BLOCKADES SHUT DOWN MEXICAN HIGHWAYS
Farmworkers send a message to Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum
By David Bacon
The Nation - 2-21-26
SAN QUINTIN, BAJA CALIFORNIA, MEXICO - Farmworkers and other residents of the Zapata colonia in the San Quintin Valley blockade the Transpeninsular Highway to protest corruption in the new government of the San Quintin municipality.
SAN QUINTIN, BAJA CALIFORNIA (2/15/26) - In the dead of winter, Baja California's Transpeninsular Highway is the road strawberries take on their journey from the San Quintin Valley north to U.S. supermarkets. For a week this January, though, as waiting consumers froze in midwest cities, the huge semitrailers loaded with fruit ground to a halt, blockaded three hours south of the border by the people whose labor produces the harvest.
Every morning for over a week, hundreds of workers threw tires and traffic cones down on the highway's asphalt, and the trucks stopped. After sunset, huge crowds of men, women and children, dressed in the frayed clothing of field workers, milled around bonfires. The glowing red lights of the huge vehicles, lined up motionless into the distance, lit their blockade.
Walberto Solorio Meza, president of the Growers Council of Baja California, warned that highway closures put the whole strawberry crop in danger. Last year San Quintin Valley companies harvested over 100,000 tons of berries, worth more than a quarter of a billion dollars.
Finally, on February 2, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum came to the valley, in response to the conditions that sparked the blockades. There she announced the San Quintin Justice Plan, a commitment made at her inauguration over a year ago. Sheinbaum scolded leaders of her party for being more interested in taking selfies with her than attacking social problems like child labor and pesticide exposure. "San Quintín is an area with a lot of poverty [with] many struggles by farmworkers for their rights," she explained later. "I told them to go into the community, get close to the people."
Mexico plans to create a "labor certification" that exporters must have in order to send farm products to U.S. markets. Employers will have to ensure workers are enrolled in Mexico's Social Security system, and abide by labor standards. The San Quintin Justice Plan includes an Integral Service Center, education initiatives, a Justice Center administered by the Federal Secretary of Labor and Social Services, and support for workers in gaining legal land titles.
The blockades here, and others like them elsewhere in Mexico, show how widespread desperation and anger have become in many rural areas. They highlight a growing danger for the progressive national administration that took power, with the huge election majority for past President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador eight years ago, and the even greater majority for Sheinbaum year before last.
SAN QUINTIN, BAJA CALIFORNIA, MEXICO - A farmworker brought her two children to the highway blockade.
Mexico's six previous administrations established a neoliberal system in which corporations, especially foreign ones, were given great freedom to operate in return for investment. That freedom included a system of low wages and company-friendly unions, and a water crisis that has made life almost unbearable for many rural workers and farmers. In San Quintin that system is still largely unchanged. While the blockades have complex political causes, they feed off popular anger that has accumulated for years.
The San Quintin Valley lies three hours south of San Diego, where about 80,000 workers pick strawberries and tomatoes for U.S. markets during winter months. Most are originally Mixtec and Triqui migrants recruited from the indigenous towns of Oaxaca, Guerrero and other states of southern Mexico. They provided the labor growers needed when industrial agriculture started here in the late 1970s.
Catalina Juana Lopez Reyes arrived in 1976, and lived, she remembers, "in a shack we built of sticks. We slept on tree branches for a year, and my husband had to go hunt rabbits because there was only work for three months each year." A midwife helped deliver her daughters, and charged seventeen pesos when that was the wage for a day's work. Her coworkers began to invade unoccupied land to build housing, led by a radical farmworker organization started by the Mexican Communist Party. Today, as a result, many homes are built on lots where the land title is in dispute, a problem Sheinbaum promises to fix.
It is a desert valley, whose water resources were never enough to support industrial agriculture and a growing population of workers. Who got the water, therefore, was the clearest demonstration of who had political power. Pumping groundwater to irrigate rows of berries led the water table to fall, and salt from the ocean invaded the aquifer.
Marcos Lopez, a researcher at the University of California Davis' Labor and Community Center, explains that corporate growers built over 80 desalination plants for irrigation. Lopez says he doubts, however, that any plants serve Vicente Guerrero, the valley's largest town with 23,000 people, or San Quintin itself. Growers are basically selling or furnishing the towns water from their own facilities, he believes. More than 95 percent of the water in the valley goes for irrigation. The Reiter family that founded Driscoll's, the world's largest berry company, even built one small plant on the beach here, just to serve their home.
Luis and his daughter Joanne live in a settlement not far from the Reiters, where there are no water lines at all. They bought their lot for 1000 pesos a month, from a shady land developer in a rustic development on the outskirts of San Quintin. Some homes in town can get water from a main called "pipas", but it's so salty it's virtually useless. Luis and Joanne don't even have that, and instead spend 120 pesos four times a month for a truck to fill up the tank in front of their house. There's no electric line either, so the solar panels on their roof cost another 2000 pesos a month. Together it all absorbs half of Luis' wages, when he's working.
SAN QUINTIN, BAJA CALIFORNIA, MEXICO - Luis and Joanne stand in front of the garrafon, or tank, where they store the water they have to buy four times a month, for 120 pesos each time.
In the 1980s spontaneous strikes swept the valley, and one packinghouse was burned to the ground. In 2015 community activists transformed groups fighting for water access into a worker organization called the Alianza, and struck the growers. When the police sent armed vehicles, called "tiburones" or sharks, to shoot strikers in worker neighborhoods, the local police station was torched. Meanwhile, highway blockades became the principal means workers used to hold the growers' berries and tomatoes hostage. The political leaders of today's highway blockades "learned a lot from the 2015 movement," according to Jesus Estrada, a Mixtec labor and community activist who's worked on both sides of the border.
One of the most important products of the 2015 strike was the creation of the Sindicato Independiente y Democratico de Jornaleros Agricolas, or the National Independent Democratic Union of Farmworkers (SINDJA). It is as much a community union and worker advocate as it is an organization in the workplace, in part because the old system of company-friendly unions is still in place. Almost every San Quintin grower has a contrato patronal, or bosses' contract, with the old unions that were part of Mexico's political structure for decades.
The labor reforms of the last few years, which supposedly give workers the right to choose independent unions like SINDJA, ratify contracts, and elect leaders democratically, have yet to touch Mexican agriculture. "Here everything is controlled by the old unions and the ranchers," Estrada explains. "Even the water. If people really organize themselves, things can be changed. But it takes a lot of work."
"Many of us have suffered reprisals, dismissals for wanting to organize, and they put us on the blacklist," charges Jyreh García Ramírez, SINDJA's recording secretary. SINDJA, and its sister organization, MUDJI (Women United in Defense of Farmworkers and Indigenous People) therefore use worker complaints of labor violations to organize. The union accompanies workers to meet with their bosses or with government agencies, and shows up when workers take action, usually in short work stoppages.
At present, there is no office of the Federal Labor Secretary in San Quintin. With no monitoring, therefore, worker activists report that well over 100 growers, producing strawberries for Driscoll's affiliate Berrymex and other corporate exporters, hire workers on a day-to-day basis and are paid in cash.
One frequent problem is discrimination based on indigenous identity. Many workers can't read work contracts in Spanish, and only speak Mixtec, Triqui and other indigenous languages. "Companies take advantage of this, giving them contracts with illegal wages or without benefits," Garcia says. Last year the union fought over 50 wrongful dismissals. A further source of corruption is the company practice of inventing Social Security numbers for workers, deducting contributions but keeping them instead of paying them to the government. Workers wind up with multiple numbers, robbed of the benefits they paid for when they need them.
SAN QUINTIN, BAJA CALIFORNIA, MEXICO - Catalina Juana Lopez Reyes weeps as she remembers how hard the first years were when she arrived from Oaxaca to work in the San Quintin Valley.
For many workers, therefore, going to the U.S. with a temporary work visa is a more immediate solution than going on strike and risking their jobs. According to Estrada, "Two of the obstacles to organizing are the fear of being fired and the H-2A [work visa] program, with this dream of earning a lot instead of staying and changing things. Here it takes 8 hours to earn $13 or $15 and in the U.S. it takes one hour."
H-2A recruitment by labor contractors in the San Quintin Valley has mushroomed since 2015. Some recruiters funnel workers to growers north of the border. Other recruiters are growers themselves, who have operations in both Baja California and in the U.S. Berrymex, for instance, connected to the huge Driscoll's corporate complex, chooses workers in its own or contracted fields in Baja California, assesses and trains them for work in its operations in the north, and then gets them H-2A visas.
"The dream of so many workers is to go to the United States, because it is more income," Garcia says. "Here the companies use that hook a lot. They say, 'Stay with me for five years and I'll give you a visa so that you can go work there.' Many times workers have been at a company for ten years and they have never been given a visa. But they continue working with the promise of next year, and next year never comes. When we organize meetings the worker says, 'I can't go because the company will identify me and won't give me a visa.' So the companies use it so that the workers do not organize, do not join the union, do not speak out or say anything, do not demand rights."
Garcia started working with her mother in the tomato rows when she was 12. Today she and the children of the original migrants are adults, with their own families and expectations. They are pushing for change in the politics of San Quintin and Baja California, as the children of immigrants have done in Los Angeles and California.
The San Quintin Valley was formerly attached politically to the municipio (the equivalent of a U.S. county) of Ensenada, a larger city two hours north. In 2000 a Mixtec leader, Celerino Garcia, became the first indigenous candidate for statewide office, running in the Ensenada district. Then, in February of 2020, the growing demand for an indigenous political voice led to the creation of a separate San Quintin municipio.
"San Quintín is a municipio of migrants," Estrada explains, "from Oaxaca, Guerrero - from every state. They came as migrants, as workers, and then their children were born here. All the movements, all the blockades, are organized by migrants - people who've been outside the system. And because it is a municipio of migrants, working people have not had a political voice. Now, today, they are fighting against local corruption, but this movement is something more than that. They're looking for a political voice and have been wanting it for a long time."
SAN QUINTIN, BAJA CALIFORNIA, MEXICO - In front of his makeshift house, Abelina Ramirez (c) former president of the farmworkers union SINDJA, and Gonzala Ruano Bautista, teacher activist, talk to Rafael about joining the union.
Nevertheless, behind the blockades are political interests with multiple agendas. Some, especially the workers at the barricades, want living and working conditions to change. Others are political opponents of Morena, the political party of Sheinbaum and Lopez Obrador, which now governs almost every Mexican state.
On January 23 the Baja California state government announced it was hiring outside accountants to audit the administration of Miriam Cano, mayor of the new San Quintin municipio. She's been accused of corruption and diversion of funds for social services. Among her accusers is her opponent in the 2024 election, Gisela Tomez of the Partido del Trabajo (Labor Party). They demand Cano's resignation and that of 10 other municipal officials. Although Cano co-founded Morena in Baja Californiam and supported Sheinbaum in 2024, the president did not greet her during her visit to San Quintin.
Some workers in the highway blockades support the charges, cynical about progressive organizations and Morena itself. Widespread cynicism also impacts efforts to change the conditions protested by the people standing in front of the trucks, affecting the organizing work of SINDJA.
"Many times workers tell us a union is useless and does not solve anything," Garcia says. "They confuse us with the company unions and say we are on the side of the boss. So we demonstrate with facts and our commitment that we are not the same, that we are independent. We will always be on the side of the worker because we are workers ourselves. We know the violations because we live them."
Farmworkers in San Quintin will judge the government by the same yardstick - whether its plan makes changes on the ground, or is just empty words - whether Morena is really for them or for the growers. The San Quintin Justice Program starts in April, but similar reforms for agricutural labor will apply first to avocado growers in Michoacan, 1500 miles south of San Quintin, before it hits the tomatoes and berries of San Quintin.
Whether these reforms become a reality will depend on how the government makes its choice in priorities. Enforcing labor rights, raising family incomes, forcing the growers to subsidize water for residents, giving workers a decent life in San Quintin instead of leaving for the U.S. - these changes will have to be enacted and then enforced. They will face opposition by the corporate elite that has ruled Baja California for decades, forcing the government to choose who it will serve.
TOTALCO, VERACRUZ, MEXICO - A farmer in the Cuencas Libres Oriental Valley, where residents have protested environmental pollution by Granjas Carroll de Mexico, owned by Smithfield Foods.
This is not a problem unique to San Quintin. Two years ago highway blockades there highlighted a similar conflict in priorities - between satisfying the water needs of corporate investors and the welfare of farmers and rural communities. In the Cuencas Libres Oriental basin, in the states of Veracruz and Puebla, farmers have fought pitched battles since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement against industrial pig farms and strawberry and vegetable growers.
This large valley has no outlet to the ocean, so pollutants in its aquifer, particularly the animal waste from Smithfield Farms' huge network of pig-raising farms, is slowly poisoning the water. At the same time big corporate water users - from strawberry growers supplying Driscoll's to the broccoli farms of former President Vicente Fox to Smithfield's pig-raising subsidiary, Granjas Carroll - all get permission to pump water in huge quantities. At the same time small farmers are told that water scarcity requires denying them access.
"We have been six years with no harvests," charges Renato Romero, a member of the Movement in Defense of Water in the Libres-Oriental basin. "For three years we haven't even had water for planting. I'm 63, and my land belonged to my mother. I've lived my whole life here. But we have no way to farm anymore."
Like San Quintin, the valley's history of protests goes back decades. In 2024 one blockade in front of Granjas Carroll's feed processing mill was attacked by the Veracruz state police. When Don Guadalupe Serrano, an old man who'd led earlier protests, was put in handcuffs and shoved into a police car, farmers surrounded it and freed him. Then the police began beating and shooting the demonstrators, killing two brothers, Jorge and Alberto Cortina Vázquez.
Veracruz Governor Cuitláhuac García Jiménez announced that the special police unit that shot the farmers, the Fuerza Civil, would be dissolved. A nearby Granjas Carroll facility was partially and temporarily closed. But then last July Romero was arrested on Federal charges for occupying a site where a company was installing equipment for pumping water. An outcry by over 50 environmental and human rights organizations forced his release, but the charges have not been dropped.
Social conflicts in Mexico's countryside over water access, environmental degradation and labor rights are the product of continuing contradictions, with roots in the neoliberal policies of Morena's predecessors. And today the Mexican state is administered by people who fought those neoliberal policies in their youth. Both Baja California Norte and Veracruz are governed by Morena. As a student, Veracruz Governor García Jiménez belonged to the Mexican Socialist Party and was a follower of Heberto Castillo, a historic figure of the Mexican left.
"Morena's economic policies rest on the development of safety nets for poor people especially, with cash transfer programs, including pensions and education subsidies," explains Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, director of the Center for Mexican Studies at UCLA. At the same time, however, Lopez Obrador and Sheinbaum inherited an economy heavily dependent on foreign investment. "The money for those programs depends on healthy economic growth, and that in turn depends on investment and increased ties to the U.S., Mexico's number one trading partner. Now we see the contradictions."
So the government faces hard choices. Garcia and the union have their expectations, but don't want to simply depend on Morena making the right one in San Quintin. "I believe soon there will be a strike demanding improvements for everyone," she hopes, "not just on one ranch or for one person, but in general. If many workers join we can achieve collective agreements and change for everyone. For everyone."
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