Pesticides, Accidents and ICE:
Migrant farmworkers risk their lives to put food on your table
—– TRANSCRIPT —–
(10-second music)
Welcome to Code WACK!, your podcast on America’s broken healthcare system and how Medicare for All could help. I’m your host, Brenda Gazzar.
What dangers do farmworkers in California face every day? What are their biggest challenges when it comes to their health and their quality of life? Hugo Morales, co-founder and executive director of Radio Bilingue and a former farmworker, shared his insights with us in this second episode of a two-part series.
Welcome back to Code WACK!, Hugo.
Q: There seems to be a lack of reliable information about farmworkers’ life expectancy. But according to the Center for Farmworker Families, it’s about 49 years. Tell us about the conditions that you see that these workers face that may contribute to lower life expectancy.
Morales: Well, the housing for one. Thanks to Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers back in the mid 60s, there was an effort finally by the counties to enforce — they were put to shame, right? — to enforce sanitation. So what the growers did — almost all of them — they closed their labor camps and left the farmworkers to find for themselves where they could live. Farmworkers now live typically in apartments crammed sometimes several families in one, some live in garages, particularly if you go all along the coast, especially — well everywhere, including here in Fresno, but places like in the Bay Area like Sonoma County, Napa, and Monterey County, the rents are so high that people are living in garages, trailers, cars, any way they can live. That is a pretty bad situation.
And then often they live in apartments that are not particularly kept up. That’s why the rent is cheap. I mean relatively cheap, as compared to others. That contributes to it.
And then of course farm labor is a dangerous industry, being a dairy worker is very dangerous. So that’s another reason for the short life expectancy.
Q: Can you just elaborate a little bit about why the dairy industry is so dangerous?
Morales: The workers that work in dairies, they have to get there to work around four in the morning to set up the machines for getting the milk from the cows. The cows are literally in the mud so these workers come in with high boots for example, for going through the mud. And of course they can be kicked, they can slip. They have to move some of the manure around. With the tractors, the wheels can spin and the tractors can stand up literally and fall over the worker. Those are very common and dangerous situations.
I mean from time to time we do get farmworkers that call in from dairies to Radio Bilingue wanting to get information on how they can contact Cal OSHA about the dangerous situations that they’re working in. It’s a real hazardous job for these workers.
Q: Right. And then what about the other campesinos that don’t work in the dairies. What are the dangers that they face?
Morales: Well, a lot of them (use) tractors, for example. If they’re lucky right they get to ride a tractor, right? You don’t have to bend your back anymore — okay, welcome to the tractor industry — but they’re dangerous, too. Caterpillars are dangerous and so are forklifts. I’ve driven forklifts. I’ve driven tractors. I know they are dangerous. You relax and put a little bit more gas because you want to go a little faster or get to a place a little place faster, you only put yourself in even more danger. Even of our former employees’, her father died in a tractor accident. Again, the tractor going up like that, fell right over him.
Now, a lot of the farming is mechanized so again there are tractors, and you may get caught up in some of the machines as you are going through the fields, so generally it’s just really, really dangerous besides the pesticides. Literally, there are tons. You can look up about the millions of tons of pesticides that are put on, plowed in these fields.
One of the folks that get really impacted is obviously the schools and the residences, but also the people who do the spraying. Now there are stricter rules about protective gear. But I remember when I was growing up, there was no protective gear and it was not used. My father never used it. And the people that worked with him never used it.
And this is a live pesticide that is sprayed to trees, so you go up and down the rows.
And of course, inevitably it’s gonna get on you so it’s difficult. In fact, one of the people that worked for my dad eventually, I believe, died from pesticides.
Q: What do you think are the most pressing health and health care challenges facing migrant communities in the Central Valley today?
Morales: Definitely, I think diabetes is a really, really severe issue and heart conditions, those diseases that are tied to obesity. And then folks who don’t eat properly, in other words who don’t eat a proper amount of vegetables and fruit. It’s ironic that people pick the vegetables and fruit but yet, that’s not their main diet. It’s more the fast food and other greasy foods that are not good for our bodies and so, it’s cheap. And so they end up obese and with heart conditions and also diabetes. Sugars. Of course, Pop. Sugars. I think it’s unfortunate that so much of the industry has focused on that. In fact, Mexico has the highest per capita consumption of Coca-Cola and sodas in the world.
Oh wow.
Morales: Yes, and so when these people come here to the United States, they already come with the habit of drinking a lot of sugary drinks.
Q: What about asthma and other respiratory conditions?
Morales: Oh, definitely, I mean that’s really, really true. Asthma and respiratory conditions here in the San Joaquin Valley, especially, you find Valley Fever. And then asthma, I mean, you know, with all this pollution. I’ll give you an example of the demographics here in Fresno Unified. Fresno Unified has 76,000 students or so. Of those only 10% are white. So two-thirds are Mexican. And then about 7% black and the rest Asian. 90 percent of the 76,000 children in Fresno Unified are low-income. 90 percent. So that means Fresno Unified gets extra money, right, from the state for having that kind of composition.
Fresno is a city of poverty. Well, 9 out of 10 kids are registered poor people with the federal government. Over 50 percent of the San Joaquin Valley families qualify and are enrolled in Medi-Cal. But there are a lot that are not because they are undocumented, for example or there are still obstacles in terms of enrollment and continuing that enrollment and so on. So the highest percentage of uninsured are among the Mexican American and farmworkers in our state.
Q: So what does that mean for them, for uninsured farmworkers? How does that affect their lives?
Morales: Essentially, they do not have the benefit of having a culture of preventive health. So they become diabetic, they become obese and diabetic and then they go to the emergency room. So it’s very expensive for California and for society to pay for but that’s the consequence of not having health care for everybody.
Q: Right. And for those that are on Medicaid, what kind of quality of health care do you think they get?
Morales: Well, I always see folks complaining of not being able to have many choices in terms of doctors. Many doctors do not take Medi-Cal, and then the travel they have to do in order to get a doctor to see them and then it’s very hard to get any specialist through Medi-Cal here in the San Joaquin Valley and for migrants. It’s a very hard situation.
In Fresno, 1 out of 5 — 20 percent of the children in Fresno — have one or two undocumented parents. So that means the mixed status families often think about the consequences of seeking any kind of medical help because they think they may be tracked by ICE or whatever. And so it’s a really, really difficult situation for them that they have to try to be healthy but at least stay out of hospital or seeing a doctor or out of an institution.
Thank you, Hugo.
Find more Code WACK! episodes on ProgressiveVoices.com and on the PV App. You can also subscribe to Code WACK! wherever you find your podcasts. This podcast is powered by HEAL California, uplifting the voices of those fighting for health care reform around the country. I’m Brenda Gazzar.
_________________________________________________________________________________
HEAL California is an independent news and information hub focused on the Medicare for All movement.
With non-partisan news, views, podcasts and videos, we highlight the on-going injustices of our broken healthcare system and amplify the voices of those who are most impacted by it.
Our Podcasts shine a light on the failures of America’s healthcare system, while explaining how Medicare for All could help.
Our Media page offers connections to experts and additional resources including links to legislation and studies.
Keep up with the Medicare for All movement!
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and subscribe for email updates.