Sunday, April 27, 2014

Notes from SJSU Panel on "Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies"

The Department Of Justice Studies at SJSU Hosted The Ann Lucas In Law & Justice Featuring A Debate On The Book "Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farm Workers In The United States" By Seth M. Holmes. It took place on April 23rd and I was fortunate to be able to attend. Here are some notes!

Seth M. Holmes
  • Anthropologist
  • Author of "Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies"
  • PHD from Berkeley 
  • Director of Public Health @ Berkeley
  • Physician

On The Panel
  • Kitty Calavita (UC Irvine)
  • Maria Echaveste (Stanford, Berkeley)

How The Book Came To Be
  • From Seth's own curiosity & interest
  • wanted to know about relationship between U.S & Mexico
  • The way we get our food and where it comes from 
  • Indigenous people

The Experience (brief)
  • Seth worked picking berries and strawberries twice a week
  • other days interviewed nurses/doctors about campesino's health
  • lived w/ Triqui ppl (19 of them) in a small shack apartment
  • he lived in the closet
  • lives in oaxaca for a while
  • crossed the desert border and was detained and fined by border patrol
  • took 7 yrs to write the book
  • visits Triqui ppl almost every yr.

Tonaca Farm
  • Jap/American workers
  • Aglo American owners?
  • $7.16/hr in Washington ST.

3 Types Of Labor Camps
  1. 50 ppl 
  • no insolation
  • derogative terms like "perro"(dog), "Indio estupido" (stupid indian/indigenous), "burro" (donkey), and "Oaxaca"(from Oaxacan descent) are used by the owners to call or describe their employees.
  • no heating ??
      2. ??

      3. 250 ppl 
  • no insolation
  • pickers do not take breaks for fear that they might not make the weight of fruit they need to pick
  • the more fruit the more money

Racism
  • Mizteco ppl earn more money than Triqui ppl
  • Triqui ppl are categorized by others as the "most dumb indigenous"

Migrant Health
  • Clinics are usually unfunded 
  • most migrants do not have health insurance
  • by age 30, 40s and 50s the campesino is worn-out b/c of harsh labor 

Book recommendation
  • The Birth Of The Clinic
  • look up symbolic violence

Maria Echaveste:
  • Why is is that ppl believe that others are more well suited to pick strawberries? Why categorize people? 
  • Agriculture has always been an exploited industry

Recommended Documentary
  • "Harvest Of Shame"

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