My home in Visalia, California, is at the top of lists like The Best Places to Live. The worst and least educated areas in the country are the worst..
California’s Central Valley, one the most productive agricultural regions in the world faces serious social, economic and environmental challenges. It is also impacted by pollution from three major industries: oil, dairy, and agriculture.
California agriculture is dependent on Latino and immigrant labour. Farmworkers and employers have had an unbalanced relationship since 1935 when they were exempted from the National Labor Relations Act. California farmworkers were not eligible for overtime until a 2016 law was passed.
This essay is also available Spanish
It is not surprising that farmworkers are still exposed to pesticides and continue to work under dangerous conditions. Pesticide drift, where pesticide sprays or dust move beyond the fields on which they were applied, can pose a danger to farmworkers, their families as well as their communities. A recent study revealed that pesticide drift is a serious problem. Children’s brain tumors were linked to exposure to pesticides that contained carcinogens during pregnancy in women who lived within 4000m of the application.
However, the Valley is also home of environmental justice advocates.
Before the term was invented, the Valley’s communities are home to the first environmental justice movements. The Valley saw environmental justice fights as early as 1960s. Signature of the first United Farmworkers union contracts to establish worker-led health committees and to restrict the use pesticides like DDT before its official ban.
The UFW is the longest-standing farmworker union in America. It was established in Delano (California) in 1962 as the National Farm Workers Association. They were part of the broader Multi-racial Farmworker Movement, which initiated the Delano Grape StrikeThe 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of boycotts to address public concerns about pesticide exposure.
I have interviewed former UFW organizers and am a sociologist. Some of their environmental justice work went beyond their UFW days. Their stories would have shown the connection between UFW and environmental injustice, I thought. I was instead confronted with complex life histories and some former organizers who rejected my assertions that UFW and environmental justice were interconnected.
It is not surprising that former organizers, farmworker communities, and others are skeptical about environmentalism. Major environmentalist organizations have a history partnering with xenophobic groups to blame immigrants in America’s environmental problems.
Despite not being called UFW leaders, they were the largest environmental justice leaders. They adopted a definition for the environment that was people-centered.
Lupe Martinez (69), was first a UFW volunteer back in 1960 and then an organizing member in 1982. She retired as assistant director at the Center for Race Poverty and the Environment. I met him in his old office in Delano. His office was covered in memorabilia from past union elections as well as recent victories for environmental justice.
The term environmental justice was not invented until much later. Martinez said that the farmworker movement had already started this, but it’s not what it was called.
I learned that my preconceived ideas about environmental justice had to be put aside and that I had to listen to the stories of people.
From Earth Day to local churches
Roberto Bustos, a former UFW organizer.
Gilbert Padilla (94) was a cofounder of United Farmworkers. We met at his Fresno home and then took a walk around Malaga, an unincorporated area outside Fresno. Purity Oil Sales originally owned the Superfund site. It contained millions upon millions of gallons worth of used oil. The first order to clean it was in 1974. Subsequent investigations revealed arsenic and mercury, lead, benzene and other chemicals..
Padilla was the speaker at the 1970 Earth Day event. Padilla and Esther, a former UFW member, left the union a decade after the event. They worked for the Sequoia Health Clinic at the time and worked to relocate residents from the toxic Malaga area that was later declared a Superfund site. House meetings, community-initiated surveys (biomarkers to measure stillbirths and cancer) were used to pressure Senator Art Torres.
Despite Padillas dedication to protecting communities from polluting, during and following his UFW days. He has never been a supporter of environmental justice or environmentalists.
I asked Gilbert whether he remembered the person who organized the first Earth Day, invited him or if he could recall his speech. He replied that he spoke every day. We would speak in every church and anywhere we could.
Padilla’s response shows how former members of UFW viewed Earth Day and traditional environmentalismas as a strategic and fleeting moment for recruiting, not as a unifying movement to sustain involvement.
I am an organizer
Dia de Muertos at the Comision Honorifica Mexicana American Community Center, Porterville, California (Credit: Rodrigo Alatriste-Diaz)
I felt a similar resistance when I interviewed Ben Maddock, an UFW worker and environmental justice advocate, in early 2018. He lives in Shafter in California. I was able to see his tall, muscular figure in his stories despite his limitations due to his service in the Marines and his work in tile setting. I also remember him as one of Cesar Chaz’s security detail. Maddock was an organizer who helped to negotiate and manage union contracts all the way to Florida.
Maddock and his wife sat at the kitchen table, and I asked them about their union days, pesticides and the environmentalist label.
My dad was an orange farmer. He used all these pesticides to grow a crop. I’m an organizer. Maddock stated. I like to look at the bad and try to change them. I don’t know what I believe. [in environmentalism]Pesticides are a threat as long as they are used. I look at organic products on the market and it looks the same as the organic stuff.
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His suspicion of organic farming is not unfounded if you consider the fields around his home, which include organic farms. Recycled wastewater from oil drilling can be used for irrigation.I was left feeling that Maddock had a special hatred for environmentalists.
UFW organizers were committed to social justice and wanted to improve the lives first and foremost of farmworkers. Their ideas and work regarding social justice could not have been reduced to a single issue such as poverty, the environment, pesticides, or any other.
Maddock died in July. Chris Schneider, 65, a mutual friend and former UFW organizer, shared a story about Maddock he had read on Facebook. The post described Maddock’s role as chief negotiator for the Coca Cola (Minute Maid), contract. Florida’s black, Mexican, and/or white citrus workers. The final contract agreement provided for wage increases to be lowered in exchange for a permanent ban of the pesticide Temik (Aldicarb), which is a neurotoxin with known acute symptoms (nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness and headaches). It was recently reintroduced and rebanned from Florida citrus cultivation.
Maddock was wrong. He was an important player in environmental justice for farmworker community, regardless of whether he realized it.
Womens role
Sandra Garcia, 62 (co-founder and director of Campesinas Unidas del Valle de San Joaquin) is my conversation at her Poplar home. Her parents were Huelgistas (strikers), with the UFW during Guimarra strike. This was a labor strike against Guimarra Vineyards Corp. which is California’s largest table grape producer and one of the first companies to strike, be boycotted and sign a union agreement in 1970.
Garcia is currently a leader in several environmental justice groups in the Valley. Garcia, a former farmworker, recalled how before bathrooms were required in the fields and when crops weren’t long enough to provide privacy, women would gather together and hold objects to provide privacy. To ensure their daughters’ safety and privacy, mothers would need to take breaks and walk them to the fields for sanitation.
Garcia shared with me a craft, a plastic pen that had a beautiful flower and leaves made of recycled cloth and plastic. She explained that Campesinas Unidas members gather used decorations from quinceaeras (a celebration similar to sweet 16), and repurpose them as pens. These pens are then sold for grassroots fundraising.
Sandra’s field experiences, and the innovative funding strategies of her organization, show how women and cultures influence farmworkers’ political practices. Sandra describes her ongoing efforts [translated]:
They are our priority [women farmworkers]To find out where resources are, each community has its own resources. We need to be able to identify each resource and how to use them to make their community safer for their family.
Environmental justice advocates believe that chemicals are not only dangerous to the environment, but also to their physical and psychological safety. Sandra’s personal experience shows that the criminalization and sexual assault of immigrant farmworkers and workers are top priorities for communities and the environment.
Legacy of environmental justice in the Valley
The Farmworker Movement is being rediscovered and its legacy in environmental justice are a reminder about the long struggle to end farmworker exploitation.
The UFW’s environmental justice legacy in the Valley can be seen today in the organizations built or touched upon by former organizers and participants. Former organizers who retire leave behind a list of EJ organizations that they helped to build or contribute to, such as the Central California Environmental Justice Network, the Center on Race, Poverty and The Environment.
The legacy lives on in the advocates. Josefina Flores (89) was the first person I met at the 2015 March For Real Climate Leadership in Oakland.Josefina and other UFW members were beaten, shot, arrested, and taken into custody during the Delano Grape Strike. Today, ex-participants like Ruth Martinez and Flores, both members of The Center on Race, Poverty and The Environment, are common attendees at environmental justice rallies around the Valley. Their perseverance and stories inspire the next wave.
We can only understand the Valley’s environmental justice by listening to the stories and experiences of those who are not environmentalists.
Rodrigo Alatriste-Diaz is aCurrently, he is a UC Merceds Community and Labor Center researcher and an Agents of Change fellow. His dissertation research examines how class and racial relations manifest in health policy and environmental politics in California’s San Joaquin Valley. You can reach him via Twitter at @ralatristediaz.
This essay was created by the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice fellowship. Agents of Change empowers scientists and academics from historically marginal backgrounds to reimagine solutions that will benefit the planet.
Banner photo: Lupe Martnez
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