Pics: Strawberry Workers in Santa Maria, Calif.

[IndianaGreen]

Pics: Strawberry Workers in Santa Maria, Calif.

By David Bacon

SANTA MARIA, CA - 16FEBRUARY09 – Guillermina Arzola, a Mixtec immigrant from San Sebastian del Monte in Oaxaca, works in a crew of indigenous Mixtec and Zapotec farm workers from Oaxaca and Guerrero picking strawberries. The crew foreman is Eugenio Cardenas of the Central Coast company, and the berries will be marketed by Green Giant. It is the beginning of the strawberry season in Santa Maria. Workers stand in line to bring the berries they've picked to the checker. He inspects them and then punches a ticket that keeps track of the number of boxes each worker has picked. Three Zapotec farmworkers from Santa Maria Sola in Oaxaca walk out of the field, after having asked if there was any work.

In Santa Maria many Mixtec and Zapotec families live in an apartment complex, and children play in the yard in front. Most are new migrants with very low lncome, and haven't yet found much work. In the apartment of Samuel Ramirez, his wife Juana Lopez, and their children Adela and Maria there is little furniture besides mattresses, a table and a couple of chairs, and a TV. Leobarda Hernandez is the oldest, most respected woman in the Hernandez family next door.





More photos:

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/8193/

[babylonsister]

1. Here's a story..."Reverse Migration Rocks Mexico"

Lots of people are leaving.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5155516&mesg_id=5155516

Reverse Migration Rocks Mexico
By Malcolm Beith

Page 1 of 1
Posted February 2009

With the U.S. economy contracting rapidly, Mexican migrants are heading back south. But they're finding the homecoming isn't quite what they imagined.


Every Saturday for nearly four years, Elena Trujillo has gone to the local department store in Morelia, Michoacán, to pick up money wired home by her 34-year-old son, Ángel. This 59-year-old mother of three is one of the between 16 and 35 million Mexicans who depend on remittances from relatives in the United States to boost their incomes. But in late September -- for Trujillo and for countless others -- the wire transfers stopped coming. Confused at first, Trujillo was reassured by Ángel on the phone: Everything is OK; I have a surprise for you. The next week, Trujillo received another transfer, this one much larger than normal. She was ecstatic. Ángel's construction work must finally be paying dividends, she thought. Then, just a few days later, Ángel came back to Michoacán. "I couldn't believe it. He had given up and come home," Trujillo said. "He had given up on the American Dream."

Ángel Trujillo is just one of as many as 3 million Mexicans who some experts and officials predict will return home from the United States in the coming months. The economic crisis in the United States is already hitting migrant workers, many of whom work in tanking industries such as construction and manufacturing. Unemployment among Mexican immigrants was 9.7 percent in January, up from 4.5 percent in March of last year, and higher than the 7.6 percent for the United States overall, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Not surprisingly, remittances from the United States are also falling for the first time in the 13 years that officials have kept figures on record. In 2008, transfers dropped $1 billion compared with year before, and economists say that the effects of the recession are only beginning to be felt.

more...

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4731

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Why are the pickers so bundled up?

Are the berries that toxic?

Years ago picking strawberries was what 12 year olds and up did during summer for school clothes..
we picked in normal clothes...jeans, straw hat, sneakers, no gloves.

What am I missing about how these guys are dressed?

[Mojorabbit]

3. It is weird

I pick my own over in Plant city every year. It must be stifling in those clothes.

[Prometheus Bound]

4. That's pretty scary.

[Joanne98]

5. I used to pick strawberries. Three dollars a flat. It was good for dinner and gas.