Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States

“I think of the mountains to our right and how the desert might be beautiful under different circumstances. I hear a dog bark and think of the towns to our left and how the people living there are likely asleep and comfortable. Macario tells me we are in Arizona now. I see no difference.”

This passage exemplifies embodied anthropology, as Holmes provides a first-person account of the sights and sounds of his journey across the US-Mexico border. In other field notes, he emphasizes different bodily responses—notably, the pain in his head, shoulders, back, and knees caused by picking berries.

“The reality of survival for my Triqui companions shows that it would be riskier to stay in San Miguel without work, money, food, or education. In this original context, crossing the border is not a choice to engage in a risk behavior but rather a process necessary to survive, to make life less risky.”

This quote challenges the notion that migrating for work is voluntary rather than necessary. Holmes’s ethnographic research shows that poverty forces Triqui people to migrate. They don’t voluntarily engage in dangerous behavior, a claim often made to justify their mistreatment. Instead, they view migration as less risky than remaining in their hometown of San Miguel.

“Ultimately, I hope that my field research and writing will work toward ameliorating the social suffering inherent to migrant labor in North America.”

Holmes’s aim isn’t just to elucidate the political, economic, and social components of migrant health and labor but also to engender changes in individual behavior and national policy to alleviate the suffering of migrants. He concludes his book with a discussion of pragmatic solidarity as a framework for those who want to work toward change.

“My body offered insights not only via experiences of the living and working conditions of migrant laborers but also as I generated particular responses from those around me.”

Researchers who practice embodied anthropology use their bodily experiences as a means of understanding their field of study. However, the researcher’s body also generates responses from others. Holmes is a tall, white, English-speaking man. As such, he was treated quite differently than the Triqui migrants he was studying.

“This embodied experience offers thickness and vividness to the ethnographic description of everyday life, including such critical realities as social suffering, inequality and hierarchy, and local and global solidarity.”

Traditionally, anthropologists observed and recorded in a detached manner. The emphasis on embodiment and bodily experience began in the 1980s. Holmes adopted this newer approach, living and working among Triqui migrants throughout his fieldwork. During this time, he not only observed the physical and social suffering of the Triqui people but also experienced some of it firsthand. His account of their suffering is thus more vivid than it might otherwise have been.

“Many of the most powerful inputs into the suffering of farmworkers are structural, not willed by individual agents.”

Farm executives are often blamed for the suffering of migrant laborers. A key takeaway from Holmes’s book is that social, economic, and political structures are the primary cause of migrant suffering. Among these structures are corporate agribusiness, foreign competition, and other facets of capitalist economies.

“The living and working conditions of pickers are so undesirable that each group will move out of this position as quickly as possible. The pickers come from the most vulnerable populations at any given time. As each group advances socially and economically, a more exploited and oppressed group takes its place.”

US agriculture depends on human suffering. The conditions in which pickers live and work are so harsh that people cycle out of these positions as quickly as possible. The US-born children of migrants have educational and job opportunities that their parents lacked. Improving their plight, however, creates a labor gap that farmers fill with other exploited people.

“‘We can grow the best crop there is, but if we don’t have the people to harvest, we’re pretty well sunk. Also weather. There’s flooding, freezing. A frost kills the growing buds, so you can lose anywhere from 5 to 40 percent of your crop. And regulations somewhat. Regulatory issues which change your practice usually pick the edge off, and it goes to someone else. It’s also urban growth.’”

In this quote, Rob Tanaka describes the various challenges farmers face, including labor shortages, inclement weather, legal regulations, and urban sprawl. These pressures, combined with the need to price their products competitively, fuels the suffering of migrant farmworkers.

“Marginalization begets marginalization.”

Structural inequalities perpetuate exploitation and suffering. During an interview with a supervisor at Tanaka farm, Holmes learned that workers who live in the labor camps aren’t eligible for processing plant jobs, which are more desirable than picking jobs. Indigenous farmers live in camps because they can’t afford to rent homes in town. Thus, they’re relegated to the hardest and worst-paying jobs on the farm.

“The ethnic-labor hierarchy seen here—white and Asian American U.S. citizen, Latino U.S. citizen or resident, undocumented mestizo Mexican, undocumented indigenous Mexican—is common in much of North American farming.”

This quote describes the ethnic-labor hierarchy in North American farming. Two key takeaways from Holmes’s book are that this hierarchy perpetuates exploitation and that it mirrors global hierarchies. Structural vulnerabilities, then, exist at multiple levels, from local family farms to corporate agribusiness conglomerates.

“The farther down the ladder from Anglo-American U.S. citizen to undocumented indigenous Mexican one is positioned, the more degrading the treatment by supervisors, the more physically taxing the work, the more exposure to weather and pesticides, the more fear of the government, the less comfortable one's housing, and the less control over one's own time.”

This passage describes the impact of the ethnic-labor hierarchy. Although workers on all levels of the hierarchy suffer, suffering is concentrated at the bottom of the ladder. This suffering is both physical and mental in nature.

“The suffering of Triqui migrant laborers is an embodiment of multiple forms of violence.”

A central point in Holmes’s book is that Triqui migrants experience different forms of violence. Political violence pushes them into inhospitable areas with limited access to water for farming. Global capitalism prompts them to leave their homes and families to find work across the US-Mexico border. Once in the US, they face structural violence in the form of labor, ethnic, and citizenship hierarchies. These hierarchies place them at the bottom of the pecking order on farms, forcing them to work the most difficult jobs for little pay, which results in injury and sickness.

“‘Ese médico no sabe nada.’”

This quote translates as, “That doctor doesn’t know anything.” The speaker is a city official from San Miguel. Holmes was initially taken aback by the statement. During the course of his fieldwork, however, he heard similar expressions of disdain from various sources, including migrant workers. He came to understand that structural forces impacting healthcare—including the lack of funding, the emphasis on biotechnical aspects of health, and the perceptions of clinicians—hindered medical professionals from assessing and treating migrant patients.

“The pressures of the current neoliberal capitalist system of health care and its financing force health professionals into a double bind. Either they spend the time and energy necessary to listen to and fully treat the patient and put their job and clinic in economic jeopardy, or they move at a frenetic pace to keep their practice afloat and only partially attend to the patient in their presence.”

Holmes repeatedly emphasizes that structures, not individuals, are the primary cause of migrant suffering. This passage underscores the impact of capitalism on healthcare professionals, who are forced to see as many patients as possible to keep their practices economically viable. This pressure hinders their ability to provide quality care.

“Health care professionals cannot be blamed for their acontextuality.”

Current models of healthcare emphasize the biotechnical aspects of practicing medicine like blood and radiological tests. Doctors and nurses aren’t trained to see the social determinants of illness or to hear them when they speak to patients. Even clinicians inclined to address these factors are hindered from doing so by the pressures of the capitalist system.

“Clinicians often blame the sickness on the patient.”

Racial, ethnic, and citizenship hierarchies impact how clinicians view Indigenous patients. Holmes found that Triqui people were often blamed for their ailments. For example, Abelino’s doctor told him that his knee hurt because he squatted incorrectly while picking berries.

“‘There are plenty of kids in the high school who are proud to be Mexican and flaunt that. Some kids in the high school think they bring it on themselves because they don’t just make the choice to be like the white kids.’”

This quote is about ethnic difference and intolerance. The speaker is a teacher from a high school in the Skagit Valley area. Mexican students at the school faced threats, harassment, and violence from their white peers. As this teacher noted, some kids blamed the Mexican students for their misfortunes because they refused to conform to the dominant white culture.

“Area residents and local newspapers used metaphors of ‘cleaning up the neighborhood’ to indicate a project that functionally displaced those considered Mexican from their area by shutting down a labor camp, a day laborer pickup spot and an apartment building occupied primarily by Mexican migrants or U.S. Latinos.”

The stereotype of the “dirty Mexican” is prevalent across the US. As Holmes observes, migrant pickers toil in fields, which is dirty work. Moreover, their uninsulated shacks coat all their belongings in dust. Locals in the Skagit Valley area used this unavoidable aspect of farm work to justify the displacement of migrant workers from a camp, a pickup spot for day laborers, and an apartment building. The metaphor used to spearhead this displacement campaign, “cleaning up the neighborhood,” contrasts the dirtiness and disorder of Mexican people against the cleanliness and order of white people.

“‘You can do anything you want in this country. Anyone can be anything they want to. There is no excuse in this country. There are no barriers. Nothing holds you back except for you. You have no one to blame if you don’t become the best you could except for you.’”

The speaker of this quote is a white man who lives near the Tanaka Brothers Farm. His claim that anyone can succeed in America through desire and hard work is both common and false. The trope of rugged individualism ignores structural racism, poverty, and other factors preventing people from improving their material and social plight. In short, this view implies a reductive and acontextual explanation that blames migrants for their own suffering.

“In essence, the migrant body is made to betray itself.”

Ethnic differences and body positions during work are used to naturalize, normalize, and justify the suffering of Indigenous farmworkers. Triqui pickers are seen to belong at the bottom of the labor hierarchy because of their short stature and ability to endure. Triqui pickers internalize these hierarchies and take pride in their ability to do hard, back breaking work. In other words, their bodies are made to turn on themselves.

“Though I was paid by the farm as a berry picker each week, the bank personnel repeatedly tried to escort me to the front of the line when I arrived on payday with my Triqui companions.”

This quote lays bare the inequalities facing migrant farmworkers in the US. Bank personnel in the Skagit Valley area served white customers before the pickers, who were forced to stand in line for hours to cash their paychecks. Although Holmes had the same job as the Triqui pickers, his white, English-speaking body engendered different treatment.

“‘Theorists and methodologists—get to work!’”

This quote is attributed to the American sociologist C. Wright Mills, who urged scholars to devise new ways of theorizing and approaching the study of marginalized people. Holmes takes up this challenge, combining ethnography, field interviews, and social theory to denaturalize social inequities in US farming.

“Many people who use the words immigration and migration assume freely chosen movement between distinct and disconnected places and communities.”

One of the myths Holmes debunks is voluntary labor migration. For Triqui workers, migrating from San Miguel, Oaxaca, Mexico to Washington State’s Skagit Valley in the US wasn’t voluntary—it was necessary for survival. The poverty they faced in Mexico was more dangerous than crossing the US-Mexico border—and less desirable than doing the hard, dirty work of picking berries.