When Food Workers Rebel | 5 in a series
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| Familias Unidas por la Justicia committee and members after voting to authorize boycott of Sakuma Bros. Farms! |
Moderator’s
Note: As part of our continuing series dedicated to the
revolt of food system workers, I am posting an important analysis and set of
critical reflections prepared by Tomas Madrigal, a graduate student at the University of California-Santa Barbara and workers' rights activist collaborating with Rosalinda Guillen of Community to Community and the the Mixtec/Triqui organization known as Familias
Unidas por la Justicia (United Families for Justice).
This report focuses on how
indigenous peoples themselves define autonomy and what this means for an understanding
of the current struggle of the berry pickers in Burlington, Washington.
We make the road by walking
INDIGENOUS FARM WORKERS EMBODY THE ETHICS OF AUTONOMY
Tomás Madrigal | Seattle, WA | October 3, 2013
A los compañeros del CNI
y La Otra: Unir y no dividirnos. ¡Hoy es el tiempo de luchar! ¡No estan solos!
De San Juan Copala, lo hacemos desde donde estemos.
–Josefina,
Triqui Elder, San Juan Copala, Oaxaca
I
first had the privilege of listening to a Triqui elder as a witness to The
First Forum in Defense of Water and Territory, in Vicam, Sonora, Mexico on
November 20-21 2010.
Her
words were filled with a deep hurt, she had been part of the group of Triqui
women who had been forced off of their land in San Juan Copala, Oaxaca because
of the rich mining deposits underneath the soil that they toiled for subsistence.
A paramilitary group was responsible for their removal through extreme violence
and force.
Even
still, with that immediate pain in her voice, her words above were for unity
and struggle, they were for life and against death.
Over
the last month I have had the privilege to witness in my own territory, where I
grew up, a similar act of self-lessness on behalf of a community of mostly
Triqui and Mixteco migrant farmworkers.
This
struggle for life in the face of death has profoundly moved me and the team
from Community to Community Development that has followed their lead because we
saw in them, the future in the present. We saw ourselves in them. And because
they asked us to walk with them.
The Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle was another moment where an indigenous group from
the south asked the world to walk with them. To do so is to go beyond charity,
even to go beyond solidarity: it is to truly see and value each other, and to see
ones own liberation tied to that of another group of beings.
The
Zapatistas explain that capitalism is death, that the Fourth World War is
about the complete destruction of the fabric of the community.
In
Vicam, Sonora, Tata Juan Chavez Alonso a Purhepecha elder from Michoacan and a
founder of the National Indigenous Congress of Mexico, who has since passed
away, said the following about this problem, “Los proyectos de mal gobierno se trata de privatizar todo. Son proyectos
de muerte. Va contra todo.” [The projects of the bad government are
invested in privatizing everything. They are projects of death. It goes against
everything in the natural world.]
Tata
Juan in this strategy session encouraged us to, “retomar los proyectos de vida, es el trabajo que hacer.” [To take
up once again the projects that give life, that is the work ahead of us.]
He
explained that these projects for life and against death were linked to our
heritage as indigenous people: “Modas
de vida, organización, cultura./lifestyles, organization, culture.”
He continued, “A defender y apoyar
esos proyectos de vida./We must defend and nurture those projects
that give life.” These include Autonomia/Autonomy, which he defined as,
“cuando un pueblo toma su derecho de
cuidar su territorio./when a community exercises its ability to be
stewards of the territory in which they live.”
He
linked the concept of Autonomy with self-determination, saying that the road
ahead are our own communities defending ourselves, no matter what unjust laws
or bad governments rule.
In
many ways, the struggle that is being forged by the indigenous migrant
community of over 300 in Burlington, WA is exercising their autonomy in an
attempt to deal directly with their employer.
U.S.
journalists scoffed at their demand that they wanted to have overtime pay
during the harvest, which during peak season can be as long as eleven hours.
But the farmworkers made their demands based on what they needed for
self-determination, to spend time with their families and recuperate after
working so hard for their employer. They do not want to stop at compliance;
that is not enough; they want justice and the ability to determine for
themselves what justice is.
In
Vicam, Sonora another Purhepecha elder, Tata Francisco, explained that we
should not limit ourselves to a struggle over the wage in our struggle against
death. He didn’t deny its importance, but emphasized a larger view that
resonates with the current struggle of the Triqui and Mixteco farmworkers in
Burlington, WA.
Tata
Francisco said, “ahora los demandas
no son por sueldos altos, sino autobasto. Es una ganancia./
Today, our demands are not for higher wages, but for self-sustainability. This
is a victory in and of itself.” He explained that the ongoing struggles in
Michoacan have been fought on two arenas, the first was legal battles and the
second was community struggles to exercise their own autonomy and self-defense.
He
explained that biotech was having a major impact upon the communities ability
to exercise their autonomy because the introduction of modified seed made many
farmers dependent upon the corporations that produce them.
Tata
Francisco urged the other indigenous farmers to exercise and invest in
traditional agricultural practices, even in the face of Monsanto and biopiracy.
He
said, “our communal knowledge is being privatized and we need to take it back!
We need to recover our old ways and reject corporate agriculture,” that “en ves de pedir salarios altos, debemos
pelear por control sobre la forma de producción!/ instead of asking
only for higher wages, we should fight for control over the modes of production!”
A
struggle over the modes of production (and reproduction) on a vertically
integrated berry farm is exactly what is happening with Familias Unidas por la
Justicia at Sakuma Brothers Farms, Inc. a 1,500 acre, $6.1 million earning firm
just north of Seattle, WA. The firm has desparately tried to come into
compliance, not because of the law, but because of three distinct farmworker
strikes this summer. But even with those strikes, farmworkers were not able to
secure beyond what the law already says is the bare minimum for the industry.
That
is why they have organized themselves as families, as an organization Familias
Unidas por la Justicia (United Families for Justice) to struggle for life
and not death, and that is why the most important work that they have been busy
doing over the last month has been to rebuild the fabric of their communities,
the result is that unity in struggle that Tata Josefina said in the epigraph of
this essay.
As
the farmworkers take the next step in their struggle for dignity and the
ability to live off of their labor, they recently asked, “Will you walk with
Familias Unidas por la Justicia?” They have taken the first step, inviting you
as a consumer to join a struggle against an unfair food system, knowing that
their liberation is bound with every one else’s in a food system that is no
longer sustainable in the United States or the rest of the World.
We are what is at stake.
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