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Posts Tagged ‘farmworkers’

History Channel Celebrates Cesar Chavez

4:32 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Activism| TV| history · Comments Off

28 Mar 2006

This Friday, March 31, marks the birthday of legendary farmworkers’ rights leader Cesar Chavez. To commemorate the date, The History Channel en Español will be featuring a documentary about Chavez’s life, called “La lucha en el campo” (”The Fight in the Fields”):

The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers’ Struggle, produced, directed and written by Rick Tejada-Flores and Ray Telles, covers the full arc of Cesar Chavez’s life.

A social history using archival footage, newsreel, and interviews with Ethel Kennedy, former California Governor Jerry Brown, Dolores Huerta, and Chavez’s brother, sister, son and daughter, among others, the documentary traces the remarkable contributions of Chavez and others involved in this epic struggle for safer working conditions, equality, and better pay for farm workers.

The compelling two-hour documentary, which originally premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, garnered numerous awards including a CINE Golden Eagle, a Gold Apple from the National Educational Media Network, an ALMA award from National Council of La Raza, and was also named Best Documentary at the San Antonio CineFestival.

It’s nice to see cable networks such as HBO and The History Channel honoring Latino history for once. I’m used to having to rely on PBS for that.

The film airs on The History Channel en Español this Friday at 8:00 pm EST – 5:00 pm PST

Via / Yahoo! Finance

Guest worker programs debated

12:04 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · California| Immigration| Labor| Politics · 1 Comment

2 Mar 2006

The San Francisco Chronicle talks today about California senator Dianne Feinstein’s beef with the current guest worker bill:

“I do not believe you can have a guest worker come for three years, renew it for another three years, bring their family, settle in, put children in schools, and then they’re going to turn around and go back at the end of six years,” Feinstein said. “It doesn’t happen. They disappear. And that’s the problem. That’s the rub. That’s the magnet.”

So Feinstein is splitting with her party, and wants immigrants to truly be “guests”…meaning they’ll leave forever at some point.

Justice for the Braceros

4:15 pm By Maegan La Mala · Activism · Comments Off

29 Nov 2005

A labor agreement between Mexico and the United States allowed nearly 2.5 million Mexican workers to come to this country beginning in 1942 to alleviate the severe labor shortages caused by World War II. Under the agreement, the workers were to contribute 10 percent of their paychecks to a pension fund, but the money, estimated in the millions of dollars, disappeared in bureaucratic mazes.

It seems that there will never be justice for the braceros. It seems that the guilty parties are simply waiting for this generation to pass away in order to wipe their hands clean of the thievery that was committed against these former farmworkers. Who kept the money that was due to the braceros? Was it the Mexican government? Was it the U.S. government? Was it the farming companies that exploited this source of cheap labor? Most likely it was a combination of all three.

Last month, the Mexican government finally issued rules on how it would distribute a newly created fund designated to compensate workers for a pension fund that never materialized: in payments of 38,000 pesos (about $3,600 U.S.) to each former bracero.

Understandably many braceros have refused this payment from the Mexican government stating that what they are owed is much more. It’s disgraceful how these workers continue to be treated.

Via / Monterey Herald

Poisonous Pesticide Clouds

10:35 am By Maegan La Mala · Health| Justice · Comments Off

24 Nov 2005

After a pesticide cloud drifted over the town of Earlimart in 1999, sickening 250 people, the state fined Wilbur-Ellis, the company found liable in the case, $150,000, but since then, hundreds of people have been poisoned by pesticide drifts in Kern County. The incidents often occur in the same towns and involve the same companies.

In the Central Valley you see the pesticides being sprayed everywhere, whether it’s by tractor or through the air with a crop duster. On many occasions I will be driving through back roads lined with orange groves and suddenly the car windshield will get sprayed with moisture. You then realize that you have just driven through a pesticide cloud or at least the residue of a recent spraying.

Farmworkers face Exploitation in Salinas Valley

4:02 pm By Maegan La Mala · Immigration| society · Comments Off

23 Nov 2005

It’s ironic that some farm workers live in the “salad bowl of the world,” powered by a 3 billion dollar agricultural industry yet they suffer from all types of socioeconomic ills from high poverty, to high unemployment, to poor housing. Farm workers face exploitative conditions everywhere they look.

Farm workers struggle earning poor wages with little or no benefits while working long hours. In the Salinas Valley area where housing is much more expensive, farm workers face the reality of having to pay in some cases upwards of $600 a month to rent a garage space to live in. In some cases some pay as much as 40 percent of their monthly earnings for housing. Aside from exploitative rent prices many have to worry about paying off debt accured by coming to the United States.

Here I am today, paying little by little, the debt with the coyote and trying to send something to my family that was left behind. But it is not easy, because the pay barely makes ends meet…In a good week, we earn about $200.

Via / La Opinión

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