for them, ready to eat.”

Ronald Bacilio Castro and his family came to North Carolina 10 years ago, fleeing Guatemala’s bloody, 36-year-long civil war. The military executed two of Castro’s uncles for being associated with a rebel group they had not joined. Upon arriving in the state, Castro briefly became a poultry worker for Case Farms, and he looks back on both experiences of oppression as motivation to advocate for laborers’ rights.

Working for about a year at the processing plant in Morganton in western North Carolina, Castro worked on a production line removing cuts from whole chickens to be packaged for consumers. Case Farms processes 1.8 million birds per week, with the help of more than 2,500 dedicated “team members,” according to the company’s web site. On average, a poultry worker makes more than 20,000 cutting motions during a shift to gut, clip, de-bone and slice chickens for stores, restaurants and cafeterias across the country and abroad. This tough work often leaves workers riddled with nerve and muscle damage in their hands.

In the plant, Castro recalled, most of the workers were Hispanic and many were from his native Guatemala. Because so many employees are undocumented, Castro said the company had little regard for workers’ well-being. “You have to work like a machine,” Castro recalled in Spanish. “Many people get hurt because they’re trying to find ways to cut with the knives while the line is moving quickly. When this happens, the company simply sends them to the nursing office and gives them aspirin and a band-aid and sends them back to work. The company doesn’t care if the person is injured or not. All they care about is the production.”

Serious and often permanent injuries are not uncommon in this line of work. A study released by Duke researchers in 2007 found that 43 percent of laborers interviewed reported symptoms of musculoskeletal disorders. Some experience such debilitating pain that they can no longer pick up their children or perform simple tasks such as bathing.

When the pain does not go away, the company fires the workers, Castro said. “It is a company that doesn’t have a heart,” he said. “The company is growing every day with mostly immigrant workers who are cheap laborers and I know firsthand. I suffered through it and saw what was happening while I was there.”

One of these groups is a Duke organization, and many connected with the Duke community have taken it upon themselves to bring this invisible population into the public eye. Interns from the nonprofit organization, Student Action with Farmworkers—founded by Duke students—collected documentary photos and interviews from farmworkers, advocates and educators in order to provide the in-depth portrait of the people who harvest our food today. The documentary reveals the unsettling reality that little has changed since the original documentary on the subject, Harvest of Shame, was released in 1960.

Although officially unaffiliated with the University, SAF is located in the Center for Documentary Studies and has strong Duke roots. It was established by Robert Coles, a former Duke professor, and Bruce Payne, former director of the Hart Leadership Program. In the 1970s, they led a summer-long Migrant Project in which 12 Duke students investigated the conditions in North Carolina migrant camps, testified before OSHA and successfully lobbied for the creation of N.C. Farmworker Legal Services. These connections helped facilitate funding for further documentary projects, sent students to work with advocacy groups and inspired a service-learning course at Duke.

“These incredibly privileged Duke students in the ’70s made the decision to document the lives of farmworkers to see what their experiences were and to share their stories.... They didn’t ignore it, they shared what they saw and that helped SAF start,” said SAF Advocacy and Organizing Director Nadeen Bir.

Capitalizing on the momentum and inspiration from other activists, in 1992 a group of students mobilized farmworkers, their advocates and community members to incorporate SAF as a nonprofit. The organization celebrates its 20th anniversary this November. For many SAF board and staff members, these issues hit very close to home. Executive Director Melinda Wiggins, Divinity ’94, grew up in a rural farming area in the Mississippi Delta, and her grandparents and parents were sharecroppers. “In Mississippi, things are very different because it is now mostly crops that are harvested by machine, so I didn’t know that we still had so many folks working out in the fields and that most crops were still hand harvested,” Wiggins said. Because of agriculture’s importance to North Carolina’s economy, Wiggins said lawmakers and businesses are reluctant to change labor laws and farm regulations that could make business more expensive. Still, the cost of improving workers’ conditions is small, she added, and worth fighting for.

Part of the group’s effort is to help workers advocate for themselves. SAF’s Migrant Youth Director Raúl Granados Gámez was born and raised in Mexico where he and his family owned a small farm. He moved to California in 1997, where his mother packages carrots for Bolthouse Farms. Gámez, now living in North Carolina, used to spend summers in California helping his mom pick green tomatoes and apples. Although worker conditions in California are better than in North Carolina, his mother still experiences poor treatment. Gámez attributes his opportunities to the sacrifices his mother made.

“It is sad and infuriating... they want to keep them quiet by threatening them because most people come here, it’s not a secret, because they want a better life,” Gámez said. “If I hadn’t come to the United States, I probably wouldn’t have gotten a college degree. That’s a reality because it is expensive, and we didn’t have the means to do it.”

Gámez attended California State University, Long Beach, where he received degrees in Theatre Arts and Translation and Interpretations Studies. He incorporates these skills into his work with the Levante Leadership Institute, a program that utilizes theatre and arts to provide migrant and farmworker youth in rural North Carolina opportunities to build self-esteem, develop leadership skills and prepare for higher education.

“A lot of them just go to work and do what they’re told to do, but they don’t analyze, don’t stop to think that they have a voice,” said Gámez, who is in his third year overseeing the program. “By doing this youth group, we’re giving them a space where they can come and not be afraid to speak up.”

The groups compose plays based on their own journal writing and discussion of issues the students care about. Eventually, they perform these plays in a number of venues, including at Duke.

The group came to perform one of this year’s plays for a University Spanish class March 1. Based on one child’s experience, the play tells a story about a teacher who insisted to meet with a student’s mother in order for him to pass. Desperate, the student called his mother and begged her to come even though, as an undocumented immigrant, she did not have a driver’s license. On the way to the school, his mother is pulled over and ultimately deported. The student sits sullen in the classroom finally explaining to the teacher and the audience the constant fear he and his family endure as a result of their immigration status.

“We can communicate with each other without regret or awkwardness,” Diego said of the program. “We can pretty much do anything around each other because we feel like we’re family, and we have these strong bonds because you know other people feel the same way you do.”

After the performance, documented and undocumented students discussed their dreams of becoming doctors, veterinarians, engineers, artists or simply getting the right to go to college. Upon completion of the one-year program, students receive a small scholarship toward their higher education goals, and SAF continues to assist students on that journey.

“Seeing students that were part of the program and that are now in college is one of the biggest rewards,” Gámez said. “Also, getting students who are very quiet and very timid, who don’t feel comfortable speaking in front of people, and then seeing them perform or do a presentation in front of 100 people, it’s like ‘Wow.’”

Workers across the agricultural industry are put at risk by their environment.

Many of those affected are children—approximately 400,000 children across the United States work in the fields harvesting fruits and vegetables. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 includes exemptions that allow children as young as 12 years old to work unlimited hours in fields and orchards with the consent of their parents. “One student said to me, ‘I’m 12 years, I still want to play. I still want to read and do things that I want to do that I can’t because I have to go to work,’” Gámez said. “If at McDonalds, at 14 you can’t handle the hot oil because it is dangerous, but at 12 or 14-years-old you can drive a tractor, it doesn’t make any sense.”

Workers of all ages are subject to living conditions that lack privacy and sanitation. Picture a room with no air conditioning crammed full of 20 or more workers. Toilets and showers are not separated by stalls, if they are provided at all. Companies are not mandated to provide washing equipment, so laundry facilities for 30 people may consist of a single bucket and soap. The government did not require companies to provide mattresses until 2007. Many of the workers are men separated from their families for months at a time, forced to live in close quarters and squalid conditions.

While workers are often afraid to report conditions, North Carolina doesn’t have the resources to check every labor camp. Since the economic downturn, the North Carolina Department of Labor has only been able to keep seven inspectors for the entire state. They are working to provide information both for growers and workers to improve their conditions. Dolores Quesenberry, a spokeswoman for the department, emphasized a number of training workshops and informational materials that they provide. For the system to work, however, workers and advocates need to alert the agency to violations.

The fields also present a health hazard to workers. Fifteen-year-old Jorge*, a Levante Leadership Institute member from Clinton, N.C., has worked in the fields during the summer since he was 11. “One time, I stayed in the field for 10 hours trying to fill up a big bucket for $4.50 with little tomatoes. I don’t think it is fair.... A lot of adults have died in the field, and here are kids like me running around working as fast as they can to fill up buckets to help their families.”

During the workday, Jorge said he only got one break from the hot and muddy task to eat lunch, with no water or bathroom breaks. He remembered the “weird” smell and feel of pesticides on his skin after a long day of work. “It doesn’t look like that, but the plants have chemicals that harm your fingers and damage them,” he said. “When I got home, my fingers were all yellow, so I had to take a shower and scrub them really hard, and it still wouldn’t leave.”

But Jorge said he does not blame or resent anyone for the hard work he and his family do. Before his field work, Jorge said he, too, would go to the grocery store and just pass by the food without thinking about where it came from. “I would just pass by and say, ‘Oh, I want a strawberry pack and just put it in the cart,’” he said. “But now I know that people who pick them are out in the burning sun helping us get food.”

Many organizations are working to raise awareness about the health hazards of pesticide exposure. Abigail Lee Bissette, a senior at Warren Wilson College and 2011 SAF summer intern, worked with a nonprofit in Raleigh called Toxic Free North Carolina on such a campaign, specifically in a farmworker documentary project. Bissette saw conditions at different farmworker housing sites and vividly remembers an evening when she accompanied a migrant education worker to look for homes that might have children. They found a 21-year-old woman, pregnant with her fourth child, living “a stone’s throw away” from a tobacco field. “As we were talking to her, we asked if they told her when they spray the pesticides,” Bissette recalled. “She shook her head. I looked around and saw that two of her boys were playing and running around grabbing tobacco leaves and hitting each other with them.” Bissette was shaken. The leaves didn’t look like they had been recently sprayed, but you couldn’t know for sure. “You don’t really know how it’s affecting future generations,” she said. “This woman is pregnant and being exposed to pesticides and carcinogens. You don’t know what effect they’re having on children as well as farmworkers.”

Four Duke students that are a part of the Student Organizing School, another SAF program, are working to raise awareness about issues of child labor, pesticide exposure and poor work and housing conditions. Through the program, SAF trains, mentors and supports a small number of college students to take leadership roles in the farmworker movement. For example, the students hosted a Valentine’s Day event to write cards to North Carolina Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry telling her that the lack of adequate enforcement of labor or housing standards laws “is breaking their hearts.”

In conjunction with SAF, the students are planning a number of events for National Farmworker Awareness Week March 25-31.

“Coming into college, I came in with the false belief that my achievements, my work or my intelligence were the things that made me worthy of an education, but I think doing this work with farmworkers has showed me that it’s nothing I’ve done,” said junior Alison Khoo, a Duke student organizer. “It’s about how much privilege I’ve had. I’ve had time to study, time to focus because there were people picking my food or making my food or cleaning my house. I was taking these things for granted, and [I] see this as a chance to really give back and to try to right some of these injustices.”

It is important that Duke students continue to work toward issues that are important to them and the surrounding community, said Charlie Thompson, director of the undergraduate program at the Center for Documentary Studies and SAF board member. He is currently teaching a recurring course that produces documentaries about farmworkers. In addition to this, students this semester are gathering materials for an exhibit celebrating the 20th anniversary of SAF.

“People tend to say that Duke is not an activist school,” Thompson said. “Maybe that is true in some ways, but when Duke students get onto a cause they carry through with their commitment and like with SAF have made a huge impact.”

Durham and Duke are very conscious of their food choices with regard to the organic, local and sustainable movements. Bon Appétit Management Company, which operates many of Duke’s eateries, is working to expand from those initiatives to the concerns of farmworkers. Carolina Fojo, an East Coast fellow from the Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation, contributed to the comprehensive report released by the foundation examining the practices of the growers they buy from. The report has sparked further investigation because issues that seemed clear cut when put into context were more complex. Unlike local, organic or sustainable movements, farmworker welfare data is hard to quantify and verify.

Despite this, organizations like Bon Appétit and SAF, continue to believe that farmworker justice is a important and worthy cause.

“It is the myth of the small farm, [that] we can’t hurt our small farmers when the fact is that these are not small farms anymore, these are commercial farms,” Bir said. “We’re trying to bring to light that all people are human beings, and it is not nine numbers that tells the difference between who deserves to have human rights and who doesn’t.”

*Names have been changed to protect the identity of these individuals