From the perspective of my parents’ union, I come from a long line of wealthy, middle-class, white Protestant Americans on my mother’s side, and Chicano Catholic farm and manual labor working-class poor on my father’s side. One could reason that how I understand difference, or my own dis-union, is one of race, ethnicity or even religion.

However, sweating and bleeding in the construction trade and as a field laborer, I learned that the embodied and material difference between humans is not race, nationality or religious difference – despite people’s insistence on this as the basis of oppression. Instead, the ache in my back and the smell and taste of sweat and blood from physically demanding, poorly compensated work illuminates the fact that our most basic needs—food and shelter—are made available to us by the labor of the economically marginalized.

This paper assesses the “state of our Union” from the perspective of the farm workers who put food on our table, with the knowledge that it is presented to those who do not necessarily, as I no longer do, work with the poor in the fields.[1] Given that readers, generally speaking, likely do not work in the fields with the poor, this essay seeks to call attention to issues of space, class identity, and work as sites in need of liberation.[2]

This liberation project will hold as its locus the lives of farm laborers, who represent all those who exist on the margins of our society. In order for liberation to be realized, the marginalized workers, the land, the owners, and consumers must be lead into partnership, into the fields to work shoulder to shoulder for the common good.[3] For the sake of coherency, this liberation project consists of three steps. First, I will provide a community analysis outlining the state of farm workers in the United States. Second, I will offer a new theoretical framework around three aspects of this liberation project: space, identity, and work. Finally, I will suggest how the Union, the Academy, and the Church can move forward in this Christian, liberative, practical theological assessment of our Union.

The Economist published an article entitled “Migrant Farm Workers: Field of Tears,” which followed the life of the Vegas, a family who traveled from Oaxaca, Mexico to the United States. During the family’s first few attempts to cross the border, U.S. border agents tied them up, took them to a cold jail and made them sleep on the bare floor for nights. Once enough migrant workers had been arrested to fill a bus, they were driven back across the border to Mexico, only to be captured again by bandits. Held at gunpoint, their food was stolen and they were stripped naked. Because the Vegas speak an indigenous language, they were voiceless on both sides of the order.

Despite these setbacks, they made it to Oxnard, California, where strawberries abound. Arriving out of season, the Vegas could not work so they dwelled as strangers in a foreign land, taking refuge on the streets or in a doghouse. It was a life better than watching their son die because of a “flood that carried rubbish, dead animals and disease through canals of Oaxaca.” After their first few paychecks, the Vegas moved north and continued to pick “la fruta del diablo,” the devil’s fruit.

How many others live on the margins of our Union? The United States Department of Agriculture briefing, “Rural Labor and Education: Farm Labor,” notes that those farm workers born in the United States or Puerto Rico account for twenty-nine percent of the total farm working population. Around sixty-eight percent of the (just over) one million total farm workers in the United States were born in Mexico,[4] while ninety-seven percent of farm managers and owners identify as white.[5]

It would be very simple to stop the analysis here and investigate the meaning of national and racial identities as it pertains to farm workers in the United States. However, farm workers like the Vegas (or my own family) do not migrate to work in the United States because they want to be “white” or American. The USDA briefing reflects this sentiment, beginning not with the racial or national identification of farm workers, but rather by noting that hired farm workers continue to be one of the most economically disadvantaged groups in the United States.[6]

Closer to home, National Agricultural Statistics Service reports that in 2010 the production of “raw” goods –the actual fruits and vegetables before processing– in California was valued at over $3.5 Billion.[7] A report released in November of 2011 suggests the documented workers in California’s agricultural market earned on average $10.20 an hour, working close to forty-five hours a week. Of the estimated 193,000 workers, 157,000 expected to be employed 150 days or more.[8]

These statistics do not take into account those people who do not have documentation, which in some estimates might add close to another 100,000 workers to the fray. The report also notes that California, while providing almost twenty-two percent of the agricultural production to the United States, ranks near the bottom in terms of living wage.[9] This communal analysis grows more troubling when gender is taken into account. Women are some of the most economically disadvantaged farm workers in the Union. A report by the United States Department of Labor found that gender was a discriminating factor in annual personal income. Women farm workers earned between $2,500 and $5,000 a year, while men earned $5,000 to $7,500.[10]

The farm working poor have a face, and it is not the pretty labels on the bags of produce or even the familiar face of Cesar Chavez. It is the hidden face of economically disadvantaged women.[11]

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Photo from Wikimedia Commons by Charles O’Rear.