Farm workers fight against environmental racism and neoliberalism.

• Author: Marentes, Carlos
• Position: Biodevastation 7

My name is Carlos Marentes. I am the founder and director of the Border Agricultural Workers Project, an effort to organize the agricultural workers of Southern New Mexico and West Texas to change the current agricultural system that only creates exploitation and misery. We are based in El Paso, Texas, one of the most important gathering and recruitment places for migrant agricultural workers along the US-Mexico border.

From 1942 to 1964, almost 5 million Mexicans came to work in the USA under the "Bracero Program" to produce the food needed by America to win World War II, defeat fascism and stabilize the economy at the end of the war.

For many years our farm workers, the men, women and children who produce the food that keeps us alive, have immigrated from South of the border. Thanks to them, every day we enjoy rich food, vegetables, fruits--all kinds of farm produce to keep us going, to grow and to make life better. Also from South of the border come the USA's meat packers, food handlers, cooks, waitresses, etc.

But sadly, the immigrants continue to fall victim to an economic model that is based on cheap food production by lowering costs of production, and many lose their lives attempting to cross the border to be here.

Recently, law enforcement officers found 17 bodies of immigrants inside and outside a trailer near Victoria, Texas. The deceased included 6 women and a 6-year-old boy. Later, another survivor died on route to the hospital. The dead immigrants were part of an estimated group of more than 70 undocumenteds who were being transported, packed inside a trailer truck. When animals are transported, at least there are holes to breathe.

On March 25, 2003, as part of the harvesting, a sugar cane field was set on fire in Raymondville, Texas. A group of six undocumented migrant workers, which included a female, had been hiding in the field. Five of them died of suffocation and severe burns. One saved his life by running out of the field as soon as the fire started.

These are testimonies of an economic model under which, as a famous Mexican composer, Jose Alfredo Jimenez, once wrote, "la vida no vale nada" ("life isn't worth anything").

Immigration is the result of two factors created by this model. On one hand, migrants are desperate because they are unable to survive in their homeland. On the other hand, they are pulled by North American demand for their labor. But migrant farm workers not only endanger their lives crossing to this country; they also risk their lives in their workplaces.

Because the US economic model demands more, not better, farmers are relying more on the use of dangerous chemicals and technology to exploit the land and...