Mexican Agricultural Workers Research Articles

Associations of Heat Exposure with Acute Kidney Injury and Kidney Function in Mexican Agricultural Workers

Associations of Heat Exposure with Acute Kidney Injury and Kidney Function in Mexican Agricultural Workers

Managing the Migration: Latino Intermediaries and the Expansion of United States Migratory Labor from World War I through the Bracero Program

Abstract This article charts the migration of ethnic Mexican agricultural workers to the Midwest in the years following the United States’ entrance into World War I, the formalization of an interstate labor recruitment apparatus, and the role of ethnic intermediaries. The introduction of the term “Latino intermediary” here is used to describe the Mexican American truckers and crew leaders who most directly upheld the Midwest's agricultural industry and labor regime. From the end of World War I through the end of the Bracero Program, Latino intermediaries straddled the line between serving the interests of other ethnic Mexican migrant workers, growers, and themselves. While some intermediaries developed profitable business operations, their success often came at the expense of other Latino migrant agricultural workers. Examining the critical role of Latino intermediaries in sustaining Midwestern agribusiness deepens our understanding of how migration from the Southwest to the Midwest was managed and how Latinos negotiated emerging tensions of class and ethnicity.

Rethinking border enforcement, permanent and circular migration

Canonical models of migration feature border enforcement as a strategy to contain undocumented immigration by effectively exacting a mobility cost. This paper revisits the role of border enforcement policy in a task-based model of the labor market where employers simultaneously hire circular migrants to take temporary tasks at low wages, in addition to permanent and native workers who perform complementary tasks at the efficiency wage. We show that stricter border enforcement is effectively a tax on temporary employment, and as such it incentivizes the reallocation of work along the task spectrum. Employers' dependence on low-wage transient work force diminishes, while more migrants prefer permanent migration, with labor market tightness consequences that favor both native and migrant workers. We confirm the empirical implication of this finding, by investigating the pattern of spousal reunion among Mexican agricultural workers in the United States subsequent to major border enforcement reforms in the 1990's.

The increasing toll of racism and discrimination on California agricultural workers and their families under the Trump administration

Over 800,000 Mexican agricultural workers are employed in California each year, of which approximately 400,000 are estimated to be undocumented immigrants. Previous studies have found President Trump to be distinct in his anti-immigrant rhetoric and explicit verbal attacks of immigrants and refugees, which predicts hostile community attitudes towards immigrants and minorities. We convened 19 focus groups (FG) in diverse regions of California to gather information from Latina/o agriculture workers on the potential impact(s) of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and immigration policy on this population. Widespread racism and discrimination were overwhelmingly noted in all FG sessions. Participants reported being the targets of increasingly hostile behavior, including hate crimes, that they attributed to anti-immigration rhetoric. Therefore, participants also reported an increasing sense of fear and psychological distress that led them to avoid community participation. Perceptions of racist and intentionally harmful policies contributed to reduced interactions with healthcare facilities and prompted both documented and undocumented participants to withdraw themselves and their children from public programs. For FG participants, the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and immigration policy severely impacted their community resulting in profound negative impacts on their economic well-being, education, and physical and emotional health.

Capital espacial entre los trabajadores agrícolas mexicanos en contextos de trabajo no libre en Canadá

En el artículo se examina el capital espacial adquirido por los trabajadores agrícolas mexicanos en Canadá como un activo que puede brindarles un poder o una influencia en contextos de trabajo no libre. Se propone pensar el mercado laboral agrícola como un campo bourdiano. Se recurre a un enfoque cualitativo, apoyado en cinco entrevistas individuales y dos colectivas efectuadas en 2011 en granjas y espacios públicos en la zona periférica de la Región de Montreal, Quebec. Fragmentos de las entrevistas permiten observar el espacio como sitio de conflicto y como un tipo de capital que confiere a los trabajadores la capacidad de agencia para enfrentarse a las relaciones de dominación y subordinación del “campo del trabajo temporal agrícola migrante en Canadá”, así como al aislamiento y exclusión socioespacial. También se observan otras formas de capital como el lingüístico y el social, los cuales permiten generar y elevar el capital espacial.

Shifting from Village-Based Networks to Locally Generated Networks: Undocumented Mexican Agricultural Workers Who Use/Used Hard Drugs

Hardships that face transmigrants working in agriculture include the potential for drug use. Reliant on village-based networks that facilitate border crossing and developing a plan for a destination within this country, transmigrants who try new drugs/alcohol and/or continue on accustomed drugs/alcohol are facilitated in these endeavors through locally generated networks as alternative forms of access and support. Seven cases of undocumented men from Mexico are reviewed to show how use of illicit drugs is minimally affected by economic success and time in the United States, or village-based networks that first facilitated entry into this country. Prior conditions, especially childhood difficulties and search for socioeconomic autonomy, precipitate new and/or continuing drug use within the United States on this side of the border, where both forms of drug use are facilitated by locally generated networks.

From Ephemeral to Enduring

From 2005 to 2009 the National Museum of American History embarked on one of its most ambitious collecting projects, focused on documenting experiences around the Bracero Program, the largest guest worker program in American History. This article focuses on the dilemmas of documenting memory through oral history for the Bracero History Archive and the reception of the National Museum of American History’s exhibit, Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program, 1942–1964. The present day political and social context in which these oral histories were collected left indelible marks on how the program is remembered. The retelling of bracero history also reveals contemporary concerns with the role that Mexican agricultural workers play in American society and sheds light on the national dilemma of immigration reform.

Labour militancy deferred: racial state interventions and the California farm worker struggle

This article explains how the US’s employment of racial state projects directly affected efforts to unionise farm workers in California – the 1942 Bracero Program which imported Mexican agricultural workers into the US Southwest, and Japanese internment, which forcibly moved Japanese people from their homes in US Pacific coast states to internment camps situated throughout the country. Both projects decimated the momentum and militancy of the farm worker movement. Thus, the projects created a period of suspended social movement activity in which farm labour organisers directed their energies away from confrontation with growers and towards confrontations with the state. The state’s emergence as a central actor in the farm labour struggle managed to exploit the differences in terms of land-ownership/class and citizenship rights between groups of workers: ‘white’ Americans, Mexican Americans, Japanese, Filipino and Braceros – non-citizen Mexican workers brought in on a temporary basis. All of which weakened the capacity for joint action – until the mid-1960s.

Practices in Pesticide Handling and the Use of Personal Protective Equipment in Mexican Agricultural Workers

ABSTRACT Practices related to the safe handling of pesticides and use of personal protective equipment (PPE) are largely unknown among agricultural workers in developing countries. The authors obtained information from 99 Mexican agricultural workers (35 women and 64 men) who answered questions on sociodemographic data, agricultural practices, use of pesticides, use of PPE, and risk perception. As expected, men handled pesticides more frequently than women (67% versus 20%). The workers carried out several agricultural tasks, as is customary in the case of fieldworkers who (1) work in small agricultural enterprises; use a great number of pesticide products (59 commercial brands of pesticides, 33 active ingredients, and 20 chemical families); (2) use mostly manual application equipment; (3) have a low rate of correct usage of PPE (2%), which does not vary according to the education level, the time of year, or the risk perception; and (4) have insufficient hygienic practices. In addition, storage of pesticide products and application equipment at home is frequent among this group of workers (42%), and provides a significant source of para-occupational exposure for the workers' families. These results show the need to develop prevention programs to reduce risks posed by pesticides to agricultural workers and their families.

Jim Norris . North for the Harvest: Mexican Workers, Growers, and the Sugar Beet Industry . St. Paul : Minnesota Historical Society Press . 2009 . Pp. xi, 223. $22.95.

This book attempts to provide equal coverage to Mexican sugar beet workers (betabeleros), the sugar beet industry, and the farmers who contracted with the industry and employed the workers. This is not the first book that treats any of these subjects. Indeed the historiography on the rise of the sugar beet as a supplement or replacement for the ubiquitous sugar cane product is extensive. Nor is this book the first to treat Mexican agricultural workers in the northern Midwest. Dennis Nodín Valdés in his groundbreaking work Al Norte: Agricultural Workers in the Great Lakes Region, 1917–1970 (1990) pioneered this territory of history. Jim Norris embarks on a unique approach to the topic by carefully weaving the story of a triad that emerged in Minnesota's Red River Valley as the sugar beet market boomed in the latter nineteenth and continued into the twentieth century in a roller coaster ride of busts and booms. The need to profit from the revolutionary technology that extracted sugar from beets forged a symbiotic relationship among farmers, Mexicans workers, and sugar processors, primarily the American Crystal Sugar Company.

Locational Choices of the Legal and Illegal: The Case of Mexican Agricultural Workers in the U.S.

This paper examines relationships between legal and illegal farmworker migration from Mexico and state-level labor market, agricultural, demographic, and public policy variables. The study uses a nationally representative farmworker survey providing direct legal status data. Consistent with previous literature, results indicate that personal and community networks are primary determinants of locational choices. Conversely, border enforcement is negatively related to migration to certain areas. Results are strongest for California migrants and for those with previous migration experience. Potential welfare and education program values are uncorrelated with locations of recent Mexican agricultural workers.

Difficult socio-economic circumstances and the utilization of risk information: A study of Mexican agricultural workers in the USA

Experiences associated with challenging socio-economic conditions may impact on motivational and cognitive processes that influence risk or health information processing. Within a population living in poverty, this study explored whether differences in socio-economic circumstances, and the subjective evaluation of these conditions, were associated with the utilization of new scientific evidence when judging risks. Using an experimental design, scientific information (i.e., strength of risk evidence and chemical persistence) was systematically varied in profiles of hazardous chemicals, and presented to a sample of 437 immigrant farm labourers in the USA. Participants were measured on several socio-economic indicators including education, migrant status, expectations for stable employment and perceptions of economic options. As predicted, when compared to labourers who believed themselves to be less dependent on their employment situation, participants who felt more economically dependent utilized scientific evidence less when judging the risks presented by environmental chemicals. The subjective appraisal of challenging socio-economic conditions may affect risk judgements through the utilization or processing of relevant information. The research is discussed in reference to dual-process theories of reasoning, and public health and agricultural policies that depend on individual actions to minimize the health risks of pesticide exposure.

Using Participatory Research to Build an Effective Type 2 Diabetes Intervention: The Process of Advocacy Among Female Hispanic Farmworkers and Their Families in Southeast Idaho

SUMMARY The Formando Nuestro Futuro/Shaping our Future project (herewith, Formando) is a community-based participative research (CBPR) focused on type 2 diabetes. It was conceptualized and designed by a team of university-based researchers and community health workers (promotores). This article describes the process of establishing a CBPR project such as Formando and the most current results from that project. The Formando project is an example of health-focused advocacy with the Mexican agricultural workers in Southeast (SE) Idaho. To date, 172 qualitative interviews on participants' knowledge about type 2 diabetes have been carried out with farmworker women and their families. Biometric data (heights, weights, blood pressures and fasting blood glucoses) were obtained from participants. Fieldnotes, focus group discussions and key informants were used to triangulate findings. Significant quantitative findings include that age was significantly associated with Body Mass Index (BMI) (p <0.001, Spearman Correlation <0.001) and with elevated fasting blood glucose (p <0.001, Spearman Correlation <0.001). The qualitative interviews were thematically analyzed. Key themes associated with type 2 diabetes in this community were the connection between thinness and vanity, dieting and starvation and the onset of diabetes as a result of, what social scientists call, structural violence within the immigrants' daily lives. We conclude that long-term commitment to using the CBPR approach in these Mexican agricultural communities is an effective way to engage in health research and to establish real and meaningful dialogue with community members.

The interpretation of “culture”: Diverging perspectives on medical provision in rural Montana

Seeking to address evident disparities in health care delivery to minority populations, researchers have developed a framework generally referred to as “cultural competency.” This framework suggests that increasing providers’ knowledge about culturally specific beliefs and behaviors will both assist providers in caring for particular, traditionally underserved groups and enhance the quality of health care delivery for all patients. Meanwhile, a number of critics have challenged the presuppositions of the “culture” concept underlying cultural competency, arguing that such well-intended efforts may merely exacerbate received stereotypes. Despite such criticism, the influence of cultural competency, along with the related categories of cultural sensitivity, cultural humility, cultural proficiency, and cultural awareness, continues to grow in medical schools, governmental agencies, and health care organizations, particularly in the United States. To better assess the varying theoretical and policy claims of proponents and opponents of the cultural competency framework, we undertook a modest qualitative, interview-based investigation. We explored how “culture” is being presented and enacted by Mexican agricultural workers and US health care providers in one rural Montana clinic. While the Mexican agricultural workers in the study emphasized structural dimensions of labor migration as the most relevant factors in shaping patient–provider interactions, the US health care providers tended to focus on the “cultural characteristics” peculiar to their patients. The discrepancy in these assessments serves to extend and complement existing criticism of cultural competency. While our study was limited to one locale with a limited number of participants, its findings highlight the paucity of empirical research in this area and suggest the need to examine the efficacy of cultural competency in settings outside conventional “needs assessment” or “outcome studies” models.

Pesticide Exposure Alters Follicle-Stimulating Hormone Levels in Mexican Agricultural Workers

Organophosphorous pesticides (OPs) are suspected of altering reproductive function by reducing brain acetylcholinesterase activity and monoamine levels, thus impairing hypothalamic and/or pituitary endocrine functions and gonadal processes. Our objective was to evaluate in a longitudinal study the association between OP exposure and serum levels of pituitary and sex hormones. Urinary OP metabolite levels were measured by gas–liquid chromatography, and serum pituitary and sex hormone levels by enzymatic immunoassay and radioimmunoassay in 64 men. A total of 147 urine and blood samples were analyzed for each parameter. More than 80% of the participants had at least one OP metabolite in their urine samples. The most frequent metabolite found was diethylthiophosphate (DETP; 55%), followed by diethylphosphate (DEP; 46%), dimethylthiophosphate (DMTP; 32%), and dimethyldithiophosphate (DMDTP; 31%). However, the metabolites detected at higher concentrations were DMTP, DEP, DMDTP, and dimethylphosphate. There was a high proportion of individuals with follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) concentrations outside the range of normality (48%). The average FSH serum levels were higher during the heavy pesticide spraying season. However, a multivariate analysis of data collected in all periods showed that serum FSH levels were negatively associated with urinary concentrations of both DMTP and DMDTP, whereas luteinizing hormone (LH) was negatively associated with DMTP. We observed no significant associations between estradiol or testosterone serum levels with OP metabolites. The hormonal disruption in agricultural workers presented here, together with results from experimental animal studies, suggests that OP exposure disrupts the hypothalamic–pituitary endocrine function and also indicates that FSH and LH are the hormones most affected.

Organophosphorous pesticide exposure alters sperm chromatin structure in Mexican agricultural workers

Our objective was to evaluate alterations in sperm chromatin structure in men occupationally exposed to a mixture of organophosphorus pesticides (OP) because these alterations have been proposed to compromise male fertility and offspring development. Chromatin susceptibility to in situ acid-induced denaturation structure was assessed by the sperm chromatin structure assay (SCSA). Urinary levels of alkylphosphates (DAP) were used to assess exposure. Diethylthiophosphate (DETP) was the most frequent OP metabolite found in urine samples indicating that compounds derived from thiophosphoric acid were mainly used. Chromatin structure was altered in most samples. About 75% of semen samples were classified as having poor fertility potential (>30% of Percentage of DNA Fragmentation Index [DFI%]), whereas individuals without OP occupational exposure showed average DFI% values of 9.9%. Most parameters of conventional semen analysis were within normality except for the presence of immature cells (IGC) in which 82% of the samples were above reference values. There were significant direct associations between urinary DETP concentrations and mean DFI and SD-DFI but marginally ( P = 0.079) with DFI%, after adjustment for potential confounders, including IGC. This suggests that OP exposure alters sperm chromatin condensation, which could be reflected in an increased number of cells with greater susceptibility to DNA denaturation. This study showed that human sperm chromatin is a sensitive target to OP exposure and may contribute to adverse reproductive outcomes. Further studies on the relevance of protein phosphorylation as a possible mechanism by which OP alter sperm chromatin are required.

"Don't Let Them Make You Feel You Did a Crime": Immigration Law, Labor Rights, and Farmworker Testimony

Now as farmworker women, we're educating ourselves. We're helping other farmworker women to know their rights. We have conferences where we teach women how to defend themselves, how to get legal assistance, how to sue.... We also have conferences on domestic violence, sexual harassment, pesticides, and AIDS (Rothenberg 57). Maria Carmona, one of founders of Women's Leadership Project, illustrates how migrant workers deploy various strategies of resistance through which they struggle against forms of coercion exercised by state and transnational capital. The Farmworker Women's Leadership Project, as well as unions such as United Farm Workers (UFW) and Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), represents strategies of formal, organized opposition. The struggle for a safe working environment, a living wage, and a measure of control over workplace has been at center of migrant laborers' political battles. Yet, these battles are waged not only through picket line, strike, and ballot box but also through production of narratives that articulate forms of oppositional knowledge and identity. Transnational capital generates discursive strategies that create racial, national, and gendered divisions of labor that target specific bodies for specific kinds of work. Producing truth claims, these discourses seek to contain resistance and coerce workers into compliance. In worker testimony, we witness how farm laborers analyze, critique, and resist these discourses. Through narrative, workers engage in struggle over truth claims produced by power. Migrant laborers not only generate oppositional knowledge about workplace and their labor, but also redefine the family and the self. In this essay I analyze hegemonic narratives about migrant labor, and I consider forms of cultural resistance produced by workers through testimony. (1) I discuss novel Under Feet of Jesus, arguing that Helena Maria Viramontes not only critiques prevailing discourses of criminality that serve to legitimize exploitation of migrant labor but also offers tools for intervention into current legal and representational practices that seek to define migrant workers through essentializing race and gender stereotypes. Contemporary narratives featuring stereotype of illegal alien suppress long history of migration between United States and Mexico. Putting aside for a moment larger issues raised by Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and United States appropriation of land formerly owned by Mexico, United States has relied upon labor from Mexico throughout twentieth century. In first quarter of last century, agricultural interests began to pressure US government to facilitate use of Mexican agricultural workers in fields. In 1925, one year after Border Patrol was created, Department of Labor and Immigration Bureau initiated programs attempting to restrict Mexican immigration to those who were either already employed or guaranteed employment on US farms. Some of very same immigration laws which had been used to exclude Chinese in nineteenth century (the head tax, literacy requirements, public charge provisions, and Alien Contract Labor Law) were waived to ensure flow of Mexican farm workers into fields. During Depression, these immigration laws, still on books, were used to restrict Mexican immigration, and, in Los Angeles from 1929 to 1935, 80,000 people of Mexican descent, regardless of their legal right to be in United States, were deported to Mexico. In 1942, as World War II produced another labor shortage, an Executive Order initiated bracero program which recruited four to five million Mexicans to work in United States. At end of war, while employers were still bringing in workers, federal government instituted large-scale expulsions of Mexican immigrants in mass militarized roundups of 1954 and 1955. …

Huelga, 1928 Style: The Imperial Valley Cantaloupe Workers' Strike

more spectacular conflicts in California's fields, the 1928 strike was a purely local affair, staged by Imperial Valley workers with little or no aid from outside organizations. It was broken easily, in part because of organizational weaknesses, but primarily through threats and force by the valley's growers and law enforcement officials. Nevertheless, the strike stands as an important event in California history. It was the first attempt at a major work-stoppage organized by Mexican farm workers in modern California. It is important to note that this attempt occurred nearly forty years before the current struggle in Delano and nearly fifteen years before the beginning of the formal bracero program. The strike of the Imperial cantaloupe workers in 1928 is part of a long and sometimes bitter heritage of conflict between Mexican agricultural workers and their employers in rural California.1 The basic economic and social conditions that caused the Imperial Valley strike already were well established in 1928, and the Delano Huelga indicates that these conditions still exist in California's fields.

International Population Movements as Aids to Communicable Disease Control

POPULATION movements have always been viewed as a real or potential hazard in the spread of communicable disease. In the Crusades, the internecine conflicts of the Renaissance, and the conquests which brought the Americas into the orbit of European culture, disease was always one of the horsemen riding side by side with the soldier, the merchant, and the priest. The traveler's course might be traced by the implantation of disease as well as by the growing weeds whose seeds had dropped from his saddlebags. It is only in recent years, and even then with little real appreciation of its inherent logic and potential strength, that public health workers have taken advantage of population movements and used them as a positive force for health by combining a few simple ingredients of border inspection, quarantilne, treatment, and control epidemiology. While several rudimentary examples of this approach in regard to mobile populations have emerged from the operation of the venereal disease control program of the United States, nio example existed prior to 1956 in which use was made of an international population movement that would apply all of the basic elements of venereal disease control for the benefit of two countries. It was therefore a program of new stature which the national health agencies of Mexico and the United States undertook in 1956 when they decided to weld together the elements of a complete international control program and apply it to Mexican migrant laborers coming into the United States during the growing and harvesting season. It should be clearly understood that such synthesis cannot be affected at will. It is based on mutual respect and understanding between the two nations as well as upon a number of preconditions, including facility and speed in diagnosis and treatment, the existence of a contacteliciting and contact-tracing mechanism, and the availability of forces which can be mobilized to accomplish diagnosis, treatment, and contact investigation. Even in 1956 when jet planes hurtled through the air at speeds far exceeding sound and the mysteries of orbital space had become the commonplace of newspaper headlines, these factors were not entirely adequate to cope with all aspects of the combined programs; they were present in sufficient degree, nevertheless, to merit the sizable demonstration test which we describe. More than 400,000 Mexican agricultural workers enter the United States each year to work in our fields at the times when there is an urgent seasonal demand for labor. Physical examinations are given these workers by the Public Health Service Division of Foreign Quarantine, both at the recruitment centers in The authors are all with the Public Health Service. Dr. Smith serves as deputy chief of the Communicable Disease Center, Dr. Stuart, public health advisor in the Office of the Surgeon General, and Mr. Watson, public health advisor in the Venereal Disease Branch of the Center. By special arrangement, the article appears simultaneously, in substantially the same form, in the Boletin de la Oficina Sanitaria Panamericana.