The weekly newsletter of the México Solidarity Project

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Strawberries from the Field and from the Box

Have you noticed that the strawberries in the produce aisle — no matter where your grocery store is located — almost always carry the Driscoll’s label? If you can still get locally grown berries from family farms for a few weeks in the summer, you know that Driscoll’s berries are different. They’re available year-round, they’re bigger and perfectly formed, and don’t spoil as quickly. And another crucial difference: they don’t have the same intense sweet flavor as the ones grown to be eaten, rather than grown for ease of transport.

In today’s interview, Matthew Fischer-Daly explains why Driscoll’s dominates the strawberry market, and why those berries can be sold cheaply in places far from the fields. You won’t be surprised that the exploitation of farm workers subsidizes our berry habit, and that it is Mexican workers who are almost surely the ones performing the back-breaking labor of picking a fruit that grows close to the ground.

Many of these workers were farmers themselves, but working for agribusiness knocks the joy and the “dignity”— an important concept for Fischer-Daly - out of them. Their knowledge and skills are denied, and they are reduced to a replaceable widget in the factory farm system.

The next time you pick a strawberry out of the Driscoll’s box, imagine the other fingers that picked that same strawberry from the field. Through that berry, our fingers touch, through that berry, our lives are linked.

While agribusiness only cares about the workers’ fingers which are needed as a farm tool, for the rest of us who want to stand in solidarity, we must respect and appreciate the whole person. As Fischer-Daly says, solidarity is dignity, and dignity is solidarity.

In this issue we also welcome Renata Turrent, who provides a feminist perspective on current developments in México.

Investigating Driscoll’s Strawberries 

Strawberries at the grocery store are typically not from your local family farm. At the start of the 20th century, the “California” model of fresh fruit production emerged. Men in suits heading agribusinesses took control, and started running farms like “factories in the field,” with super-exploitation of workers to sustain profitability.

It was enabled by radical new economic policies. NAFTA regulations reduced tariffs and non-tariff barriers, established protections to ensure the profits of foreign investors, and expanded patent protections. Driscoll’s executives explicitly cited these policies as the government support they needed to expand to México, and that expansion propelled Driscoll’s into its current dominant position.

What other changes account for the availability of affordable berries to US consumers?

The massive expansion of strawberry production was part of a larger retail revolution. In the early 80s, the US government gutted anti-trust laws. One result is that Walmart alone accounted for a third of U.S. food sales by 2020. It used its monopoly power to pressure suppliers to depress labor costs and lower prices. This led to increased sales and a huge demand for uniform fruit year-around, and companies — like Driscoll’s — expanded as intermediary, coordinating companies.

Cheap labor enabled strawberry growers to meet growing demand. Neo-liberals in México and the US engineered a big surplus farm labor market. Around 4.9 million peasants were dispossessed of their land in the 1990’s, primarily in southern México’s indigenous communities. Around 2.9 million workers are employed in all of México’s agriculture, leaving 2 million more workers than available jobs.

No wonder many migrate to the US for work. The National Agricultural Workers Survey reports that 70% of all crop workers aren’t citizens, and 53% of those are Mexican. That doesn’t include temporary H2-A workers, of whom 93% are Mexican.

US labor and immigration policies created a highly exploitable agricultural labor force in the US. Farmworkers were excluded from the National Labor Relations Act in 1935. They have no protected collective bargaining rights. And what meager rights they have are not enforced. The Economic Policy Institute reports that only 1% of agricultural employers get inspected, although 70% of those inspections find violations.

Rosalinda Guillen, founder of Community2Community and an experienced farmworker organizer, was an important partner. Pro bono lawyers helped win wage theft cases and union rights under the state Little Norris-LaGuardia Act, bolstering workers’ confidence.

 It took three years before the employer recognized FUJ. FUJ ingeniously included a first-contract arbitration deadline in the election agreement that got the employer to the table. The new contract improved terms and conditions of work. Workers also created a cooperative farm, Tierra y Libertad. Over time, FUJ developed a problem-solving relationship with management. 

Tierra y Libertad, the workers’ cooperative, has its own important story. It signals how the workers are implementing their vision of a better food system. 

How about in México?

At the export agribusiness enclave in San Quintín, Baja California, workers were fed up with stagnant wages, rising living costs, and denial of benefits like pensions, healthcare, and paid vacations that are supposed to be guaranteed in the Constitution. In addition, they experienced rampant gender-based harassment and violence and corrupt of employer-protection unions.

The workers organized the largest strike in agribusiness in México to date, walking out during the 2015 strawberry harvest. Tens of thousands of workers struck. Hours into the strike, national police violently broke up the picket lines and arrested workers en masse. 

Even during negotiations, police with riot gear raided communities. The strikers lacked material support — most were dependent on fieldwork wages to live.

Why was the Sakuma Brothers strike more successful? What’s the secret sauce that produces long- term worker power? 

As FUJ built bargaining power through the strength of its expanding coalition, Sakuma Brothers was forced to enter into a dignity-based relationship. It had to recognize the workers’ capacity to co-govern the workplace, to co-create and implement new rules in their contract. For example, the union and management co-manage wage-setting by daily test picks of strawberries. The next day’s wage rate is based on actual conditions and a pre-negotiated range.

In San Quintín, workers faced many obstacles, and the process of dignity broke down during the strike. Several workers told me that women were marginalized, and that eroded solidarity. Splits grew within the Alliance during negotiations. Without a unified movement, workers didn’t stand a chance. Employers could easily replace workers, given a  labor surplus, and the need  to work to feed their families. Employers could count on the state to use force to suppress strikes. The workers couldn’t develop a defense against state violence or gain the financial support needed to sustain the strike. 

What must US activists do to stand in solidarity with Mexican workers?

Dignity is not the icing on the cake — it is the cake! We create power through solidarity and solidarity through dignity. It’s not helpful to tell others, in México or elsewhere, what to do. We achieve social change when we listen, learn, respect each other.

This means challenging the existence of borders. One compelling approach, articulated by the law scholar Jennifer Gordon, is transnational citizenship, a worker-to-worker system of protecting workers’ rights internationally. Organizing through dignity means organizing inclusively, breaking down nationalist, patriarchal, racist, and other hierarchies, and then compelling our governments to clearly establish and enforce the rights of workers. 

Bonded in solidarity, we can create the world we all deserve. 

Contrasting the Candidates in 2024 Election

The Mexican presidential election is still ten months away, but  the race has already started.  AMLO proposed rules for selecting the next Morena candidate in June and Morena’s National Council approved them unanimously. The lack of leadership in the opposition allowed AMLO to also set the tone for their own selection process.

 Currently the front runners on each side of the political spectrum are women.  Mexico will probably have the first woman president-elect in June 2024.

But former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum from Morena, the left-wing party, and  Xóchitl Gálvez from PAN, the right-wing party, present opposite views on most national issues, as outlined below.

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

Étienne von Bertrab, Mexico’s Tren Maya: Megaproject of Death—or Hope? The Nation. “For a majority of the long-ignored people in Mexico’s south, the train is a megaproject of hope,” writes México Solidarity Project member Étienne von Bertrab.

Manuel González Vargas, Los Libros de Texto de 1º y 2º tocan equidad, tipos de familia, comer bien Sin Embargo. Los elementos ultraderechistas y comprometidos del sector empresarial de México ven el espectro del comunismo en los nuevos libros de texto gratuitos del gobierno.

Owen Schalk, Justice for Mariano Abarca, Canadian Dimension. 204 of the 269 foreign-owned mining companies in Mexico are Canadian. Mariano Abarca’s case shows that Canada’s embassies will defend Canadian mining companies even when they are accused of the worst crimes.

Viri Ríos, Cómo se logró reducir la pobreza en México El País. La única forma verdaderamente sostenible de disminuir la pobreza es aumentar los ingresos y eso es, precisamente, lo que sucedió en este sexenio.

Maya Averbuch, Mexico’s AMLO Proposes Work Training Plan for Foreign Migrants, Bloomberg. Mexico needs qualified workers because “it has a lot of public investment and foreign investment, and there is a demand for workers,” says AMLO.

Gerardo Esquivel, Un México menos desigual Milenio. Los resultados de la encuesta de este año muestran un resultado inequívoco: México es hoy menos desigual que al inicio de esta administración.

Alejandra Garcia, Mexico Highlights Effectiveness of Cuba Soberana Vaccine in Children, Resumen Latinoamericano. Mexico became one of the first countries worldwide to authorize the emergency use of Abdala.

México confisca más de 70 000 armas, el 60 % procedentes de EEUU HispanTV.  Se estima que aproximadamente 200 000 armas ingresan ilegalmente a México cada año: un abrumador 60% de estas armas provienen directamente de Estados Unidos.

Adriana Barrera and Cassandra Garrison, Mexican official says US refuses to cooperate on GM corn studies, Reuters. "Their science is the Word of God. That is not science, that is ideology,"  Mexican Deputy Agriculture Minister Victor Suarez said.

Eva Cuervo, Guerra judicial en México contra la 4T, Rebelión. El Sistema Judicial en México hoy autoerigido como el máximo poder requiere de cambios profundos, porque el que opera actualmente, bajo los lineamientos neoliberales, son un obstáculo para el avance de la democracia y la justicia que tanto necesitan y anhelan los mexicanos.

The Mexico Solidarity Project brings together activists from various socialist and left organizations and individuals committed to worker and global justice. We 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, Courtney Childs, Victoria Hamlin, Agatha Hinman, Peter Shapiro. To give feedback or get involved yourself, please email us!

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