Chasing the Harvest: Migrant Workers in California Agriculture
Lives from an invisible community—the migrant farmworkers of the United States

The Grapes of Wrath brought national attention to the condition of California’s migrant farmworkers in the 1930s. Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers’ grape and lettuce boycotts captured the imagination of the United States in the 1960s and ’70s. Yet today, the stories of the more than 800,000 men, women, and children working in California’s fields—one third of the nation’s agricultural work force—are rarely heard, despite the persistence of wage theft, dangerous working conditions, and uncertain futures. This book of oral histories makes the reality of farm work visible in accounts of hardship, bravery, solidarity, and creativity in California’s fields, as real people struggle to win new opportunities for future generations.

Among the narrators:

Maricruz, a single mother fired from a packing plant after filing a sexual assault complaint against her supervisor.

Roberto, a vineyard laborer in the scorching Coachella Valley who became an advocate for more humane working conditions after his teenage son almost died of heatstroke.

Oscar, an elementary school teacher in Salinas who wants to free his students from a life in the fields, the fate that once awaited him as a child.
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Chasing the Harvest: Migrant Workers in California Agriculture
Lives from an invisible community—the migrant farmworkers of the United States

The Grapes of Wrath brought national attention to the condition of California’s migrant farmworkers in the 1930s. Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers’ grape and lettuce boycotts captured the imagination of the United States in the 1960s and ’70s. Yet today, the stories of the more than 800,000 men, women, and children working in California’s fields—one third of the nation’s agricultural work force—are rarely heard, despite the persistence of wage theft, dangerous working conditions, and uncertain futures. This book of oral histories makes the reality of farm work visible in accounts of hardship, bravery, solidarity, and creativity in California’s fields, as real people struggle to win new opportunities for future generations.

Among the narrators:

Maricruz, a single mother fired from a packing plant after filing a sexual assault complaint against her supervisor.

Roberto, a vineyard laborer in the scorching Coachella Valley who became an advocate for more humane working conditions after his teenage son almost died of heatstroke.

Oscar, an elementary school teacher in Salinas who wants to free his students from a life in the fields, the fate that once awaited him as a child.
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Chasing the Harvest: Migrant Workers in California Agriculture

Chasing the Harvest: Migrant Workers in California Agriculture

by Gabriel Thompson (Editor)
Chasing the Harvest: Migrant Workers in California Agriculture

Chasing the Harvest: Migrant Workers in California Agriculture

by Gabriel Thompson (Editor)

Paperback

$24.95 
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Overview

Lives from an invisible community—the migrant farmworkers of the United States

The Grapes of Wrath brought national attention to the condition of California’s migrant farmworkers in the 1930s. Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers’ grape and lettuce boycotts captured the imagination of the United States in the 1960s and ’70s. Yet today, the stories of the more than 800,000 men, women, and children working in California’s fields—one third of the nation’s agricultural work force—are rarely heard, despite the persistence of wage theft, dangerous working conditions, and uncertain futures. This book of oral histories makes the reality of farm work visible in accounts of hardship, bravery, solidarity, and creativity in California’s fields, as real people struggle to win new opportunities for future generations.

Among the narrators:

Maricruz, a single mother fired from a packing plant after filing a sexual assault complaint against her supervisor.

Roberto, a vineyard laborer in the scorching Coachella Valley who became an advocate for more humane working conditions after his teenage son almost died of heatstroke.

Oscar, an elementary school teacher in Salinas who wants to free his students from a life in the fields, the fate that once awaited him as a child.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781786632210
Publisher: Verso Books
Publication date: 05/16/2017
Series: Voice of Witness
Pages: 320
Product dimensions: 5.40(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Gabriel Thompson is an independent journalist who has written for the New York Times, Harper’s, New York, Slate, Mother Jones, Virginia Quarterly Review, and the Nation. His articles about labor and immigration have won a number of prizes, including the Studs Terkel Media Award and the Sidney Award. His most recent book is America’s Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century.

Table of Contents

Introduction, "Look at my bands" by Gabriel Thompson 11

Executive Editor's Note Mimi Lok 23

Map 25

Produce truck driver Maricruz Ladino 27

Elementary school teacher Oscar Ramos 49

Farmworker-various crops Roberto Valdez 67

Former sheepherder Heraclio Astete 85

Retired farmworker and labor leader Rosario Pelayo 101

Indigenous program community worker Fausto Sanchez 115

Irrigator and pesticide applicator Jose Saldivar 133

Farmworkers-table grapes Maria Pedro Guadalupe Ayala 143

High school student, part-time farmworker Ismael Moreno 163

Farmworker-wine grapes Silvia Correra 177

Grower Harold McClarty 195

Labor leader Maria Elena Durazo 211

Mayordomo Rafael Gonzalez Meraz 227

Grower Jim Cochran 241

Head Start manager Beatriz Machiche 259

Appendices

I Timeline 269

II Glossary 282

III California Farmworker Legal Protections 289

IV California Farmworker Organizations 304

V "Cultivating Fear" by Human Rights Watch 310

Acknowledgments 319

Editor Biography 320

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