April 7, 2015
Farmworkers in Baja California Protest Labor Abuses
“It is time for us to stand up… There are people who think that because we come from pueblos, we are ignorant about our rights.”
— Ana López, San Quintín farmworker
On March 17, as many as 50,000 workers in the coastal valley of San Quintín—many of them indigenous migrants from southern Mexico—went on strike at the peak of the winter harvest, fueling a movement for farmworker justice that has unfolded on both sides of the border.
The protests emerged in one of Mexico’s most important export regions. Farms in the San Quintín Valley owned by or affiliated with U.S. transnational agribusinesses export millions of tons of produce to the United States each year. Laborers at these mega-farms decried the working conditions that they face—including wages as low as $8 a day, up to 16-hour days with no overtime, and rights violations including wage theft and sexual harassment—conditions they have called “slave-like”. Workers also demanded government-mandated benefits and healthcare.
The walkouts, which marked the first strike in Baja California in decades, were inspired and informed by farmworker movements in the United States. Many San Quintín pickers drew on their experiences as transnational migrants working in U.S. agricultural fields, “where many saw firsthand the slow but steady gains in worker conditions resulting from organized labor movements,” the Los Angeles Times reported. Meanwhile, in interviews, strike leaders described the organizing strategies they honed while participating in U.S. labor unions, such as the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the United Farm Workers (UFW).
In addition to the walkouts, farmworkers shut down 55 miles of the Trans-Peninsular Highway, which many growers use to transport produce from San Quintín north. Their protests were met with police brutality and unlawful arrests, prompting an investigation by Mexico’s National Commission for Human Rights.
On March 27, strike leaders met with an attorney representing local growers, who offered workers a 15% wage increase. Labor leaders, who seek a daily wage of 200 pesos (about $13), rejected the proposal.
By the end of March, most striking workers returned to the fields, and Baja California Governor Francisco Vega de Lamadrid claimed the labor dispute had been resolved. However, 19 farmworkers remained in detention—among them 9 minors—and several hundred workers joined a 10-bus caravan to mobilize support for farmworker justice across Baja California.
Ultimately, the growing visibility of the protests, which have attracted significant media attention in both Mexico and the United States, suggests the potential of cross-border solidarity efforts to advance workers’ rights. As a Los Angeles Times investigation into conditions at Mexican mega-farms revealed, migrant farmworkers on both sides of the border contend with strikingly similar abuses, from recruitment fraud to blacklisting and other forms of retaliation against whistleblowers. These shared experiences of exploitation have animated recent acts of bi-national solidarity, such as a new alliance with the UFW and mobilizations in California spearheaded by the Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales (Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations, FIOB).
On April 4, FIOB members and their allies gathered outside the offices of Driscoll’s in Oxnard, California. Driscoll’s sells strawberries in the United States picked by workers at BerryMex farms in San Quintín. With chants of “San Quintín, aguanta, Oaxacalifornia se levanta” ["Hold on, San Quintín, Oaxacalifornia is rising up"], U.S.-based migrant workers added their voices to the call for fair wages and working conditions in San Quintín.
Photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/breadfortheworld/7006123521/