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

Holmes’s embodied ethnography of Triqui migrants uncovers the structures that negatively impact Indigenous farm laborers from San Miguel. His bodily experiences not only inform his analysis but also convey, in a visceral way, the challenges facing undocumented farmworkers in the US. Holmes transcribes excerpts from his field notes, which describe, in the first-person, what it was like to travel, live, and work alongside Triqui migrants. In addition to lending immediacy to the plight of migrants, these notes present their suffering in an engaging and accessible manner. In the Introduction, for example, Holmes recounts the frightening experience of waiting to cross the US-Mexico border with a group Triqui migrants: “This town scares me. It’s impossible to know which person dressed in dark clothing is an assailant wanting money from easy targets […] I push an empty soda bottle in my pocket above my money, and I feel a bit safer” (12). Later in the Introduction, he writes about his desperation after being detained by US Border Control agents: “I begin to cry, exhausted, imagining life in prison as I wait for the legal system to process my case” (24). Holmes’s experiences while crossing the border, including the journey’s physical impact on his body, mirror those of his Triqui friends, one of whose comments he shares: “He tells me that he suffered a lot crossing the second time. He briefly speaks of blisters and more rattlesnakes […] He shows me the large, popped blisters on his feet and the holes in his socks” (27).

Holmes discusses various social structures that fuel migration and exacerbate the suffering of migrants on US farms. Central among these is the corporatization of US agriculture, a byproduct of capitalism. Global economic structures pressure small farms to reduce costs and increase efficiency, which directly impacts migrant farmworkers. For example, pickers who are paid by the hour at the Tanaka Brothers Farm are regularly underpaid because checkers record the wrong check-in and check-out times on their work cards. The checkers do so not out of spite but because their supervisors instruct them to. Holmes points to NAFTA—a trade agreement that eliminated tariffs on agricultural products but didn’t ban subsidies—as an important cause of labor migration. Corn is the primary crop of Indigenous Mexican farmers. In the US, corn is highly subsidized by the federal government, which allows American farmers and corporations to undercut Indigenous growers: “During my fieldwork in San Miguel, I watched genetically engineered, corporately grown corn from the U.S. Midwest underselling local, family-grown corn in the same village” (25).

In addition to global structures, local hierarchies contribute to the suffering of Triqui people. The Triqui are at the bottom of the social hierarchy in Oaxaca. Ethnic violence has pushed them onto lands that are inhospitable to farming. Holmes’s Triqui friends unanimously cite poverty as their primary reason for migrating to the US. Once on US farms, ethnicity and citizenship hierarchies relegate them to the most difficult and worst-paid jobs, bar them from promotion, and prevent them from taking farm-run English classes. These hierarchies also impact healthcare workers’ perceptions of Triqui migrants and the quality of care they receive.

The problems of the Triqui seem insurmountable, but Holmes ends his book with concrete advice for those who want to enact change. His recommendations are two-pronged: 1) Campaign for policy change. 2) Change hearts and minds. The first approach includes lobbying elected officials for immigration reform. This might entail offering migrant workers a path toward legal residency or citizenship, or allowing agricultural workers to enter the US legally and to remain in the country for the duration of the harvest season. The second approach is particularly well-suited to scholars and their readers. Holmes recommends changing societal attitudes through actions that counteract symbolic violence. Scholarly publications and conferences, newspaper articles, and community events can disrupt the social hierarchies that normalize, naturalize, and internalize the mistreatment of migrants. Holmes urges social scientists and their readers to join organizations that lobby on behalf of the oppressed. Anthropologists have traditionally seen themselves as detached observers who objectively gather facts to understand humans across the globe, past and present. Holmes argues that this traditional approach falls short. Studying suffering without also trying to alleviate it is both undesirable and unethical. For him, the only responsible course of action is advocacy at the local, national, and international levels.