Rise of the Farmworker

The study of foodways and the essential role of farmworkers defines Chicana/o/x art. Like many other Chicana/o/x artists, Montoya was part of a farmworker family and witnessed detrimental working environments and labor practices. The exploitative conditions the laborers endured were the impetus for unions like the United Farm Workers (UFW) to advocate for wage increases and banning pesticides, among many other demands. The UFW relied on artists such as Montoya to provide posters for fundraisers and to promote general awareness of boycott campaigns. The support graphics for their cause included the iconic UFW’s black eagle, which was a recurring symbol throughout the Chicano movement and even today. Now, artists continue supporting undocumented farmworkers and fighting food insecurity affecting marginalized communities, embracing symbols like monarch butterflies to represent
a borderless world.

Resources

Natalia Deeb-Sossa is an interdisciplinary and transnational Chicana feminist health scholar who has made significant contributions in the areas of gender, race/ethnicity and class, and how they influence reproductive justice and reproductive health, community politics, cultural citizenship and social justice. As a result of her work, she developed “Say Before You Spray,” (PDF) a warning system for pesticide exposure in California, including farmworkers, rural agricultural communities and communities of color. She is a professor in the UC Davis department of Chicana/o Studies. These are her recommendations for further reading on art by Montoya and other artists she terms cultural works whose art became symbols that supported and promoted Chicanx movements and farmworkers collectivity and visibility.

Seth M. Holmes (2023), Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States.
In this ethnography, Holmes shares the stories of food production workers with whom he trekked through the desert into Arizona and was jailed with them before they were deported.  Holmes shares how he lived with indigenous families in the mountains of Oaxaca and in farm labor camps in the US where he worked alongside the migrant workers and accompanied them when sick. Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies reveals the systemic dehumanization, exploitation and oppression in the food production industry that endangers and/or ignores the human rights and health of its workers.

Carey McWilliams (2000), Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California
McWilliams exposes the social and environmental damages inflicted by the growth of corporate agriculture in California. McWilliams chronicles the toll on the multiracial and low-paid farmworkers working in California’s agricultural industry, including Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos and Armenians who work in huge factory farms. McWilliams examines the efforts to organize labor unions and calls in Factories in the Field, for the abolition of the artificial distinction between factory and farm to guarantee farmworkers rights to collective bargaining.

Teresa M. Mares (2019), Life on the Other Border: Farmworkers and Food Justice in Vermont
In this ethnography Mares examines Vermont’s dairy industry to examine the misalignment between the agricultural and immigration policies impacting the food system in the US. Mares examines the structural vulnerability of Latinx farmworkers in the agricultural economy, while also highlighting the resilient ways workers sustain themselves and their families.

David Bacon (2017), In the Fields of the North / En los campos del norte.
Bacon, a photojournalist, activist and photographer, documents the experiences of farmworkers who live under tarps, in trailer camps and in between countries following the harvest season.  Bacon uncovers abuse in the labor contractor work system and highlights how farmworkers are exposed to pesticides, extreme weather, exploitation, yet are powerfully resilient.

Philip Martin is professor emeritus in the UC Davis Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. His fields of interest include immigration, farm labor and economic development, and he is the editor of Rural Migration News. He was the only academic appointed to the Commission on Agricultural Workers to assess the effects of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. These are his recommendations for further reading on farmworkers in the United States. 

Books written by Professor Martin that range from the failure of unions, the dominance of Mexican workers in North America and the vulnerability of farm workers in wealthier societies. 

Reference websites on farm labor and agricultural workers