Baja California's Farmworkers Have Suffered Same Humiliations for 20 Years Antonio Heras - Mexico Voices
go to original April 6, 2015

Everardo Garduño, investigador del Instituto de Investigaciones Culturales de la UABC. (Eneida Sánchez Zambrano)

Over the years, the demands of the day laborers have not changed, even as new allegations of sexual harassment against women workers by mayordomos [middlemen, recruiters] are added, said Everardo Garduño, a member of the Institute of Cultural Research at the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC) and author of the book Mixtecs in Baja California: The Case of San Quintín [Mixtecos en Baja Californa: el caso de San Quintín].

Garduño pointed that the indigenous migrant communities that have managed to establish themselves in the region have the same right to demand better living conditions than any other citizen of Baja California, but the government's attitude has been one of arrogance, because it does not address the problem, is not interested in the solution and does not give the issue the importance that it should have.

Garduño emphasizes that the mobilization of groups of laborers in the valley of San Quintín is only understood in the context of the creation of new settlements that the farmworkers have themselves built through struggles that have granted them freedom of action and of organization.

He noted that organizing the farmworkers has been virtually impossible [when they live on the farms], because of the presence of the mayordomo, a kind of internal police [and middleman-recruiter], who is on top of everything that happens. Therefore, it is in these [new] settled neighborhoods where organizing the farmworkers can take place. There, they began to organize the movement for the unified struggle of the Triqui people, where both the Independent Headquarters of Agricultural Workers and possession of the Maclovio Rojas neighborhood picked up momentum.

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