Conversations Across Our America: Talking About Immigration and the Latinoization of the United States

Juan Marinez

Juan Marinez works with the Michigan State University Extension Service and served as a federal liaison to Washington, D.C. From 1999 to 2002 he received an IPA1 assignment to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and was invited to serve as Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman’s national program coordinator on farmworkers. In this capacity he facilitated the acquisition of $20 million to assist farmworkers who had been negatively affected by natural disasters. His expertise is on Hispanic farm owners and the relationship between nonHispanic farm owners and Hispanic farmworkers. We met at his university office. juan: There’s an interesting phenomenon in Michigan where Latino immigrants are becoming small farm owners. The kids start school, and all of a sudden it hits them that they’re there permanently. They’re great savers —wait to accumulate between $40,000 and $80,000, and that’s good enough to get them a down payment on a farm in Southwest Michigan. They could then buy a 40-, 20-, or 10-acre family farm. They also would stay with family members and go back and work in Chicago until they established themselves by getting a local job and then they would farm part-time. As they make these moves in farm ownership, they bring others along with them to do the same. louis: So the notion of the land is still very important to them? juan: Oh, yeah, very important. Most of them have come from rural Mexico so they know what they’re getting into. louis: What is your position in the College of Agriculture? juan: I’m on the extension side. I was probably one of the top administrajuan marinez 47 the crucible of change and adaptation tors for ten or fifteen years in the nation as a Hispanic, and now there’s a few more. I’m starting my thirty-fifth year. I spent three years in Washington as an IPA on loan from Michigan State to the secretary of agriculture. I was the first national farmworker coordinator for USDA, the first one to include farmworkers in disaster assistance. I was able to get $20 million through the agriculture secretary to include farmworkers in disaster relief, so when there’s a frost or there’s, let’s say, bird infestation or drought, hurricanes . They never used to include farmworkers. That comes from the ag secretary, and you make grant money to the states to assist farmworkers and [those] who are negatively affected by natural disasters. I had to fight on policy with the National Farm Bureau for this money as they were not supportive at first until we had an economic discussion on the lack of farm labor for production agriculture if farm labor could not be assisted when natural disasters occur across our land. I said, “Look, if workers don’t get any kind of assistance, then next year this workforce will not show up and farmers are going to be in trouble.” Very little attention gets paid to rural regions outside of farmworkers. There’s also little to no talk about Latinos who now reside as permanent rural populations. The rural economy wouldn’t survive if it wasn’t for us who do the heavy work in rural Juan Marinez in his office at Michigan State University, East Lansing. Photo by Louis Mendoza. 48 conversations across our america America. But we are so much a part of the rural labor force. For example, in dairy parlors Mexican milkers now make up to 60 percent of the labor force—enough employees that today you have a magazine in Spanish for employees. louis: Do people think of them as a transient community that doesn’t need to be addressed? juan: In some ways, yes. For example, my dad’s generation contributed to that image. So, many times, you don’t take actions because your head’s someplace else. We had a speaker here once whose entire talk was, “You know, folks, it’s nice that you want to go back to Texas, but you know what? You got to stop thinking that you’re going to go back. You’ve got to start thinking that you are a Michiganian. You need to be thinking of what impact you can make here. Vote in Michigan.” I thought he made a lot of sense. His point was that we can’t be thinking that we...