West Coast Observer: American Hypocrisy

By William Silveira

In the New York Times article “A Former Farmworker on American Hypocrisy” (May 6, 2020), Alfredo Corchado accuses our government of hypocrisy when it says workers formerly considered “illegal” are now “essential.” Much of what Corchado discusses was known to me. I grew up in Tulare and have resided in Tulare County my whole life. My father was a farm owner with 400 acres of farm land south of Tulare. At the time I was growing up, we raised sugar beets, cotton, milo, barley, and alfalfa. We also had pigs. My brother and I irrigated these crops and cut, mowed, and raked the alfalfa. In our spare time we were expected to help out with the pigs – fence maintenance, health care, and feeding.
    We attended a rural grammar school (grades K-8th). The school had 300-400 pupils. Most of them were children of farm workers who had put down roots in a poor housing development north of the school – between the City of Tulare and the school itself. There were a smaller number whose parents still followed the crop cycles. These students would cycle in and out of the school according to the crop seasons. Some of them would talk about Yuma, Arizona. This was a place unknown to me. I know now that it was a place in which there were jobs in fields planted to melons and vegetables that would grow in the winter season when they couldn’t be grown where I was. All of these classmates whose parents moved with crop cycles were Mexican-Americans.

    Most of the children who lived in the housing tracts north of the school were the offspring of people who had migrated here from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas. Some people referred to them as “okies.” Some of their parents were employed on local farms, and when employment was available whole families would work in the fields – hoeing weeds, thinning crops, irrigating, and picking crops. In the late 1940s, this dynamic changed as mechanical cotton harvesters were introduced. With these machines, the cotton could be picked fairly rapidly, and one man operating a cotton picking machine could do the work of many field workers picking the cotton by hand.
    Prior to the introduction of the mechanical cotton picker, the streets of Tulare would be crowded with people on Saturday afternoons, for the pickers were paid on Saturdays and they would take their pay to go shopping. Within two to three years, these crowds disappeared. People were no longer being paid to pick cotton by hand. But still there was a demand for hand labor in fruit orchards and vineyards – particularly oranges – and farther afield, on the valley’s west side working in vegetable fields. And in southern Tulare County there were table grapes.
    We were aware of the “bracero” program, which ended in 1964. Some argued that it deprived Americans of jobs. Studies have shown it did not. But the 1960s were the era in which Cesar Chavez created the United Farm Workers Union. The union people did not want foreign (Mexican) workers competing for jobs in the field. (A work force that returned to Mexico for part of the year would obviously be hard to recruit and maintain in unions.)
    Much ink was spilled in the press. Growers claimed that crops would go unpicked and that they could not afford high union wages and benefits. The UFW claimed that the growers could well afford to pay higher wages, but would not do so. While the UFW was initially successful in unionizing some farms, over time they were unable to unionize the majority of the field workers. Despite the ending of the bracero program workers still entered California from south of the border to work in agriculture, and in other industries as well.

Alfredo Corchado

I have gone into this sketchy history (much, much more could be said) because I think it is helpful to put context to Corchado’s article. Corchado is right when he accuses our government of hypocrisy when it says workers formerly considered “illegal” are now “essential.” They’ve always been essential. And they are essential because the work that they do helps put food on our tables.
    Whether the Trump administration wants to call undocumented farm workers “essential” workers now does not make them more or less so. The large growers are allies of Trump, and his pronouncements aren’t going to alienate them. The word “essential” is a fig leaf covering the hypocrisy of building border walls while allowing the growers to hire as many undocumented workers as they need to operate their farms.
    We have always had a strange relationship with the people we expect to work in our fields and perform other manual labor. The Chinese were welcomed when we were building our railroads. They were reviled and excluded when the railroads were completed. When we acquired the Philippine Islands from Spain, we recruited many of their people to work in the grape fields of Tulare and Kern Counties, as well as on sugar cane plantations in Hawaii. Once here, many people developed prejudicial feelings against them. When the dust bowl and depression drove thousands of people from the dust bowl states to California, we actively recruited them to work in the fields, but also reviled them as “ignorant and lazy okies.” I have mentioned this to point out that antipathies against field workers transcended racial lines and thus should be viewed as a different form of bigotry.
    Corchado discusses the current experiences of Mexican farm worker families. And he makes some sensible proposals for remediating the present situation for the undocumented farm worker. The problem is that despite the wringing of hands and the calls for change, it is doubtful that there will be change. There is an element of racism in our attitudes about farm workers, but it goes beyond that. We had bigoted attitudes about “okies,” who had deeper roots in America than many California farm owners.
    As far back as the 19th century we have wanted to have it both ways: we wanted people to do the work that needed to be done, but when it was done we wanted them out of sight and out of mind.

    This dynamic is not likely to change, but not because of politics in Sacramento or Washington or even because of the pandemic. As usual, the change will come in the form of strong economic motivators. Hand labor is still necessary for table grapes and oranges, but not nearly to the degree it once was, owing to mechanization and development of varieties that lend themselves to mechanization. More and more land is being planted to nut crops, particularly almonds and walnuts. The harvesting of these crops is now heavily mechanized. The mechanization of cotton eliminated the need for hand labor in that crop – and eliminated the scenes of strife and hardship chronicled by Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath.
    The vegetable crops in which the Corchado family toiled are still there, but I wonder for how much longer. Water is in short supply, and the continual expansion of nut crops is taking up more and more of it. Out in the west side, where Del Bosque farms, there is a very real and immediate water shortage. Vegetable winter crops can be grown in Arizona and northern Mexico. They can be quickly frozen – ready for use in American kitchens. (Some say that the quick freezing of vegetables causes them to retain more nutritional elements than maintaining them as fresh produce in the super markets.)
    Unfortunately, our politics are heavily polarized. The current situation regarding undocumented workers gives Trump and his cohorts a ready tool to excuse doing nothing. He can build walls and call undocumented farm workers “essential workers.” They will be “essential” so long as there is demand for their work by Trump supporters. Formerly, their labor was deemed essential to allegedly keep crops from rotting in the fields. Now, the coronavirus gives another handy excuse to maintain the status quo. This stalemate will be resolved by the fast-moving economic dynamics of farming in California. Water (or lack of it) and drought will cause far greater changes than Congress or state legislatures.

Copyright © 2020 by William Silveira