Monday, July 24, 2023

COMUNIDADES DE RESISTENCIA EN LA FRONTERA

COMUNIDADES DE RESISTENCIA EN LA FRONTERA
Por David Bacon
Perspectivas Latinoamericanas, Marzo 2023
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0094582X221149440


David Bacon es un fotógrafo y escritor que ha documentado los movimientos sociales en México/EE.UU. frontera durante 30 años. Las fotografías que aquí se reproducen son seleccionadas del libro "Más que un muro/Más que un muro" publicado por el Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Tijuana, México, 2022. Para más información sobre el libro, escriba a dbacon@igc.org o haga clic aquí

 

Maclovio Rojas, ubicada en el extremo este de Tijuana, es el hogar de 1,300 personas. Es una comunidad en resistencia, formada en 1988 por personas que no pudieron encontrar otro lugar para vivir en la ciudad en rápida expansión. La tierra en la que se asentaron estaba desocupada y pertenecía al gobierno federal. De acuerdo con la antigua ley de reforma agraria, las personas tenían derecho a establecerse aquí y después solicitar al gobierno su propiedad formal. A lo largo de los caminos de terracería que se extienden como una cuadrícula desde la carretera, las casas de la gente están hechas con tarimas viejas, cartón corrugado del que se utiliza para empacar envíos, y otros desechos provenientes de las fábricas. La comunidad está asentada sobre un terreno bajo, seco y arenoso, rodeado por colinas deforestadas.

La tierra aquí pareciera no tener gran valor, pero del otro lado de la terracería, en la orilla de la ciudad se distingue la maquiladora de la empresa Hyundai, y apenas por encima de la colina, el Parque Industrial Florido. El TLCAN y la devaluación del peso provocaron un auge de la construcción en Tijuana, y en unas cuantas décadas este pequeño pueblo turístico de tan mala reputación se convirtió en asiento de cientos de maquiladoras.

"Así fue como surgió Tijuana", explicó Eduardo Badillo, secretario general del Comité Regional de Apoyo a Trabajadores Fronterizos, una organización comunitaria activa en los barrios de la ciudad. "El gobierno denomina a estos asentamientos como "invasiones", nosotros los llamamos "tomas". Como sea que quieran llamarles, la ley reconoció nuestro derecho a construir viviendas en esta tierra, porque de acuerdo con la Constitución, éste es nuestro país." (E. Badillo, comunicación personal, 01 de mayo de 1996).

Los derechos otorgados por la reforma agraria fueron socavados al reformarse la Constitución mexicana cuando comenzó la época del TLCAN,  pero para facilitar que las corporaciones como Hyundai adquirieran sus propias tierras y proteger sus títulos de propiedad. Después de construir sus casas, la familia Yorba, los propietarios originales de estas tierras antes de la Revolución, alegaban que les pertenecían. Los habitantes locales vieron este reclamo como un engaño para que Hyundai lograra obtener la posesión legal de las tierras. La familia acusó a la líder comunitaria Hortensia Hernández de haber tomado ilegalmente sus tierras, y fue arrestada en 1995. Los pobladores se negaron a abandonar sus casas y el conflicto creció. Después de cinco meses en prisión, la familia no pudo presentar los documentos que probaran su propiedad, y Hortensia fue finalmente liberada.

Cuando salió de prisión, Hortensia debía su libertad en gran parte al Comité Regional de Apoyo a Trabajadores Fronterizos, con sede en Tijuana, y al Comité de Apoyo para Trabajadores de Maquiladoras, con sede en San Diego. Ambos grupos ayudaron a organizar una marcha desde Tijuana a la capital del estado en Mexicali para exigir su liberación.

Maclovio Rojas se convirtió en una entre muchas comunidades similares a lo largo de la frontera, pues estas comunidades han surgido de las tomas de tierras realizadas por personas pobres, a menudo trabajadores de las maquiladoras, a quienes en la mayoría de los casos los gobiernos les han negado los títulos legales de propiedad, en su afán de proteger a los inversionistas. Las comunidades, al enfrentar los intentos por desalojar a la gente de sus casas y expulsarlos de sus tierras, se transforman rápidamente en comunidades de resistencia. Algunas han sido expulsadas, pero otras han resistido a pesar del encarcelamiento de sus líderes y los conflictos con la policía y los golpeadores. En la década de 1990, Maclovio Rojas fue escenario de uno de esos conflictos, pero actualmente es un lugar mucho más pacífico, y a lo largo de los años sus habitantes han obligado al gobierno local a proporcionarles escuelas y proveerles de los servicios básicos.

Ante todo, la tradición de la ocupación de la tierra está muy presente, con comunidades de resistencia parecidas en la periferia de la mayoría de las grandes ciudades de la frontera. Cañon Buenavista es otra comunidad en resistencia, surgió de dos invasiones distintas de tierras por trabajadores rurales de los ranchos de Maneadero, el valle agrícola ubicado justo al sur de Ensenada. La primera invasión fue dirigida por Benito García, un controvertido personaje entre los migrantes oaxaqueños. García fue un carismático líder durante las huelgas agrícolas al inicio de la década de 1980, y más tarde fue acusado de abuso de autoridad. En la década de 1980, organizó a los trabajadores agrícolas en el valle de Maneadero para invadir 50 hectáreas en una ladera desértica al sur de la ciudad, antes los trabajadores vivían en los campamentos de trabajo o incluso dormían en la carretera.

El gobierno del estado compró entonces la tierra a las personas que decían tener la propiedad legal, y la revendió a los invasores por medio de una agencia llamada Inmobiliaria Estatal. Julio Sandoval llegó a Cañón Buenavista en 1990 y construyó allí una casa para su familia. Sandoval ya había liderado un movimiento similar en San Quintín organizando una comunidad Triqui de trabajadores agrícolas llamada Nuevo San Juan Copala. La Confederación Independiente de Obreros Agrícolas y Campesinos, una organización rural radical fundada por el Partido Comunista Mexicano, dirigió muchas de estas luchas en el Valle de San Quintín en Baja California en la década de 1990, y su líder Beatriz Chávez fue encarcelada por invadir tierras para construir viviendas.

Sandoval tuvo problemas con las autoridades estatales cuando comenzó a incitar a los pobladores de Cañón Buenavista para que no hicieran el pago de sus lotes. La Inmobiliaria Estatal había aumentado el precio de venta y los pagos por cada lote, por lo que muchas familias ya no pudieron pagar su deuda. Sin embargo Sandoval había descubierto que en 1973 el gobierno federal declaró que decenas de miles de hectáreas en el norte de Baja California, incluida la tierra donde se encuentra Cañon Buenavista, eran propiedad del gobierno. Como resultado de una nueva invasión de tierras, la población total de Cañón Buenavista aumentó a 2,700 familias, aproximadamente 10,000 personas, la mayoría originarios de pueblos Mixtecos y Triqui en Oaxaca. Sin embargo, Sandoval fue acusado de tomar las tierras por la fuerza y ??encarcelado por dos años en la prisión estatal de Ensenada.

Estas son comunidades son producto del hambre por tierras -de personas que son arrastradas a la frontera para conseguir trabajo, pero que no tienen acceso a la vivienda. Para sobrevivir, muchas comunidades de resistencia solicitaron el apoyo de la Coalición por la Justicia en las Maquiladoras y de otros grupos transfronterizos. El Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales, FIOB, también apoyó a los migrantes indígenas, tanto en sus pueblos de origen en Oaxaca y en sus comunidades al sur de la frontera, en Baja California, como en las comunidades indígenas al norte de la frontera, en California.

En el otro extremo de la frontera, cerca de la ciudad de Matamoros, los trabajadores de las maquiladoras construyeron los asentamientos Derechos Humanos, y Fuerza y ??Unidad. En las afueras de Nuevo Laredo, cruzando la frontera con Texas, el asentamiento de Blanca Navidad, igual que el de Cañón Buenavista, se unió también al movimiento por el reconocimiento de las comunidades autónomas que iniciaron los zapatistas en Chiapas. Después de triunfar y vencer el intento de desalojo del gobierno estatal de Tamaulipas en 2006, las comunidades indígenas autónomas de Chiapas enviaron mil cajas de víveres a la población de Blanca Navidad, en un gesto de apoyo para fortalecer su alianza norte-sur. Un año después, los comandantes zapatistas Eucaria, Miriam y Zebedeo estuvieron ahí en un intercambio por dos semanas, y la comunidad construyó un centro de salud: El Otro Caracol /The Other Snail.

En esa reunión, la comandanta Eucaria explicó que las mujeres son muy importantes para la supervivencia de las comunidades de resistencia. "Como mujeres", dijo, "somos indispensables en los pueblos autónomos. Echamos a andar proyectos para bordar, criar pollos, hornear pan. Y aunque obtenemos muy poco dinero, lo usamos para satisfacer las necesidades de nuestra lucha, y si nos sobra algo, lo invertimos en molinos para moler masa. De esa manera, las mujeres tienen más tiempo para hacer otro trabajo. Nosotras tomamos las decisiones y nadie puede mandarnos".

Sin embargo, la precaria situación de las mujeres en la frontera, tanto en las comunidades de resistencia como en las colonias de las grandes ciudades fronterizas se transformó en una crisis política y social a fines de la década de 1990 cuando muchas de ellas desaparecieron y fueron asesinadas en Ciudad Juárez. De acuerdo con Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa, un grupo organizado por las madres de las víctimas, de 1996 al otoño de 2002, se sabe que 284 mujeres fueron asesinadas, y otras 450 fueron desaparecidas. Al menos 90 de sus cuerpos han aparecido en las afueras del desierto de la ciudad, enterrados en tumbas poco profundas. Muchas fueron violadas antes de ser asesinadas. Su edad promedio era de 16 años, y la más joven tenía sólo 10 años de edad.

Rosario Acosta, madre de una de las mujeres desaparecidas, acusó a los fiscales del gobierno de  Chihuahua por tratar de silenciar a las madres cuando exigen que se haga algo al respecto. "Alegan que los inmigrantes en Ciudad Juárez son responsables por la creciente inseguridad en nuestra ciudad", comentó. Pero las madres estaban convencidas de que fuerzas sociales más grandes eran las responsables de generar el clima de extrema violencia contra las mujeres. Ciudad Juárez se ha convertido en una enorme metrópolis construida a costa del trabajo de decenas de miles de mujeres jóvenes en las maquiladoras. 

 

01 - Maclovio Rojas, Tijuana, Baja California - 1996
A la entrada de la comunidad Maclovio Rojas un letrero indica que se trata de una asociación civil y una organización de pequeños dueños afiliada a la CIOAC. En la década de 1970, la CIOAC fue organizada por el Partido Comunista Mexicano (PCM) y otros activistas de izquierda para ayudar a los pequeños agricultores y los campesinos pobres a defender su derecho a la tierra. Para 1996, el PCM ya había desaparecido pero sus activistas mantuvieron una sección local de la CIOAC en Baja California para ayudar a los trabajadores migrantes a organizarse, establecerse y construir sus viviendas.


02 - Cañón Buenavista, Baja California - 2002
En las orillas de Cañón Buenavista, el pueblo se integra con el paisaje con los cerros desérticos que lo rodean. La comunidad se autodenomina "Pueblo Autónomo Aguas Calientes", como una manera de manifestar su participación en el movimiento zapatista por la creación de pueblos autónomos, en los que los habitantes indígenas detentan el poder.


03 - Maclovio Rojas, Tijuana, Baja California - 1996
Niños en Maclovio Rojas juegan en la calle de tierra con llantas y cajones lecheros, como si estuvieran en un patio de juegos.


04 - Maclovio Rojas, Tijuana, Baja California - 1996
Los habitantes de la comunidad escuchan hablar a Hortensia Hernández, después de que fue liberada de la cárcel de Baja California, donde fue encarcelada por dirigir la lucha por obtener los derechos de posesión sobre las tierras de la comunidad.

"He vivido en Tijuana durante 21 años, y 9 años aquí en Maclovio Rojas", señaló.

"Estamos luchando por mantener nuestras 197 hectáreas. Esta es una zona industrial. Nos han dicho que han comprometido estos terrenos para entregarlos a las empresas transnacionales. La autopista va a pasar por aquí, y por eso la tierra se ha vuelto muy valiosa. Pero no vamos a ceder ni un centímetro.

El gobierno del estado quería apoderarse de la tierra, pero cuando vieron que no íbamos a ceder, empezaron a inventar acusaciones en nuestra contra, sobre todo por despojo e instigación. Aquí en Baja California, cuando te acusan de esto, no tienes derecho a  fianza. Pero pudimos demostrar que éramos inocentes y que las acusaciones habían sido inventadas. Demostramos que estas eran tierras federales, y por eso logré mi libertad. El gobierno estatal sabe que no pueden hacer mucho en nuestra contra porque nos hemos organizado para resistir.

Estuve presa durante cinco meses. Un día en la cárcel se siente como si fuera un año. Esta cárcel es un lugar de perdición. Las personas detenidas allí, en lugar de  rehabilitarse quedan peor, y se van deteriorando física y moralmente.

La gente aquí es pobre y, a menudo, ni siquiera tienen que comer. Al no recibir apoyo del gobierno para hacer producir esta tierra, la gente tiene que trabajar en las maquiladoras para sobrevivir. Más de la mitad de la población de Maclovio Rojas trabaja en las diferentes fábricas. Muchos trabajan en Hyundai. Cuando algunos trabajadores fueron injustamente despedidos de la fábrica Laymex decidieron organizar una huelga. Nosotros fuimos a apoyarlos, y esa fue una de las razones por las que me detuvieron.


05 - Cañón Buenavista, Baja California, 2002.
El pueblo se fusiona con las colinas del desierto circundante.


06 - Cañón Buenavista, Baja California - 2002
Esther Murillo formó parte del grupo de las primeras veinte familias que ocuparon 78 hectáreas en los cerros que rodean el Cañón Buenavista. Para realizar la toma escogieron el 1 de mayo, el día internacional del trabajo. "Al principio éramos sólo 30 personas  y la policía nos rodeó", recuerda. "Dijeron que iban a quemar las casas que construimos, pero nos quedamos despiertos 20 de nosotros y vigilamos toda la noche. Teníamos a nuestros hijos adentro y temíamos que algo pudiera pasarles. Pero estábamos tranquilos, y no nos movimos para evitar que hubiera un enfrentamiento físico. Al principio había 40 casas y una semana después eran 50. Ahora son unas 500. Pero durante mucho tiempo la policía siguió viniendo todas las noches para asustarnos."

Esther no tenía dinero para pagar una renta o comprar un terreno. Ganando 50-70 pesos diarios en el campo ($ 5-7) y trabajando sólo durante la temporada de cosecha, no podía sobrevivir. "Siendo pobres, ¿qué se supone que debíamos hacer entonces?", pregunta. Sin embargo, una vez  tomadas las tierras, Esther y sus demás compañeros se llevaron un gran chasco. "Todo esto era una ladera cubierta de maleza, llena de víboras y tarántulas, y tuvimos que limpiarlo todo", comenta. "Pero luego, ya que habíamos hecho el trabajo, de pronto comenzaron a aparecer muchos supuestos propietarios."


07 - Cañón Buenavista, Baja California - 2002
Juana Sandoval, esposa de Julio Sandoval, líder comunitario preso, calienta tortillas en una estufa montada sobre bloques de cemento. La estufa se conecta por una manguera de plástico a un tanque de gas grande que la familia reabastece dos veces al mes. El único cuarto grande de la casa está a oscuras incluso a mediodía. Aún así, la casa de Sandoval está mejor que muchas otras en Cañón Buenavista. "Algunos de nosotros vivimos en casas de cartón y cocinamos con leña, una combinación muy peligrosa", comenta Julio en entrevista telefónica desde la prisión. Una de las paredes exteriores de una casa, construida con un plafón de madera se quemó justo en un incendio, e incendió la casa de al lado.


08 - Cañón Buenavista, Baja California - 2002
De vez en cuando, camiones de la gran fábrica de alimentos enlatados Herdez en Ensenada llegan con cargamentos de tomatillos. Muchos de los habitantes de la comunidad se dedican entonces a pelarlos por un salario muy bajo. Después, los tomatillos son nuevamente transportados en camiones a la fabrica para procesarlos. Los niños trabajan con su familia quitando la cáscara de los tomatillos. Después de quitarles la cáscara, los tomatillos tienen que lavarse.


09 - Cañón Buenavista, Baja California - 2002
Aunque es un trabajo duro, las familias platican y bromean entre sí para pasar el tiempo.


10 - Blanca Navidad, Tamaulipas - 2006
La líder comunitaria Blanca Enríquez en el jardín comunitario de Blanca Navidad, que fue formada por migrantes del sur de México, que buscaban tierras para construir un lugar donde vivir. La mayoría de ellos trabaja en las maquiladoras de Nuevo Laredo. Antes de construir el jardín y un centro de salud comunitario "no teníamos nada", comenta. Cuando el gobierno intentó desalojarnos, lo único que nos quedó fueron lonas, postes y algunas mantas. La mayoría de nosotros en esta colonia trabajamos en las maquiladoras, pero sin importar en dónde trabajemos todos somos de esta comunidad y todos somos iguales."


11 - Blanca Navidad, Tamaulipas - 2006
En el interior de la casa de una familia en Blanca Navidad, construida con piso de tierra y paredes de plafón de madera para construcción recuperados de la fábricas. En México, a las colonias como Blanca Navidad también se les conoce como "ciudades perdidas", lugares, de acuerdo con el periodista Javier Hernández Alpízar, "donde viven los mexicanos marginados, que han sido privados de su derecho a la vivienda". En marcado contraste, no muy lejos de la colonia se localiza el puente que cruza la frontera con Estados Unidos, conocido como "El Puente Internacional del Comercio Mundial", en celebración del libre comercio.


12 - Blanca Navidad, Tamaulipas - 2006
La familia extensa de un trabajador de una maquiladora. En 2006 la gente de la comunidad Blanca Navidad fue brutalmente desalojada, cuando el alcalde de Nuevo Laredo envió tractores para demoler sus casas; muchas casas fueron quemadas, dejando a las mujeres y los niños completamente desprotegidos. El periódico El Mañana denunció al gobierno local y apoyó a la comunidad en su lucha por la tierra. Unos días después, el periódico fue bombardeado y uno de sus reportero resultó gravemente herido. Los responsables del atentado jamás fueron encontrados.


13 - Blanca Navidad, Tamaulipas - 2006
Una niña carga a su gato enfrente de su casa.


14 - Barrio La Alianza, Nuevo León - 2001
Cables de la luz tendidos ilegalmente a la línea principal a menos de medio kilómetro de distancia dentro del barrio de La Alianza. La ciudad de Monterrey no proporciona el servicio a muchos barrios de trabajadores de las maquiladoras como este, mientras que  otorga inversión y apoyo a los desarrolladores de los parques industriales en donde trabajan.


15 - Barrio La Alianza, Nuevo León - 2001
Una mujer se apoya en una pala enfrente de su casa, donde las paredes han sido armadas con placas de metal, resortes de cama y madera de desecho.


16 - Barrio La Alianza Barrio, Nuevo León - 2001
Rescatando material para las paredes, una familia encontró un cartel de una elección reciente que dice "El voto es libre y secreto". Uno de los defensores más comprometidos de los habitantes de La Alianza, y en general de los barrios pobres de Monterrey, fue Ignacio Zapata, quien impugnó las elecciones fraudulentas que mantenían a los partidos de los pobres y de la clase trabajadora fuera del poder.

Ignacio ayudó a fundar organizaciones como la Alianza de Usuarios de Servicios Públicos, que luchó por la luz eléctrica, el agua y los servicios municipales para La Alianza y otros barrios. Fue también cofundador de la Alianza Binacional Pro-Bracero, que luchó por la devolución del dinero que fue descontado del salario de los migrantes braceros en Estados Unidos desde la década de 1940 hasta principios de 1960. Originalmente un practicante de la teología de la liberación, Ignacio se unió al Partido Comunista Mexicano, después ayudó a organizar el Partido Socialista Mexicano, el antecesor del Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), y apoyó la campaña presidencial de Andrés Manuel López Obrador en 2006, que fue electo Presidente de Mexico en 2018..


17 - Barrio Derechos Humanos, Tamaulipas - 2006
Dos autobuses transportan a los habitantes de los barrios Derechos Humanos, y Fuerza y ??Libertad a los parques industriales en donde trabajan muchos de ellos, y a otros los llevan al puente que cruza la frontera sobre el Río Bravo hacia Brownsville, Texas.


18 - Barrio Derechos Humanos, Tamaulipas - 2006
Muchas familias sobreviven abriendo pequeños negocios en sus casas, y trabajando al mismo tiempo en las maquiladoras. Esta familia vende bollos, chocobananas y tostaditas.


19 - Barrio Derechos Humanos, Tamaulipas - 2006
Un niño salta por encima de un puente colgante que cruza un canal contaminado cerca de la frontera con Estados Unidos. El canal, contaminado con sustancias químicas tóxicas vertidas por las fábricas, pasa cerca de las casas. Los habitantes, casi todos migrantes de Oaxaca y el sur de México, construyeron el puente para atravesar de un lado al otro del barrio.


20 - Barrio Derechos Humanos, Tamaulipas - 2006
Un niño lleva leña a casa para la estufa.


21 - San Francisco, California - 2016
Elvia Villescas es directora de Las Hormigas, un proyecto de organización comunitaria en un barrio de Ciudad Juárez en el que viven muchos trabajadoras de las maquiladoras:

"Estamos ubicados en Anapra y Lomas de Poleo, comunidades muy marginadas de Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, en la frontera con Estados Unidos. Empezamos Las Hormigas para organizar proyectos educativos y de desarrollo humano. Anapra y Lomas de Poleo se hicieron famosas por la cantidad de cuerpos de mujeres encontrados allí durante los feminicidios. En ambos barrios hay muchas familias que perdieron una hija o una hermana que desapareció o fue asesinada.

"Anapra es una comunidad que ha sido abandonada. En la superficie parece desarrollada. Está en una carretera grande, y camiones grandes pasan todo el tiempo hacia el cruce fronterizo. Hay algunos negocios grandes a lo largo de la carretera porque el gobierno ha abierto este espacio comercial para ellos, pero si caminas solo una o dos cuadras hacia el vecindario, verás una pobreza muy profunda.

"Anapra tiene unos 20.000 habitantes. La gente que vive allí tiene grandes problemas de salud porque el saneamiento es muy malo. Muchas casas todavía no tienen alcantarillado ni desagüe, por lo que las aguas residuales se van a las calles. El gobierno no ha invertido dinero en las escuelas. Entonces, en ese sentido, hay mucha represión contra esta comunidad.

"La mayoría de las personas que viven allí son migrantes y una gran cantidad trabaja en las maquiladoras. En Las Hormigas hemos hecho mini encuestas durante nuestros talleres, pidiéndoles a las personas que levanten la mano si trabajan en una maquila. Hay una gran necesidad en esta comunidad de educación, no de educación escolar, sino de educación en derechos y en solidaridad.

"Los medios se niegan a sacar historias de este movimiento [las huelgas de Juárez de 2015] en las cuatro maquiladoras ni darle la importancia que se merece. En Commscope despidieron a 178 trabajadores, y hay cuatro maquilas donde ha pasado esto, pero la gente tiene poca información al respecto. Los que saben no quieren hablar porque temen que si dicen algo los identifiquen como alborotadores y las empresas los empiecen a vigilar.

"Existe una lista con los nombres de los trabajadores que las empresas están observando y vigilando. Todo el tiempo hay amenazas, si haces algo que les desagrade, nunca obtendrás un trabajo en una maquiladora. Los trabajadores de las maquilas siempre están temerosos de hablar por que dicen que eso les llevaría a perder sus trabajos. Y a pesar de todo, el trabajo en una maquila todavía es visto como un trabajo con cierta estabilidad, aunque muy mal pagado, pero al menos te permite trabajar.

"Los trabajadores están produciendo toda la riqueza pero reciben muy poco beneficio de ella, mientras que las empresas ganan mucho dinero. Las maquiladoras no permitirán que los trabajadores se organicen en sindicatos. Permitir eso significaría que tendrían que escucharlos y respetar sus derechos laborales y de salud. Las maquiladoras no tienen conciencia, no sienten que los trabajadores tengan derechos. Cumplen con lo mínimo que exige la ley, pero no tiene sentido que por tener miles de trabajadores les den mejores salarios o una clínica o una guardería para las trabajadoras.

La gente está harta de los salarios. Con 170 pesos diarios no se puede comprar nada. Si vas a la tienda y compras tres o cuatro cosas, te gastas 500 pesos. Amo a mi país pero a veces me causa mucho dolor. Necesitamos despertar y reafirmar quienes somos. Tenemos que cambiar el rumbo de todo, de toda la corrupción. Es un momento muy importante. Este movimiento de trabajadores de las maquiladoras está dando un paso hacia delante, obligándonos a cuestionar quiénes somos. Es una señal muy alentadora de que las cosas pueden ser difíciles pero que sí lograremos ver un cambio.

"Este movimiento de personas en las maquilas es muy importante. Tenemos que conocerlo y apoyarlo. Es el poder de la unidad contra el poder económico. Es algo increíble. Una unión con poder aquí haría una diferencia muy grande. Daría poder al pueblo, a los trabajadores. En lugar de solo trabajar para ganar sus 800 pesos, la gente sentiría que tiene la capacidad de tomar decisiones, de exigir lo que necesita. En este momento, si eres un trabajador y si necesitas a alguien que cuide a tu hijo, eso no significa nada para la maquiladora. Tú dices: 'Necesito que alguien cuide a mi bebé', pero la maquiladora no escucha tu voz. Pero si hay unión con la fuerza que da la unión la maquiladora tendrá que escuchar.

"Amo a mi país, pero a veces me da mucho dolor. Necesitamos despertar y recuperar lo que somos. Tenemos que cambiar el rumbo que va todo, toda la corrupción. Es un momento muy importante. Este movimiento de trabajadores de las maquiladoras está dando el salto, haciéndonos cuestionar quiénes somos. Es una señal muy positiva de que las cosas pueden ser difíciles pero vamos a ver un cambio".


COMMUNITIES OF RESISTANCE ALONG THE BORDER

COMMUNITIES OF RESISTANCE ALONG THE BORDER
by David Bacon
Latin American Perspectives, March 2023
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0094582X221149440

 
David Bacon is a photographer and writer who has documented the social movements on the Mexico/U.S. border for 30 years.. The photographs reproduced here are selected from the book  "More Than a Wall/Mas que un muro" published by the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Tijuana, Mexico, 2022. For more information about the book, write to dbacon@igc.org or click here



Over the past half century the once-small towns of Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana have become cities of millions. A huge part of the industrial workforce in the production and supply chain that delivers products to U.S. consumers lives not on the U.S. but on the Mexican side of the border, where people build homes out of cardboard and shipping pallets cast off by the maquiladoras and the dirt streets of their barrios often end at the border wall.

Many neighborhoods have no sewers and flood when it rains. Electricity is stolen by hooking up to power lines, while drinking water comes in a truck and people must pay to fill the tanks in front of their homes. Often living conditions for poor and homeless people in border cities like Tijuana are no different from those endured by migrants who have crossed the border to live in the United States.

In fact, most people living near the border in Mexico have no hope or expectation of crossing it. More than half of the border residents have no tourist visas or border-crossing cards. Instead they seek a way to earn a living and raise a family where they are. When the wages are low and the housing poor, they try to confront those conditions by changing them, not by crossing over to the other side.

The border has therefore been the scene of some of Mexico's sharpest social struggles, and the photographs in this collection are an effort to document that social history. This upsurge is not new-it's been going on for more than a hundred years. For three decades I've taken photographs of workers' efforts to organize to resist the poverty that the border factory regime imposes, showing both the actions in the streets and the cost visible in the homes of workers, miners, and other people living throughout the border region.

The border is a vast area with a vibrant social history. We need to see behind the superficial media coverage of the wall and people's efforts to get past it. The purpose of my photography in the border region is to provide a broader view historically, to make the invisible visible. The images have a sharp critical edge and are intended to provoke questions about the reality people experience living there.

Maclovio Rojas, on the eastern edge of Tijuana, is home to 1,300 people. It is a community in resistance, first settled in 1988 by people who could find no other place to live in the rapidly expanding city. The land they settled on was unoccupied and belonged to the federal government. Under the old agrarian reform law, people were entitled to settle here and petition the government for formal ownership. Along the dirt roads that fan out like a grid from the highway, peoples' houses are made of old pallets, unfolded corrugated shipping cartons, and other castoffs from the factories. The community sits on a dry, flat, sandy lowland surrounded by treeless hills.

The land here doesn't seem very desirable, but on the other side of a dirt road at the edge of town looms the maquiladora of the Hyundai Corporation, and just over the hill is the Florido Industrial Park. The North American Free Trade Agreement and a devalued peso inspired a building boom in Tijuana, and in a few decades a small, honky-tonk tourist town became home to hundreds of maquiladoras.

The growth of the maquiladora industry transformed life for 2 million people who today live in the city. "Tijuana was created this way," explained Eduardo Badillo, general secretary of the Border Workers' Regional Support Committee, a community organization active in the city's barrios. "The government calls these settlements 'invasions,' and we call them 'possessions.' Whatever you call them, the law recognized our right to build homes on this land, because under the Constitution, it's our country."

Land reform rights were weakened, however, by NAFTA-era changes to Mexico's constitution designed to make it easier for corporations like Hyundai to own land and protect their titles. After building their homes, the Yorbas, Tijuana's original landowners before the Revolution, claimed that the land was theirs. Residents viewed this as a thinly disguised means for Hyundai to gain possession. The family accused the community leader Hortensia Hernandez of illegally taking their land, and in 1995 she was arrested.

Residents refused to abandon their homes, and the conflict grew. After five months in prison, the family couldn't come up with documents proving their title, and Hernandez was finally released. When she walked out of prison, she owed her freedom in large part to the Tijuana-based Border Workers Regional Support Committee and the San Diego-based Support Committee for Maquiladora Workers. Both groups helped organize a march from Tijuana to the state capital in Mexicali to demand her release.

Maclovio Rojas became one of many communities like it along the border. Because they were created by land occupations by poor people, often workers from the maquiladoras, the communities' legal titles were almost always denied by governments anxious to protect investors. Facing efforts to drive them from their homes and off the land, they quickly became communities of resistance. Some were driven away, but others hung on despite the imprisonment of leaders and conflicts with police and golpeadores (thugs who beat people.)

In the 1990s Maclovio Rojas was the scene of conflict like this, but today it is a much more peaceful place, and its residents over the years have forced local government to provide schools and a minimum level of services. The tradition of land occupation is still very much alive, however, and similar communities of resistance exist on the outskirts of almost every large city on the border.

Cañon Buenavista is another community in resistance, created in two separate land invasions by rural workers from the ranches of Maneadero, the agricultural valley just south of Ensenada. The first was led by Benito García, a controversial figure among Oaxacan migrants. He was a charismatic leader of agricultural strikes in the early 1980s, later accused of misusing his authority. In the 1980s Garcia organized farmworkers in the Maneadero Valley who were living in labor camps or even sleeping by the roadside to occupy 50 hectares on a desert hillside south of town. The state government then bought out the people who claimed ownership of the land, and resold it to the occupiers through an agency called the Immobiliaria Estatal.

Julio Sandoval arrived in Cañon Buenavista in 1990 and built a home there for his family. He had already led a similar movement in the San Quintín Valley of Baja California to organize a community of Triqui farmworkers called Nuevo San Juan Copala. The Confederación Independiente de Obreros Agrícolas y Campesinos, a radical rural organization founded by the Mexican Communist Party, led many of these fights, and its leader, Beatriz Chavez, was imprisoned for occupying land for homes.

Sandoval got into trouble with the state authorities when he began telling Cañon Buenavista residents not to make payments on their lots. Immobiliaria Estatal had raised the sale price and payments for each lot, and many families never got out of debt. But Sandoval had discovered that in 1973 the federal government had declared tens of thousands of hectares in northern Baja, including the land Cañon Buenavista sits on, government property. As a result of a new land invasion, Cañon Buenavista's total population grew to 2,700 families -about 10,000 people, most of whom come from  Mixtec and Triqui towns in Oaxaca. Sandoval, however, was accused of taking land by force and jailed in the state prison in Ensenada for two years.

These are communities created by land hunger - people drawn to the border for work but with no provision for housing. To survive, many communities of resistance appealed for support from the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras and other cross-border groups. The Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales also organized support for indigenous migrants, both in their towns of origin in Oaxaca, in the towns south of the border in Baja California, and in indigenous communities north of the border in California.

At the other end of the border, near the city of Matamoros, maquiladora workers built the settlements of Derechos Humanos and Fuerza y Unidad. Outside of Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Texas, Blanca Navidad, like Cañon Buenavista, also linked itself to the movement for autonomous communities developed by the Zapatistas in Chiapas.

After successfully resisting eviction by the state government of Tamaulipas in 2006, the autonomous indigenous communities of Chiapas sent 1,000 boxes of groceries to the people of Blanca Navidad in support of their north-south alliance. A year later the Zapatista Comandantes Eucaria, Miriam, and Zebedeo held a two-week exchange there and the community built a health center it called El Otro Caracol (The Other Snail). In that meeting Comandante Eucaria explained that women are critical to the survival of communities of resistance:
      
"As women, we are needed the most in the autonomous town. We start up projects like embroidering work, raising chickens, baking bread. Although we make very little money, we use it for the needs of our struggle, and if any is left over we invest it in mills for grinding masa. That way women will have more time to do other work. We make the decisions and no one can give us orders."

 


Figure 1. Maclovio Rojas, Tijuana, Baja California,  1996. The flag of the CIOAC flying at a gate into the community. On the other side of the road and fence are trailers manufactured in the Hyundai factory. Maclovio Rojas residents believed that the state government was trying to drive them off their land so that the industrial park could expand. 

 

 
Figure 2. Maclovio Rojas, Tijuana, Baja California, 1996. A sign at the entrance into Maclovio Rojas declaring it a civil organization and union of small landholders affiliated with the CIOAC. The CIOAC was organized by the Mexican Communist Party and other leftist activists to help small farmers and the rural poor defend their rights to land. By 1996 the original PCM no longer existed, but in Baja California its activists continued to help migrant workers organize, settle, and build homes. 

 

 
Figure 3. Maclovio Rojas, Tijuana, Baja California, 1996. Children playing with tires and milk crates in the dirt street. 

 

 
Figure 4. Maclovio Rojas, Tijuana, Baja California, 1996. Residents listening to Hortensia Hernandez speak after she was released from prison, where she had been held for leading the struggle to gain their land rights. "I've lived in Tijuana for 21 years, and 9 years here in Maclovio Rojas," she told them. "We're fighting to keep our 197 hectares. This is an industrial zone. They've told us that they've committed this area to transnational corporations. The freeway is going to come through here, so the land has become very valuable. But we're not going to cede one centimeter.

"The state government wanted to gain possession of the land, but when they saw that we weren't going to give it up they began to fabricate accusations against us, especially despojo de instigación [provoking an illegal occupation]. Here in Baja California, when they accuse you of this, there's no bail, but we were able to prove that we were innocent and that the accusations had been fabricated. We showed that these were federal lands, and I was released. The state government sees that they can't do much to us because of the resistance we've put up.

"I was in jail for five months. In the penitentiary a day felt like a year. This prison is a place of perdition. The people held there, instead of being rehabilitated, leave in a much worse state, in which they've deteriorated morally and physically.

"People here are poor and often don't even have anything to eat. With no support from the government to make this land productive, people have to work in the maquiladoras to survive. Over half the people in Maclovio Rojas are workers in various factories. Many work at Hyundai. When some were unjustly fired from the Laymex factory they decided to organize a strike. We went to support them-one of the reasons I was detained." 

 

 
Figure 5. Cañon Buenavista, Baja California, 2002. The town merging into the surrounding desert hills. 

 

 
Figure 6. Cañon Buenavista, Baja California, 2002. Esther Murillo, a member of one of the 20 families that first occupied 78 hectares in the hills surrounding Cañon Buenavista. They chose May 1, the international workers' holiday, as the day for their action. "There were only 30 of us at first, and the police surrounded us," she remembered. "They said they were going to burn the houses we built, but 20 of us stayed up and watched all night. We had our children inside, and we were afraid of what might happen to them. But we were all calm and wouldn't move, so there were no physical confrontations. At first there were 40 houses, a week later 50. Now there are about 500. But for a long time the police kept coming every night to scare us."

Murillo had no money to pay rent or buy land. Making 50-70 pesos (US$5-7) a day in the fields and working only during the harvest season, she couldn't survive. "We're poor. So what were we going to do?" she asks. Once they occupied the land, however, she and her fellow residents were in for a surprise. "This was just a hillside covered with weeds, full of snakes and tarantulas, and we cleaned it all up, but then, after we'd done the work, a lot of supposed owners suddenly appeared." 

 

 
Figure 7. Cañon Buenavista, Baja California. 2002. Juana Sandoval, the wife of imprisoned community leader Julio Sandoval, heating tortillas on a stove set up on cinder blocks and connected by a rubber hose to a big propane bottle that the family has to fill twice a month. Their one large room is dim even at midday, but their home is better than many in Cañon Buenavista. "Some of us live in cardboard houses and cook on wood fires, a very dangerous combination," Julio said in a phone interview from prison. An exterior plywood wall was charred in one such fire, which burned down the home next door. 

 

 
Figure 8. Cañon Buenavista, Baja California, 2002. Residents husking tomatillos for very low pay from the big Herdez canning plant in Ensenada.  

 

 
Figure 9. Cañon Buenavista, Baja California, 2002. Residents talking and joking to make the time pass while they work husking tomatillos. 

 

 
Figure 10. Blanca Navidad, Tamaulipas, 2006. Community leader Blanca Enriquez working in the community garden. Before building the garden and a community health center, she said, "We had nothing. When the government tried to evict us all we had left were tarps and poles, and a few blankets. The majority of us in this colonia work in the maquiladoras, but regardless of where we work we are from this community, and we all are equal." 

 

 
Figure 11. Blanca Navidad, Tamaulipas, 2006. A family inside its home, which has a dirt floor and plywood walls salvaged from construction in the factories. Colonias like Blanca Navidad have been called "lost cities"-places, according to the journalist Javier Hernández Alpízar, "where excluded Mexicans live, stripped of their right to housing." In acute contrast, not far from the colonia is the bridge crossing the border to the United States known as the World Trade International Bridge. 

 

 
Figure 12. Blanca Navidad, Tamaulipas, 2006. The extended family of a maquiladora worker. In 2006 the people of the Blanca Navidad community were brutally evicted when Nuevo Laredo's mayor sent in tractors to demolish their houses; many houses were burned, leaving women and children with nothing. When El Mañana exposed the local government and supported the community in its struggle for its land,  the newspaper office was bombed and a reporter was seriously injured. Those responsible for the bombing were never identified. 

 

 
Figure 13. Blanca Navidad, Tamaulipas, 2006. A little girl holding her pet cat in front of her house. 

 

 
Figure 14. La Alianza, Nuevo León, 2001. Electric wires illegally hooked up to the main line half a mile away snaking into the barrio of La Alianza. The city of Monterrey provides no services to many barrios of maquiladora workers like this one while providing investment and support to developers of the industrial parks where the workers are employed. 

 

 
Figure 15. La Alianza, Nuevo León, 2001. A woman leaning on her shovel in front of her home, the walls of which have been assembled out of metal plates, bedsprings, and salvaged wood. 

 

 
Figure 16. La Alianza, Nuevo León, 2001. A placard from a recent election reading "The vote is free and secret." One of the strongest defenders of the residents of La Alianza and of poor barrio residents in Monterrey generally was Ignacio Zapata, who challenged fraudulent elections that kept the parties of poor and working-class people out of power.

Zapata helped found organizations like the Alliance of the Users of Public Services, which fought for electricity, water, and municipal services in La Alianza and other barrios, and the Binational Pro-Bracero Alliance, which fought to recover the money taken from the pay of bracero migrants in the United States from the 1940s to the early 1960s.

Originally a believer in liberation theology, he joined the Mexican Communist Party, later helped organize the Mexican Socialist Party (the precursor of the Party of the Democratic Revolution), and supported the 2006 presidential campaign of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was elected President of Mexico as the candidate of the Movimiento Regeneracion Nacional in 2018. 

 

 
Figure 17. Derechos Humanos, Tamaulipas, 2006. Buses waiting to take residents of Derechos Humanos and Fuerza y Libertad to the factories where many work and to the bridge where they cross the Rio Grande to Brownsville, Texas. 

 

 
Figure 18. Derechos Humanos, Tamaulipas, 2006. A small business run from home, selling buns, chocobananas, and tostada snacks. 

 

 
Figure 19. Derechos Humanos, Tamaulipas, 2006. A boy jumping across a rickety bridge over a polluted canal near the U.S. border. The canal, which is contaminated by toxic chemicals dumped by the factories, runs alongside homes. Residents built the bridge to get from one part of the neighborhood to another. 

 

 
Figure 20. Derechos Humanos, Tamaulipas, 2006. A boy bringing home wood for the stove. 

 

 
Figure 21. San Francisco, California, 2016. Elvia Villescas, the director of Las Hormigas, a community organizing project in a neighborhood of Ciudad Juárez where many maquiladora workers live. She describes her community as follows:

"We're located in Anapra and Lomas de Poleo, very marginalized communities in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, on the U.S. border. We began Las Hormigas to organize educational and human development projects. Anapra and Lomas de Poleo became famous because of the number of women's bodies found there during the feminicides. In both neighborhoods there are many families that had lost a daughter or a sister who disappeared or was murdered.

"Anapra is a community that has been abandoned. On the surface it looks developed. It's on a big highway, and big trucks go by all the time to the border crossing. There are some big businesses along the highway because the government has opened this commercial space for them, but if you walk just one or two blocks into the neighborhood you'll see very deep poverty.

"Anapra has about 20,000 inhabitants. People living there have big health problems because the sanitation is so bad. Many homes still have no sewers or drains, so the wastewater runs into the streets. The government hasn't invested money in the schools. So in that sense, there is a lot of repression against this community.

"The majority of the people living there are migrants, and a great number work in the maquiladoras. In Las Hormigas we've done mini-surveys during our workshops, asking people to raise their hands if they work in a maquila. Out of 30 people, 10 or 12 will raise their hands. So imagine that in Anapra 30 or 40 percent of the people living there work in a maquila. There's a great need in this community for education-not schoolbook education but education in rights and solidarity.

"The media refuse to carry stories about this movement [the Juarez strikes of 2015] in the four maquiladoras or treat it with the importance it deserves. In Commscope 178 workers were fired, and there are four maquilas where this has happened, but people have little information about this. Those who do know about it don't want to talk because they're afraid that if they say anything they'll be identified as troublemakers and the companies will start watching them.

"There is a list of workers whom the companies are watching and following. There are threats all the time that if you do something they don't like, you'll never get a job in a maquiladora. Workers in the maquilas are always very afraid that anything they say may lead to losing their jobs, and a maquila job is still seen as a job with some security-very poorly paid but at least you're working.

"The workers are producing all the wealth but receive very little benefit from it, while the companies make a lot of money. The maquiladoras will not permit workers to organize unions. To allow that would mean that they would have listen to them and respect their labor and health rights. The maquiladoras have no conscience, no sense that workers have rights. They comply with the minimum that the law demands, but there's no sense that because they have thousands of workers they should give them better wages or a clinic or a child care center for the women workers.

"People are tired of the wages. At 170 pesos a day you can't buy anything. You go to the store and buy three or four things and you've spent 500 pesos. But I think that in Mexico generally there is also an exhaustion that has grown and grown. People have grown tired of seeing so many abuses tolerated by those who are on top, whether it's a maquiladora or the authorities. The demand is growing that they begin to respect people's rights. This process has developed over a long time, and we're reaching the limit. That's important, because for so many years we've been living with everything.

"This movement of people in the maquilas is very important. We have to know about it and support it. It is the power of unity against the economic power. It's something incredible. A union with power here would make a very big difference. It would give power to the people, to the workers. Instead of just working to earn their 800 pesos people would feel that they have the ability to make decisions, to demand what they need. Right now, if you are a worker and if you need someone to take care of your child, that means nothing to the maquiladora. You say, 'I need someone to take care of my baby,' but the maquiladora doesn't hear your voice. But if there's a union with the strength that comes from unity the maquiladora will have to listen.

"I love my country, but sometimes it gives me great pain. We need to wake up and recover who we are. We have to change the direction everything is going, all the corruption. It's a very important moment. This movement of maquiladora workers is taking the leap, making us question who we are. It's a very positive signal that things may be difficult but we are going to see a change."

Tuesday, July 18, 2023

WHERE DISCRIMINATION FLOURISHED LIKE MUSHROOMS

WHERE DISCRIMINATION FLOURISHED LIKE MUSHROOMS
By David Bacon
The American Prospect / Capitol & Main - 6/23/23

 
Company housing provided to H-2A mushroom workers. Photo courtesy Elizabeth Strater.


Mushrooms grown for the supermarket thrive on a mixture of straw and manure.  Huge piles of it are heated to prepare the growth media, spreading the pungent stink of ammonia through the barns.  Metal trays, covered with the resulting dark soil, are stacked high into the sheds' moist darkness.  Soon the familiar round white caps appear.  Workers enter and cut their stems, placing them in 10-pound boxes.  Runners ferry them out to a checker, where they're weighed and counted.

An individual mushroom is very light, so picking 68 pounds an hour, as Ostrom Mushroom Farms demanded, meant working like a demon in the dark.  "It's really hard," according to Jose Martinez, a fired Ostrom worker.  "The smell was terrible.  There were chemicals in the growing mix, which made it smell even worse, and they wouldn't tell us what they were.  The foreman would joke, 'Don't worry, you won't die!'  If a picker protested, a supervisor would tell her, 'If you don't like it, there's the door!'"

Last year the company did show the door to dozens of its workers, replacing experienced women pickers with crews of men.  And in May Washington State's Attorney General, Bob Ferguson, found these firings constituted massive violations of worker protection regulations.  He forced Ostrom into a record $3.4 million settlement.  "It's obvious what they did," Ferguson told a May 17 news conference. "They're not paying $3.4 million to the state of Washington unless they did something wrong."  Ostrom's money will pay damages to 170 of its former workers.

The Ostrom case is historic, not just because workers were fired as a result of sex discrimination, protests and failure to meet production quotas.  The company used contract laborers on H-2A temporary visas to replace them.  "This settlement validates what we've been saying for years," charges worker advocate Rosalinda Guillen, a member of the state commission formed to monitor the negative impact of the controversial H-2A visa program.  "It is inherently abusive both to the workers brought to the U.S., and to the local workers the companies replace.  It's not called 'close to slavery' for nothing."

Ostrom has gone out of business, so no representative could be reached for comment for this article.

* * *

Ostrom began operating a mushroom shed in Sunnyside, a small farmworker town in the Yakima Valley, in 2019.  Martinez went to work there soon after, fabricating the metal growing trays.  "I saw women crying because of the way they were mistreated," he recalls.  "Supervisors threatened them to get them to work faster.   They were afraid they'd lose their jobs."

Martinez and organizers for the United Farm Workers began holding meetings to talk about forming a union.  "People started to lose their fear," he says.  "At first there were seven at a meeting, then fourteen, then more.  We talked about the low wages, and about fighting for our rights."  Workers were particularly incensed, he says, when the production quota was raised to 65 pounds an hour.  Their protests briefly got it lowered to 50.

Then Ostrom began bringing in H-2A workers. Under that program, growers and labor contractors can recruit workers in countries like Mexico and bring them to work in the United States for a period of less than a year. Growers must file an application to bring the workers in, called an H-2A Agricultural Clearance Order.

The company's H-2A Agricultural Clearance Order, filed with the U.S. Department of Labor, called for 70 workers who would start on December 15, 2021, and return to Mexico after August 15, 2022.  They'd be paid $16.32 per hour, or a piece rate of 23¢ per pound.  To earn more than the hourly wage at that piece rate, the H-2A laborers would have to pick over 71 pounds per hour.  

In the Clearance Order the company said that meeting the 71 pound quota "is a requirement to hold the position of full time Harvester."  To ensure they had a crew able to do it, Ostrom's labor contractor, H2 Visa Solutions, hired young men almost exclusively.  Under the visa program rules, these workers could only work for Ostrom, and the company could fire them for any reason, including failure to meet the quota.  Terminated workers have to leave the country immediately, and are routinely blacklisted by recruiters, who deny them work in following years.

According to the Attorney General's complaint, from January to May, 2022, the company employed 180 local workers, mostly women, who lived in the Sunnyside area.  Starting in December, 2021, three month before the H-2A workers arrived, "managers began calling domestic [local] pickers into one-on-one meetings in which the domestic pickers were told they were not meeting production minimums, and would be receiving a warning along with a three-day, unpaid suspension if their performance did not improve. The pickers were told they would be fired if they did not meet the production minimum within a week of returning from the three-day suspension."

The quota for the mostly-women local workforce was increased from 62.5 to 68 pounds per hour.  At the same time, the company stopped letting workers know their actual production rate.  Pickers often have to clean the growing rooms and dispose of garbage, but time spent doing this work was counted as though it was time spent picking, and subject to the quota.  "It was very stressful," Martinez says. "The company used the pressure of the H-2A workers, right next to the local workers.  They told the H-2A workers not to talk with us.  Almost all were indigenous people from Guerrero and Chiapas, and many didn't speak Spanish."

The complaint charges the local workers were given written warnings, suspended, and then terminated.  "Female domestic pickers received these warnings and unpaid suspensions more frequently than their male counterparts and were therefore terminated at a higher rate than their male counterparts ... At least some female pickers believed that [Ostrom] instituted these changes in order to have a reason to suspend and terminate workers who they wanted to force out ... From early 2021 to May 2022, [Ostrom] terminated approximately 79% of their domestic pickers and 85% of their female pickers."

* * *

Under the visa program rules, Ostrom had to give hiring preference to local workers.  Before bringing H-2A workers, it was required to advertise the jobs to the local community, and had to pay local workers at the same rate.  But while paying a guaranteed $17.41 per hour to the contracted laborers, it paid a lower wage to local residents.  While Ostrom's public advertisements, and even the Clearance Order, required a minimum of three months experience, few of the H-2A workers met the bar.  Local applicants were rejected if they didn't meet it, however.  

The company's Facebook job advertisement, the only outreach effort it made, said it would hire "solo personal masculino," - only male personnel. According to attorney Edgar Aguilasocho, vice president at Martinez Aguilasocho Law Inc. and general counsel for the UFW Foundation, the hiring process has to be approved by the Washington State Employment Security Department, and then the employer simply self-reports the results.  "It's strange the petition [for H-2A visas] was approved," he says.  "Many domestic workers applied and were denied."  Ostrom reported hiring four local women while hiring 65 male H-2A workers.

According to Colombia Legal Services attorney Joe Morrison, legal aid offices have brought numerous suits in the past over the same violation.  Columbia Legal Services sued a large Washington State winery, Mercer Canyons, in one celebrated case reminiscent of Ostrom's.  Garrett Benton, manager of the company's grape department, testified that many of Mercer Canyons' longtime local workers were told there was no work available, or were referred to jobs paying less than the wages of H-2A workers.  He charged that local workers "felt strongly that they were given harder, less desirable work for less pay.  Mercer Canyons was doing everything it could to discourage local farm workers from gaining employment."  The suit was settled in 2017, and Mercer Canyons agreed to pay a $1.2 million settlement, of which local workers received $545,000.

Growers have little to fear for violations of the H-2A program rules.  In 2019, out of 11,472 employers using the H-2A program, the Department of Labor only filed cases against 431 (3.73 percent), and of them, only 26 (0.25 percent) were barred from recruiting for 3 years, with an average fine of $109,098. "Lack of enforcement is a chronic problem, and characteristic of a program set up to meet grower needs," according to Guillen.

On June 22, 2022, local workers at Ostrom tried to meet with the company to protest the discrimination.  Instead of talking with them, according to the Attorney General, managers retaliated against them.  One woman was assaulted by a supervisor.  Several received unjustified warnings, a step towards being terminated.  

Later in September workers tried to deliver a petition, and were sent home early without pay.  A month afterwards, the local workers were told they would have to bring in their immigration documents to demonstrate their legal status.  Such reverification of documents, which the company had seen and accepted at the time they were hired, is a form of intimidation in a workforce where many may lack legal immigration status.  "[Ostrom] started re-verifying workers after its workers began advocating for fair and nondiscriminatory workplace conditions," the AG's complaint charges.

Many workers were laid off that fall, including Martinez.  He was recalled, but only given a position picking mushrooms, instead of his old job building the metal trays.  He was also given a quota, and then written up when he couldn't meet it. Finally he was fired as a result of his organizing activity, he believes.

Ostrom sold the Sunnyside mushroom farm this February to a Canadian company, Windmill Farms, which also runs two barns in Ontario.  Its subsidiary, Greenwood Mushrooms Sunnyside, then sent a letter to all the local workers, telling them to apply for the jobs they were already doing.  They also had to reverify their immigration status.  

Windmill Farms didn't respond to a request for comment from Capital & Main, but in a statement to The Seattle Times, CEO Clay Taylor said the company is "committed to providing a healthy, safe and supportive workplace."

* * *

The use of H-2A workers to put production pressure on local farmworkers, and eventually replace them, has become a critical issue because of the rapid growth of the program.  Over 317,000 H-2A workers were brought to the U.S. in 2021, an increase of 15 percent over the 275,000 in 2020, and three times the 100,000 of 2013.  In Washington State the number grew by 1000 percent from 2007 to 2019, reaching 34,190 in 2022, or over a third of the total farm workforce (89,943 in 2021).

The U.S. Department of Labor is supposed to enforce worker protections, and keep H-2A workers from displacing local farm workers.  The protections, however, are often non-existent.  While the Washington State Attorney General was able to charge Ostrom with discriminating against women within the state, for instance, it is not illegal for H-2A recruiters to hire only men.  According to Daniel Costa, Director of Immigration Law and Policy Research at the Economic Policy Institute, "an employer may select an entire workforce composed of a single nationality, gender, or age group."

Further, "employers and recruiters can also weed out workers who might dare to speak out against unlawful employment practices, assert their legal rights, or organize for better working conditions by joining or forming a union," Costa says, "by firing them and effectively forcing them to leave the country, or by threatening to blacklist them."

The number of investigations of wage and hour violations for farmworkers in general has actually declined from 2000 per year in the early 2000s to 1000 per year in 2021. There are 30 fewer investigators of labor standards violations for all workers today than there were in 1973.

Meanwhile, enforcement responsibility runs up against an administration policy that has encouraged the growth of the program, under both Democrats and Republicans.  At an April 2017 White House meeting President Donald Trump told growers that, although he was targeting undocumented people for deportation, he would make the H-2A program easier for them to use.  He then tried to relax wage requirements, an initiative the Biden administration rolled back on taking office.  

Yet President Biden continues to favor the growth of the program.  Samantha Power, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, thanked one meeting of growers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture last September for working with the administration on "a critical priority - expanding the pool of H-2 farmworkers from Central America, specifically from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras ... We have got your back," she promised them.  "We are committed to helping maintain a strong pipeline of experienced farmworkers to support you."  

Since this policy will add to the numbers already being brought by growers from Mexico, the overall growth of the program is inevitable, along with the problems it poses for farm workers already living in the U.S., most of whom are immigrants themselves.  Ironically, the UFW itself is associated with an H-2A recruiting program called CIERTO, which operates in Central America in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  At the same time, UFW President Teresa Romero has called abuses of the program "close to modern day slavery," and the union has advocated reforms.

When Romero went to Sunnyside to support the Ostrom workers, she investigated the housing the company was providing its H2-A workers.  Elizabeth Strater, a UFW representative, says that the company had told the Labor Department it was housing them in a public housing complex.  "But we found that the workers weren't there," she says.  "Instead they were living in what looked like an abandoned chicken coop.  The state was supposed to inspect it, but obviously they just took the company's word."

The protests by workers, and the investigation and complaint by the Attorney General, were apparently effective in keeping Windmill Farms from bringing in another crew of H-2A workers this year.  But Martinez says that every day vans carrying dozens of new workers appear at the Sunnyside barns, while the fired workers have not been rehired.  An inquiry to the Attorney General's office, asking why the rehire of the illegally fired workers was not part of the settlement, was not answered.  

Nevertheless, workers continue to rally to demand union recognition.  "We have weekly meetings of our organizing committee," Martinez says, and with the monetary settlement attendance is up. "People were very happy.  In addition some may be able to get help with their immigration status because they're witnesses or victims of violations.  Some want to go back, while others say the mistreatment was too much.  I'm sure the company doesn't want to call me back because I helped start the union, but I'd go.  We all have to work.  And we're going to keep going until we get the union in.  They can't stop us."