Immigration/Labor Rights

Ceclia Muñoz on farmworkers, xenophobia and hope

Last Updated (Thursday, 13 March 2008 21:22) Written by Cecilia Muñoz Thursday, 13 March 2008 18:10

Editor's Note: The following is a guest post by Cecilia Muñoz, Senior Vice President for Policy, National Council of La Raza, a national Hispanic civil rights organization, written especially for Farmworker Justice's new blog, Harvesting Justice!

I have always been impressed at how many of the leaders of the Latino civil rights field and the immigrant rights field, are people who come out of the farmworker labor movement or were inspired by it.

Many of the most important Latinos in the American labor movement, like Eliseo Medina, Executive Vice President of SEIU, Maria Elena Durazo, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the Los Angeles Federation of Labor, and of course Arturo Rodriguez, President of the United Farm Workers, will tell you that they were formed by their experiences in the farmworker movement. Others, like Irasema Garza, former head of the Women’s Division of the Department of Labor, and Maria Echaveste, former Deputy Chief of Staff of the Clinton White House, were shaped by their own or their families’ experiences in the fields. Their commitment to justice has clear ties to the experience of the fields and of the movement that dedicates itself to improving conditions for the segment of the workforce, which remains perhaps the most vulnerable and exploited in the United States.

While some of my colleagues at the National Council of La Raza were shaped by the same set of experiences, most of us were not. Our staff reflects the broad diversity of the U.S. Latino community across the country, including young leaders from cities like New York, Chicago and Houston, who have little or no experience of the farmworker movement. At the same time, we take great inspiration from our colleagues who come out of the farmworker movement. In a very profound way, farmworkers and the issues they face hold a place at the center of the soul of the larger Latino civil rights movement. For all the economic and social progress that we have made and hope to make as Latinos, at some level we cannot advance as a community unless we make progress on this central issue.

Farmworkers, whose immigration status ranges from native-born U.S. citizens to undocumented workers, are overwhelmingly Latino. They work in one of the three most hazardous industries in the nation, under a discriminatory set of labor laws which affords them fewer of the protections which other American workers take for granted. While the rest of us are accustomed to the basic protections of things like seat belt laws and safety standards for the vehicles we drive in, farmworkers often travel in vehicles lacking seats, let alone seat belts. They are exposed to toxic pesticides on the job, as well as exposure to extreme heat and cold. Every year we receive news of tragedies in the fields, like death by heat exhaustion, vehicle accidents that were entirely preventable, or the poisoning of tens of thousands of workers who are exposed to dangerous chemicals.

This is my 20th year at NCLR, and in that time, there has been alarmingly little progress for farmworkers using basic indicators like wages or health status. In the immigration arena that I work in, we have been engaged for years in a battle to keep from losing ground for farmworkers, as the agricultural industry agitates for changes in the law which would weaken labor protections and allow for greater access to temporary workers without some of the restrictions that current law provides. We have grown accustomed to the call that comes with every natural disaster, like a freeze in the Florida citrus crops or extreme weather or the wildfires in California, for the community to rally around the farmworkers who are victims of these crises but who are regularly forgotten by the agencies providing relief. We can anticipate exactly what will happen to farmworkers after the next natural disaster because we know the story far too well.

The immigration debate which has been raging for the last several years offered some real hope for undocumented farmworkers, under the AgJOBS bill which was carefully negotiated by farmworker leaders and the representatives of the growers. The bill, which would legalize a significant number of the workers who toil in the fields, has suffered the same fate as the broader immigration debate; it has been stymied by the great wave of xenophobia which has washed over the Congress and poisons any attempt to enact reasonable policy.

But I see hope in the response of the larger Latino community to the ugliness that affects us all in the immigration debate. Around the country there are clear signs that Latinos are offended by the ugly rhetoric that they hear on the radio and see on television. They see political candidates attempting to score political points by exploiting tensions on the immigration issue, and they cannot reconcile that ugly picture of immigrants with the hardworking, honest people in our communities and families that are the subjects of the hostility. Around the country, record numbers of immigrants are naturalizing, and organizations are mobilizing to break new records in voter registration and turnout. There is real hope that, by participating, we can begin to turn around the ugly climate which has been so harmful to the hopes of immigrants and farmworkers.

But we need to infuse the hard work and hope that is stirring in Latino communities around the country with the commitment and drive that is so apparent in the work of the Latino leaders with farmworker roots. While Latinos show signs of knowing that, at some level we are all under attack when the immigration debate gets ugly, we have an opportunity to turn this moment of energy for civic participation into a moment of commitment to change for the most vulnerable Latinos, particularly farmworkers. As a community, we may be on the verge of demonstrating serious political power that can influence critical elections. I hope and believe that as a community we will use that power to be agents of change on the major issues of the day: health care, education, wages and working conditions. As we engage in these great struggles, we must remember the fundamentals, and the hard working men and women whose plight is at the heart of our civil rights movement. If we demonstrate, as I believe we can, real transformative power for this country, we must make sure that the farmworkers whose movement has formed so many of us, experience real change.