The weekly newsletter of the México Solidarity Project

October 21, 2020/ This week's issue/ Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

Strawberry Fields Forever

Ever notice that the strawberries in the produce aisle always seem to carry the Driscoll’s brand? Mexican hands, you can be sure, picked those berries. Some 95 percent of farmworkers in the US come from México. 

These absolutely “essential” workers pick our fruits and veggies, but like other Black and Brown folks who provide what we need most, they themselves haven’t been provided adequate protection from Covid-19. They work for a pittance, in wretched camps, sometimes without even clean water. They can be fired for speaking up for basic needs and rights — and not just fired. They can be deported.

But these workers refuse to be victims.  Like White workers who organized our first unions in the face of murderous company goons and African Americans who stood up to racist terror, they are organizing to be treated with as much concern as Driscoll’s has for its strawberries.

As David Bacon puts it in our interview this week: “Displaced people are not blank slates.” They have skills, organizing know-how, and political experience. They’re not just a pair of hands, which is all the agri-bosses see. They have names, loved ones, ideas, dignity. Next time you pick a strawberry out of the box, imagine the other fingers that picked that same strawberry from the field. Such a small degree of separation! Their lives are our lives, sus vidas son nuestras vidas.

Who are these Mexicans who travel so far to earn so little to feed so many in the US?

David Bacon: Many of them were farmers themselves. Perhaps a quarter of the farm workers on the West Coast today come from Oaxaca. When NAFTA was put in place in 1994, cheap corn dumped in Mexico by US corporations like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland made it impossible for Mexican farmers to make a living growing corn, forcing them off their land. But displaced people are not blank slates. These indigenous farmers come with ancient knowledge and skills that allowed them to grow food without depleting the soil or lacing it with poison. It’s ironic that farming methods that produced domesticated corn originated in Oaxaca thousands of years ago, and now U.S.-grown corn forces Oaxacan cultivators to abandon what sustained their people.

The Bracero Program begun in 1942 imported Mexican men to pick crops when World War II created labor shortages in the US. When we hear “farm worker,” we usually imagine a man. But today women are picking alongside men. What sorts of situations do these women face?

DB: Like the men, women work all day in the fields. But back at the camp, they still can’t rest. Drinking Red Bull helps get them through the second shift of cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the kids. Nevertheless, they have stepped up to leadership roles in indigenous community organizations and in farm worker struggles, but it’s difficult. I was at a labor meeting where Rosalinda Guillen, a farm worker leader, spoke directly about the belittling and sometimes abusive treatment women get from men, including within the labor movement. Some men cheered her, but many just looked at their feet. The men are waging one battle, while the women are fighting on two fronts.

The NAFTA 2.0 trade agreement that just went into effect allegedly strengthens protection for workers. Will that help farm workers and other workers in the US?

DB: The new NAFTA does nothing for workers in the US. The labor side agreement in the old NAFTA was a charade, and the labor protections in the new NAFTA were designed more to just get it passed than to actually benefit workers. Both NAFTAs have the same purpose: to facilitate the movement of capital and production by large corporations. The first NAFTA displaced millions of Mexicans, forcing many to migrate. US workers were displaced as well, as production was relocated to Mexico and other countries. Industrial communities were emptied out, much like rural communities in México. Displaced people in the US became migrants within their own country. NAFTA 2.0 will continue this trend. At the same time, the new agreement has no mechanism whatsoever for enforcing the labor rights of farm workers here, who were written out of US labor law in the 1930s.

Against all odds, farm workers in the US have still been organizing — and winning important concessions. How is this possible?

DB: Knowledge and experience in fighting for rights over 500 years is one of the things the workers bring with them. In indigenous communities, collective decision making and action are part of people's culture: “An injury to one is an injury to all” is part of their DNA. They stage small-scale walk-outs when one of them is refused medical care or gets fired for speaking up. They also draw from the rich history of U.S. farm worker organizing, from the strikes of the braceros and the radical unions of the 1930s to the grape boycott of the 1960s. One example: bringing religious and community allies in the cities to stand with them. Mexican students on the other side of the border lent support as well.

In pushing for the labor agreement in the new NAFTA, the AFL-CIO pushed for language for labor law reform in Mexico that would facilitate union organizing. Is this the kind of solidarity we need?

DB: It is important for US unions to advocate for the rights of Mexican workers and unions, and in past decades they worked together in solidarity when Mexican unions pushed for labor law reform. But the AFL-CIO did not stand together with Mexican unions as both faced NAFTA 2.0.

The AFL-CIO negotiated without its Mexican counterparts, then used the debate about Mexican labor law reform as a pretext for supporting the treaty and attacked the new Mexican administration for implementing reforms too slowly. US labor didn’t demand that the treaty require us to reform our own weak laws or even enforce what laws we have. Mexican labor laws on paper are often better than those in the US. Neither country pays attention to its labor laws.

Speaking with, not for, strategizing across borders to enforce the right to organize and fight for a decent life wherever we go for work — that’s what real solidarity looks like.

A march in Washington State demanding a union contract. Photo by David Bacon.

Tales from the Trenches

I’m an indigenous Zapotec from the village of Zoogocho, in the northern mountains of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. It was a town of 2,000 people that has dwindled to a population of 88, all of whom are in their 70s and 80s. It’s a ghost town. Most people have had to migrate to Oaxaca City, Mexico City, or Los Angeles…

My grandmother used to tell me, “Behind those mountains there are bad things — there are white people.” It wasn’t that she disliked white people specifically, but rather she was giving me a political message about opposing the colonization of our indigenous lands and customs…

(My organization, the Frente) wants people to know that we’re social and political actors. Indigenous people are thinkers, we’re intellectuals, and we participate in decisions that affect our lives. We aren’t just here to pick your strawberries…

(But men migrate with their) machismo — we don’t leave that behind at the border… That means that even in our social and political organizations, we women face discrimination. Women have often not been allowed a voice or participation in decisions that affect us in the community. Women are often obligated to pay hometown association dues without having a say in how the funds are used. In the U.S., this caused a revolution! It was called “Taxation without Representation”....

When I die, I want to be buried in Zoogocho where my belly button [umbilical cord] is buried. That’s very important to me that that tradition be honored. For me, all of the things I do to claim who I am and where I come from, like wearing traditional clothing and speaking Zapoteco, are acts of resistance, acts of love.

Recent news reports and commentaries, from progressive and mainstream media,
on life and struggles on both sides of the US-México border

David Raby, México’s Mayan Train: myths and realities, Public Reading Rooms. Can anyone remotely progressive, asks this progressive analyst, defend the controversial Mayan Train project? This AMLO project, he concludes, “reflects a creative vision using technology to benefit the entire nation.”

Rodrigo Aguilera, How México’s far right is slowly awakening, London School of Economics. México lacks any modern historical antecedent to far-right populism. But the rise of “El Bronco” Rodríguez, the current Nuevo León governor, threatens to take México down the Bolsonaro path.

Associated Press, México diverted money from regional development fund to contain migration, Mexico News Daily. The Mexican government has diverted regional development funds to contain migration, a move that the Washington Office on Latin America says reflects how the government “has shifted its migration priorities in response to the demands of the Trump administration.”

Kylie Madry, Covid exposes México City’s water access gap between rich and poor, Climate Home News. Activists with Agua para Tod@s, Agua para la Vida won constitutional recognition of water as a human right eight years ago. Now they're battling to realize that right’s promise.

Simon Romero, Why New Mexico’s 1680 Pueblo Revolt Is Echoing in 2020 Protests, New York Times. Indigenous groups in the Southwest are imbuing their activism with commemorations of the 340-year-old Pueblo Revolt, one of Spain’s bloodiest defeats in colonial times.

Carin Zissis, U.S. 2020: Joe Biden and Donald Trump on México Relations, Council of the Americas. A rundown on everything from trade to the smuggling of US firearms into México.

Drazen Jorgic and Diego Oré, The Godfather: México's ex-defense chief helped ship tons of cocaine and heroin, Reuters. México’s defense minister from 2012 to 2018 used his power to protect a cartel faction, directing operations against rival gangs and even helping ship drugs, US prosecutors charge.

Jastinder Khera with Sofia Miselem, México sets sight on Vienna’s Aztec crowning glory, AFP. México's Morena government is demanding that the Austrian government return, in time for viewing during the 200th anniversary of Mexican independence in 2021, the only still existing Aztec headdress.

Elecciones en EU, un parteaguas en la relación con México: Bárcena, La Jornada. How interrelated have the economies of the US and México become? Trade between México and Michigan alone now equals trade between the US and Brazil.

The Mexico Solidarity Project brings together activists from various socialist and left organizations and individuals committed to worker and global justice who see the 2018 election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president of México as a watershed moment. AMLO and his progressive Morena party aim to end generations of corruption, impoverishment, and subservience to US interests. Our Project supports not just Morena, but all Mexicans struggling for basic rights, and opposes US efforts to undermine organizing and México’s national sovereignty. 

Editorial committee: Meizhu Lui, Bruce Hobson, Bill Gallegos, Sam Pizzigati. We welcome your suggestions and feedback. Interested in getting involved? Drop us an email!

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