The Human Cost of Food: Farmworkers' Lives, Labor, and Advocacy

Preface

Preface As a child I hated living the life of a farmworker . I was embarrassed by the fact that my family and I had to labor in the fields in order to make a living. I rarely let anyone know this fact about me. Those who did know were only my closest friends.When our family stopped working in the fields I felt relieved and promised myself to never mention this part of my life to anyone. As the years passed and I entered college on a CAMP (College Assistance Migrant Program ) scholarship, memories of my childhood came back to me. I felt I had to let others know what was going on in the fields and the conditions [under which] farmworkers work. In order to do this I wanted to see if things had changed since I was last in the fields. That is when I found out about Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF). SAF gave me the opportunity to go and experience the [conditions] of today’s farmworkers. Sadly [not much] has changed . . . New laws have been passed but [are] poorly enforced. [After] my internship at SAF I [became] president of the Mexican-Chicano Association [chapter] at Penn State. Our group [gave] various presentations on Mexican/Chicano culture and more importantly we . . . sponsor[ed] a Cesar Chavez presentation . . . about farmworker conditions. During my two summers xiv The Human Cost of Food after SAF I went on to [become] a teacher’s aide at our migrant summer school program. SAF breathed new life into me that I needed so much. letter from david cruz, 1996 saf intern The impetus for this book began more than a quarter-century ago. In the spring of 1975, twelve Duke University students participated in a course on social problems in the rural South, with a special concentration on farmworkers. A central objective of the course was to go beyond academic study of agricultural laborers and to engage directly in the lives of farmworkers through advocacy and outreach in the Southeast, particularly in eastern North Carolina and southern Florida. Their firsthand experiences with farmworkers inspired the students to learn more about the realities of agricultural work, so they extended their work into the summer. Through close work with established governmental agencies and community-based organizations, the students photographed and recorded documentary projects with farmworkers, conducted on-site health screenings and surveys with farmworkers about their needs, and participated in demonstrations and marches for better treatment for farmworkers. Gradually this work made a visible difference in farmworker lives, labor, and advocacy and a considerable difference in the lives of the participants themselves. In 1990, fifteen years after the first students began the project, their successors collaborated with the Center for Documentary Studies to document the living conditions of farmworker children. In 1992 Student Action with Farmworkers was officially incorporated as a nonprofit organization under the leadership of former intern Carolyn Corrie. SAF has since expanded to five full-time staff members, thirty interns per year, and national campus outreach. Since 1993, SAF’s internship program known as Into the Fields has placed nearly three hundred college students in more than fifty affiliate farmworker agencies in the Carolinas. Each summer, approximately thirty interns from across the country participate in the Into the Fields program, both to learn more about farmworkers and to work alongside farmworkers as they struggle to improve their conditions. One of the most exciting components of the Into the Fields program is SAF’s collaboration with College Assistance Migrant Programs (CAMP) to recruit xv Preface student interns from farmworker families. Approximately one-half of the current interns are former farmworkers or children of farmworkers. After completing internships with SAF, many students stay involved in farmworker advocacy. Former SAF interns carry their experience with them as they pursue careers as diverse as teaching, law, community organizing, primary health care, and ministry. For example, 1994 intern Juan Ramirez works for a nonprofit in California that teaches English as a Second Language and Citizenship classes to farmworkers, and 2000 intern Leo Peralez works at a legal aid organization in Texas. Eric Martin, who was an intern in the early nineties, recently wrote a novel called Luck about his summer internship experience. Over the past twenty-five years, SAF has continued its early efforts of community-based experiential education and activism with farmworkers and young people and has...