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.