I Could See Myself in ThemThe Writing of Student Activists in the Farmworker Movement, 1995–2005 By Julie Wilson, 1993 SAF Alumna

Activity consists of action and reflection: it is praxis; it is transformation of the world.”

–Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“

Activity consists of action and reflection: it is praxis; it is transformation of the world.”

–Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

At Student Action with Farmworkers we repeatedly refer to the notion of social change. After less than 10 minutes at one of our events, you are likely to hear us call for results like better living and working conditions for farmworkers, higher wages, and informed consumers that appreciate and stand up alongside workers. The many who participate in our community and support our work understand that SAF is action-oriented; they want to be a part of this change work. SAF is also a process-oriented culture, however, some-thing that I didn’t come to understand or support until I joined the staff in 2004. I have seen processes like reflec-tion and consensus take place many times in the ensuing years, and have come to see SAF as a thoughtful place that opposes strictly results-oriented thinking. Indeed, I have been proud of our accomplishments, but often even more proud of how we have arrived at those victories. The truth is that SAF balances the inherent contradic-tions of process and action—we know that processes like reflection and learning alone do not create change, while results that arise without transparency and thoughtfulness may be empty or even irresponsible. We believe in work-ing toward justice for farmworkers, and justice is not just a results-oriented concept. It is based on full participation and equality for all, and to work towards it requires that we model the better world we want to create. The many students that have defined SAF’s work over the past 19 years entered into a process of thinking and acting that often changed their lives even more than those they came to serve. Taken as a whole, our summer program has amounted to over 600 distinct experiences, each a

case in praxis where students learn, reflect, and act with each other and alongside farmworkers. Through weekly writing exercises, these interns composed their ideas and sharpened their understanding of what they experienced in the fields. Among other lessons, the act of writing teach-es them that a commitment to this work is a commitment to learning throughout. Nearly two decades and thousands of journal entries later, we have become the repository of a great resource, a memory project that narrates the collective learning and action of the many individuals that have made up SAF. As we look forward and continue to demand the reforms that agriculture so desperately needs, we count on the gift of these recorded memories. I think that we cannot lose our way because we have them with us. —Tony Macias, 2009 Photo credits: Cover—Photograph by Celerino Mercado, 1995. Spread: Courtesy SAF interns 1995–2005, copyright SAF.

Courtesy SAF interns 1995–2005, copyright SAF

INTRODUCTION I interned with Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF) in 1993. My experiences visiting labor camps and assisting a classroom teacher through a Migrant Education Pro-gram profoundly affected me. I saw inequities in schools that I had been ignorant of as a white, English-speaking student from a financially comfortable home.

Former SAF intern Gustavo Razo wrote, in an excerpt you will read: “Quality of education is important and productive. Quantity of education that does not teach anything is completely worthless. That is what happens with too many migrant students.” These words remind me of what I saw in the particular classroom I assisted in that summer: wasted opportunity. The teacher did not seek to understand or challenge her students, and the system as a whole promised them no better.

I went on from the summer internship to work with farmworkers through Americorps, to teach in the public schools, and to study education in graduate school out of questions I first started asking that summer: what are the hierarchies of power and privilege in schools, and what are the most effective ways for me personally to challenge them?

Through SAF, many college students begin asking new questions, some about the lives of farmworkers and some about their own roles as agents of change.

In the pages that follow, you will read excerpts from accounts of college students who interned with SAF between 1995 and 2005. These excerpts come from documentary projects that interns completed with farmworkers about folklife traditions, and from weekly journals that interns wrote and turned in to the intern-ship coordinator. I read all of this written work as part of a dissertation study I completed with SAF as a graduate student in UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Education.

I studied the students’ work in order to understand what they felt as they allied themselves with farmworkers who were trying to secure basic, yet amazingly tenuous, human rights: safe working conditions, livable homes, basic health care, and a meaningful education. I wanted to understand what pushed students to keep going when obstacles to justice loomed large. I wondered whether writing helped them persevere, providing them a forum to commemorate successes and comprehend failures.

In the pages that follow, I share students’ testimonies to help us as readers make greater sense of our own efforts to respond to injustice in our work and daily lives. —Julie Wilson

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Like all of SAF’s work, this publication has been a collaborative process. Special thanks to Oberlin College for the Alumni Fellowship that made the design, translation, and web publication of these pieces possible. Thank you to SAF staff Bart Evans, Tony Macias, Joanna Welborn, and Melinda Wiggins for their wise guidance in the writing and publica-tion of these pieces, to Alejandra Okie for her superb translation, and to Chris Sims for his beautiful design. To the intern-writers whose commitment to justice and reflection are shared in these pages: Nereida Arguijo, Julia Finkelstein, Jose de Jesus Franco, Coby Jansen, Elida Molina, Angelita Morado, Felipe Olvera, Fred Ortmann, Palmar Plonk, Scott Pryor, Rosie Rangel, Gustavo Razo, Juan Carlos Vieyra, Kate Vyborny, and interns who chose to remain anonymous. And finally, deep thanks to the 96 former SAF interns and 5 SAF staff members who participated in the study that preceded this publication; their writing and lives offer a well of inspiration and strength.

—Julie Wilson

INADEQUACY

College students come to SAF with varying degrees of knowledge about farmworkers. Approximately half come from farmworking families themselves, so their knowledge derives from experience. Some are already activists for farmworkers, participating in campaigns with United Farm Workers and other organizations. Some

Courtesy SAF interns 1995–2005, copyright SAF

have studied farmworker issues. Others arrive knowing next to nothing, and the orientation to farmworker issues that comprises their first week of the internship is their initiation into who farmworkers are, what they do, and how they experience life in the US. The southern part of the US, it’s important to add—for farmworking students from the west coast, the Carolinas can seem like a dif-ferent world.

The first week of orientation is a time of excitement, of adjustment, of trepidation. Some farmworking students write of being surprised and gratified to see other college students devoting their summers to “my people.” Some students from the west are homesick and also fearful about the south’s reputation for racism. Most are thrilled at the bonding that quickly happens among interns.

Following the week of orientation, the student interns disperse to their placement sites throughout North and South Carolina. They leave what has become a safe space for personal stories and critical debate and move into new settings, get to know their supervisors and co-workers, settle into their living quarters, begin to interact with farmworkers. At orientation, they interact-ed with farmworkers as peers; now farmworkers enter their worlds as clients, students, elders. Some interns are immediately reminded of their own family members. Others struggle to get their Spanish up to speed. Many realize they are in an unfamiliar position—people are coming to them from places of deep history and urgent need, coming for aid, for understanding, coming to them. Especially at the beginning of each summer, many interns have written that they feel overwhelmed and insecure. They are eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old—what can they offer?

Anonymous, 1995 For the first time I went to a [migrant labor] camp this week. It was a real strange feeling I got at first. I think it was because it was six women going to a camp that had 50 single men. I was kind of scared to get out of the van when I saw indeed how many there were. Yet, their tired eyes and small bodies seemed harmless. I thought of how much they looked like my own uncles and father after a hard day in the fields. About 15 minutes later, I felt much more comfortable, then for the first time in my life I felt useless. A young man who was only about 24 years old kind of lingered near by after I had screened some other young guys. He seemed real anxious to ask me a question. I gave him a smile to encourage him to ask me whatever was bothering him. In a shy voice he asked me ‘Would you happen to know how I can send money to Panama in one day? I got a telegram yester-day saying my father died. I’ve only been here a month and I have no idea of where I’m at. I have nobody here, and I feel like my family needs money for the funeral.’ His deep green eyes pleaded with me to help him. There I was soaking all of the information and I didn’t know what to say. I had only been here for 3 days, clueless as much as he. There I was at a camp to help farmwork-ers and I couldn’t help the first one who asked me for help. All I could do was direct him to a girl who works [in social services]. Later I reflected on what had hap-pened. I thought of his family, how he must feel not being with them. Now, I truly knew that I had to stay no matter what. If not to help at least to watch and learn so much from the farmworkers.

Palmar Plonk, 1995 On Thursday [we] went to visit an elderly black couple that was having some medical problems. I was really excited about visiting them because I had yet to visit or meet any seasonal farmworkers in the area—plus they speak English and I was ready for a break from trying to understand everything in Spanish. Anyway, we pulled up to their tiny white house and were greeted by Mr. Jamison who had been working for his grower for 40 years. Mr. Jamison is the perfect example of a gentle giant. He has a worker’s body leathered from the sun but you can still detect his young spirit. We went inside and met Mrs. Jamison who is bed-ridden and has had bad experiences with ulcers on her skin and has severe arthritis and foot problems. We asked them what they needed and Mr. Jamison told us about their problems. It turns out that in the past they were receiving some financial aid for Mrs. Jamison’s medical bills but for some reason or another the aid had been cut off and the Jamisons were left with a $1500 outstanding bill. Mr. Jamison went to social services and other places to try to get some kind of aid for his wife’s medical care but nobody would help. So finally he gave up and began to try to work off the debt along with having to pay for her monthly medicine costs ($150-200/month). He told us with the amount of money he earns he will be paying his debt for years. Mr. Jamison said to us—“I am not the type of man—nor have I ever been the type to seek handouts. All I need is a little help to ease the burden. I’m not even asking for $100. I’ll take the smallest amount someone can give.” He said that when he talked with social services that they told him if he retired then they would pay for his wife’s expenses but

as long as he is working they won’t give him a cent. He said that he doesn’t want to quit his work. He loves it and is not ready to leave it. He then told us something that I will never forget. He said that someone at social services told him that his wife would be better off if Mr. Jamison left her by herself with no one to care for her—because at that point all her expenses could be covered by the government. My eyes welled up in tears when Mr. Jamison told us that he would never leave his wife no matter how hard it is to pay the bills. He said “when she was young she was self-sufficient and she wanted me—but now she’s old and she needs me and I will never leave her.” I was so touched to hear him express his devotion like that to two strangers. He would rather spend the rest of his life working his fingers to the bone and never coming out of his debt, than to abandon his soulmate for a complete cessation of their financial burdens.

As we left it was all I could do to keep from crying. I had never been so sympathetic for a person in my entire life.These people had worked hard their entire lives and now they are suffering and it just doesn’t seem fair. Why is my fate different from theirs? I have so much as far as material possessions and they just barely scrape by.

We got back into the car and pulled away from the house. I couldn’t even look at the house when we left—it was too hard for me to handle the situation. I wanted to block it all out—to pretend it wasn’t real—to say that everything is OK. I was speechless and couldn’t even talk to [my co-worker] about what we had seen. I just kept nodding and thinking to myself that this is only one case of probably thousands where people are

suffering like this and don’t know where to turn. I realized then how completely screwed up our government is. It’s really sad to think that the more and more my eyes are opened, the less and less I want to see.

DISTRESS

Journal entries show not just personal feelings of inadequacy but also an awareness that the rivers of injustice run deep. As students spend more and more time on outreach to migrant camps, they become increasingly aware of the context of farmworkers’ lives and the context of their work: Racism is entrenched in the rural south. Abuse happens on migrant camps.

Photograph by Scott Pryor, 2001

Living and working conditions recall histories of slavery. People who should be working to reduce the damage—like teachers—can’t be counted on; some hold racist views themselves and perpetuate inequity by holding low expectations of migrant youth.

The gamut of emotions of distress runs from sadness to anger. Students look for somewhere to place the blame, sometimes on individuals, other times on a faceless society, a system.

Distress sharpens students’ self-reflection. Given difficult contexts, what can they do? What is too much for them to take on? At some points, solutions feel out of reach. Sometimes, students see a solution, but recognize that the solution is beyond their control. Other times, they see a solution and begin the slow process of moving toward it. If the solution to inadequate education is car-ing and knowledgeable teachers, they start to become those teachers. They spend their summer as caring, knowledgeable mentors. They contemplate careers in education. Yet, before this kind of resolve starts to take shape, distress manifests itself in words like filth-ridden, worthless, shocked, and frightened. While their summer internship is temporary, conditions at migrant camps and in the fields persist.

The following excerpts describe various forms of injustice that students bear witness to.

Fred Ortmann, 1995

I would have to say this past Tuesday night has been my most interesting and memorable night this summer. I was out again with the mobile unit in the town of Vance. I arranged things with the crewleaders so the van could park right in the middle of the camp. As soon as I stepped off the van, these men approached me saying that I need to get off the camp. These men were new to the camp and could not tolerate the awful conditions and some of the things going on. These men were scared of staying in the camp another night because they were afraid of getting sick and afraid of dying. I guess they were not well liked by some of the other men in the camp.

I was not sure what to say to these men because I knew I could not take them off the camp in the mobile unit. I asked them to wait patiently while I spoke the matter over with my supervisor and others on the van. While we were thinking of something and seeing other people in the camp, I continued talking with the men to try and calm them down. They went into more detail of some of the ongoings in the camp. They told me the “boss-man” sells them wine, beer and “dope” at high prices which puts these people in great debt to the crewleader. They wanted out before they built up a debt because they were not working.

The plan we came up with was the following. We told them that no one could help there and that they should walk off the camp to the particular location where we could call the sheriff’s department to pick them up. They got their things together and walked out (the crewlead-er was not there fortunately). When we left we called

the sheriff’s department to handle the matter. I met with the sheriff and explained to him what was going on. The officer had dealt with this particular situation several times, stabbings and deaths, and understood why these men wanted out. He said that he is not a taxi service to take people places and that, “they can only ride in the backseat if they are going to jail.” Well, the officer went and checked it out for us anyway. He said that since these were adult men with no physical or mental problems there was nothing he could do. He thinks the men returned to the camp that night.

I felt real bad because these men probably went back and might face danger. I returned to the office on Wednes-day and contacted both the labor department and the employment security commission to inspect this camp. Again it is now out of my hands. I think I have done all I can. I really hope something is done to close down this filth-ridden and illegal camp.

Gustavo Razo, 1999

The last three weeks, I’ve been working with migrant students of different education levels, from pre- kindergarten to high school. Over all, it has been a great experience for me. I help the students in different academic areas such as mathematics and English. During the time that I’ve assisted them in their classes, I’ve discovered that their learning capabilities are amazing. They learn really fast and are always willing to work. However, the reason why many migrant students do not have the standard academic level is that these students receive a really limited education. Sometimes,

it happens because they do not attend school regularly, but also it is caused by the false perception that many people, mainly teachers, have about migrant students.

Many migrant students move from one town to another, state to another, or even country to another. Unfortunately, this is the cruel reality of many of these students. They move from one school to another because their parents work in the fields and farms. Migrant students do not stay in the same place long enough to learn like a regular student. In addition, usually they are enrolled in remedial classes. They take classes that are not very productive for them.

I consider that if migrant students were enrolled in classes that require more intellectual effort, migrant students would have more representation in society, universities and businesses. It is very important that migrant students receive a good academic education. Quality of education is important and productive. On the contrary, quantity of education that does not teach anything is completely worthless. That is what happens with too many migrant students.

Juan Carlos Vieyra, 1999 When I went to Norberto’s house the first time I got out of the car and I began to look around. The house was hidden far behind some tobacco fields. The house was in very bad living conditions. Most of the windows in the house were broken and covered with plywood. The house itself was damaged and old, and seemed very small.

After, I saw his wife behind the house with three of her children. At this point what I saw was somewhat unbelievable because I had seen it very few times. I saw Norberto’s wife on her knees washing her clothes on top of a small wooden table. She was there scrubbing and scrubbing the clothes. There was a hose that extended from the inside of the house, which provided her with the water to wash. She also had a couple of buckets, some had clothes and others detergent. Next to her were three children, all younger than three years.

When she saw me and my friend she got up and came towards us. As she approached us I could see exhaustion in her face. She was still young, but there were signs in her face which said that she was aging, possibly because of the work. However, she did seem very happy walking with her children at hand. My friend and her actually knew each other because at one time they had worked together. So, when she came to greet us they began talking to each other.

I introduced myself to her, but at that point I didn’t mention anything about my work doing oral history or about asking her for an interview. I didn’t think it was the appropriate time. As they both talked with each other I took a little walk around the house. I went to the place where she had been washing and saw that she was washing right next to a reservoir of murky water that the farmer used to drain the fields. The water looked very dirty and there was a lot of mud around there. Also behind the house there were some woods. Next to the house there was a small wooden garage and they had some things stored there. The ground of the garage was

completely stained with motor oil, I guess from when they worked on the cars.

After I looked around I went back to where my friend was talking to Norberto’s wife. I began to talk to her children. All three of them were beautiful kids. It made me very sad to see them dressed in rags and dirty. One of her children, a boy, was hugging a small plastic cup. I was curious to see what was inside and I looked. What I saw were about four dead fishes. I was shocked. I asked his mom why he had the dead fishes and she answered that he was playing with them.

I became even more frightened when I thought about where he might have gotten the dead fishes. My first thought was that probably from the murky water behind the house. I thought about how many farmers drain their fields and a lot of the times the water contains pesticides. After that we said good bye and left. For the next couple of days I could hardly stop thinking about that poor family living in such conditions. I would never have thought that I would see that in North Carolina after all I had heard about the state.

RECOGNITION

Many interns’ feelings of inadequacy and distress start to mingle with hope when they connect on a personal level with the farmworkers they meet. For some students, including many from farmworking backgrounds, connec-tion takes the form of recognition. “I could see myself in them,” Felipe Olvera wrote, encountering children

Photograph by Scott Pryor, 2001

in a migrant summer program. Farmworkers remind interns of their parents and grandparents; the children of farmworkers remind them of themselves at a young age.

Empathy sensitizes interns to every instance of injustice: with the right encouragement, the right opportu-nity, this child could go to college, like me. Some interns from farmworking backgrounds decide they can be the ones to make a difference in other farmworkers’ lives. Many a visit to a migrant camp ends with a meaningful conversation, a deepening trust, as interns take the time to get to know farmworkers as more than laborers in the field, as people with life histories, with dreams. The initial desire to know someone deeper seems to stem from that initial spark of recognition, almost as though interns from farmworking backgrounds were reaching back in time to know their own families better.

Students from other backgrounds learn empathy through recognition, as well. But what they see in farmworkers may not be shared life experiences. Instead, what they begin to see are shared rights, the emblematic right to hope and the material rights to schooling, health care, and safety in workplaces and homes. In access to these rights, interns recognize sharp differences, are taught to see differences by farmworkers. Pieces of students’ lives intersect with farmworkers’ lives—perhaps they are the same age—but there the similarities end. Unlike college students, young adults living in migrant camps and working in the fields have limited opportunity to further their education. Young farmworkers tell college students about their own desire to go back to school; older farmworkers speak of their desire for their children to have the best possible education. College students

listen to farmworkers’ stories and their dreams, and compare those stories to their own. They start to ask questions: why have I been able to take schooling for granted? why have things been so easy for me? Felipe Olvera, 2000 As the kids started coming in [the first day] I waited to say hello. I was observing how they would react to Ms. Nuñez and myself. I could see myself in them because I attended summer school migrant programs and I know what they were thinking and feeling. Once I was ready to introduce myself, one of the students started talking to me. After that I built a bond with them that nobody could break, only them.

Jose de Jesus Franco, 2005 I met a young man at one of the camps that I did outreach to; he was seventeen or eighteen years old. This kid came over to the United States to work illegally. He lives in a house with six other men that he can’t relate to. When I met him, it saddened me because he was fol-lowing me around making conversation the entire hour that I was at that camp. I immediately realized that it was because he hadn’t socialized with anybody his age for a long period of time. We talked about the conditions that he lived in and what type of work he did in the fields, and then for the last fifteen minutes of my visit we talked about soccer. I left the camp saddened by his situation but happy at the same time. I was sad because of the lifestyle he was living and because he couldn’t enjoy his

young age. However, I also left happy because, for that hour that I was there, he got to talk to somebody his own age and forget about his current struggles.

Kate Vyborny, 2003 Last week I acted as a chaperone at the AIM confer-ence [Action, Inspiration, and Motivation, a Migrant Education conference] for six young women who live in Harnett County. Four seemed reasonably healthy and well-adjusted although lackluster about school and any plans for the future. One was a motivated and driven senior who was very strongly religious. That left Lidia, a rising tenth grader who looked malnourished and talked tough. She had hair down her back, which she did not plan to cut because her parents would ‘probably beat me,’ she said offhandedly. Lidia had over a 4 point aver-age in school so far but didn’t aspire to college because, she said, her parents needed her income. She didn’t just give her parents her money to pay the bills—she paid the bills, and worried about the ones that were overdue while she was at the conference. ‘How old were you when you first started working?’ she asked me, challenging me and the other students in the group. I was ashamed to admit that I had not started working—retail—until my senior year in high school. She did not try to conceal her con-tempt as she told me that she had been picking sweet potatoes and doing other work in the fields since the age of seven. ‘I didn’t have no childhood, that’s for sure,’ she said bitterly. Later, the subject of gang violence came up. She contested that ‘We Mexicanos only hurt people when they say something against our family, our race, or our friends,’ casually describing an incident: a friend was

threatened by her ex-boyfriend, so she and a bunch of friends waited after school and ‘jumped him.’ I struggled for the right way to respond. I wanted to tell her to work through the system rather than through violence. But it seemed that sometimes the system does not work for people like her. And who was I to argue that it did?

I know that my tendency will be to dramatize, to find a worst-case scenario to build my ideas around. I also know that is unrealistic. One of my biggest learning experienc-es has been the range of experiences of the farmworker and immigrant children I have met so far—including the other interns, who defied and changed my expectations from the first day. But the impact of all the extreme cases impresses on me something I have known superficially for a while, and that is the immense difference between my life and theirs. For me and most of my peers even within a range of incomes, education was always easy, expected, supported, enriched. But for migrant children, education is the path of most resistance.

Juan Carlos Vieyra, 1999 When I went back for my interview [for the documentary project] with Norberto he had been inside the house re-laxing. His children were outside playing. We sat next to the garage to do the interview. I sat on a bucket, and he sat on top of a tire. Norberto was very cooperative and a good listener as I explained the purpose of the inter-view. Once we began the interview he had no problem responding to my questions. He felt very comfortable talking. It was kind of difficult to believe that just in two days I had been a complete stranger to him, and now

here he was sitting in front of me talking as if I was one of his real good friends. He had no shame in talking about his past life and about the struggles he had to endure. There were times when I would notice a difference in his tone of voice. Sometimes it would be full of emotion, especially when he remembered the difficult times he had when he was working in the area near the border. When he talked about his children his voice showed concern and was full of hope. It was clear to see that to him the most important thing in his life was his children.

After the interview, we sat for some little time and I began to share some of my life experiences as a migrant coming from Mexico. . . . I also talked to him about the difficulties that me and my family had being farmwork-ers. I think that after Norberto heard me talking about my life he felt even more attached to me because we shared a lot in common.

RAPPORT

Rapport describes the mixture of communication and trust that can happen between farmworkers and students over the course of the summer. Rapport begins in conversations on migrant camps, in schoolrooms, when farmworkers begin to share their stories, when interns begin to listen. Rapport can deepen when interns and farmworkers are able to continue their relationships

Courtesy SAF interns 1995–2005, copyright SAF

over the summer. This can happen at work, when a legal intern returns to the same camp to investigate possible infractions, when a health intern takes a farmworker to repeat medical appointments, when an education intern gets to know a child’s family or teaches an English class to adult farmworkers. Continuing interactions allow for the recognition described earlier to bloom into trusting communication.

The barriers to rapport are many. Some farmwork-ers have reason to fear any outsider to their migrant camp; an outsider may come to sell drugs, to ensnare farmworkers in debt, to inquire after their legal status, to rob them. When farmworkers speak little or no English, their fear is greater. Interns have written of visits that went nowhere, farmworkers who wouldn’t open the door to them, refusal of medical care or other services. Interns also sometimes fear migrant camps, out of unfamiliarity or out of expence; women can feel especially uneasy approaching a group of male farm-workers. Some women have written about feeling uncomfortable when farmworkers asked them out on dates, others of having their opinions discounted because of their gender.

Documentary projects have provided an avenue outside of work for interns and farmworkers to get to know one another over a period of time. The success of these documentary projects depends in large part on the trust established between interns and farmworkers. Interns are taught during orientation to collaborate with farmworkers on the decisions of the project—the overall focus, the subjects of the photographs, the content of the interviews. But such collaboration is easier said then

done. The first time interns show up on a migrant camp with a camera or a microphone can be tense. Some of these encounters are stilted, some magical. In the excerpts that follow, interns engaged in documentary work describe moments when they overcame discomfort to establish rapport with farmworkers.

Rosie Rangel, 2005 The farmworker [we] had driven was energetic and filled with opinions about the [Farmworker Labor Organizing Committee] meeting. He had a lot to say and had a lot of questions for both Noah [fellow intern] and me. I was too tired to make conversation. I did however notice a scar on his left arm. It was small and the shape of a crescent moon. Out of necessity to find something to say I asked how he had gotten it. He told me about a tradition all too familiar to me, Toritos, a community celebration made in honor of the patron saint of his community back home in Mexico. It was a celebration I thought only happened in the community my parents grew up in. No one I had spoken to that came from different parts of Mexico could have told me the significance of a torito [small bull] or el castillo [the castle]. The more I listened to him tell the story of how he got this scar, the more and more words I recognized. I found the energy to keep asking him questions and found out that it was the same celebration only celebrated on a different 3 days and, of course, for a different saint. We talked more and more about this tradition. He told me about the leadership role he played in organizing the celebration and this led into a more philosophical conversation about organizing farmwork-ers and why he thought it was so difficult. We ended the

conversation when we arrived at his camp and at that point I went ahead and asked if he would be willing to have his tradition and story about his scar documented for our project. He readily agreed and said he would be more than happy to.

Elida Molina, 2004 As Don Raymundo sat down on the couch [for the documentary interview], he began to explain to us how he wasn’t as educated as us and to forgive him if he said something incorrectly. We insisted that the questions we were going to ask were simple questions that didn’t need any type of education to answer. For some reason, he continuously repeated this over and over to us, even though we continuously insisted to answer normally and to relax. I think it was his way of dealing with his nervousness, as he had no idea of what questions we were going to ask or of what we were going to do.

During the interview, Don Raymundo never looked me in the eyes. I definitely think it goes back to the cultural belief that Hispanic families raised in Mexico have that they are not to look at a superior in the eyes because it was a sign of disrespect. Here, I will reiterate that he thought we were superior to him as he let us know by telling us that he didn’t have the opportunity to get educated as we did. Thankfully, I was aware of this belief from an Interpersonal Communication class I had taken this past semester. At the beginning of the interview, I tried to see what the limits were of him feeling comfort-able. I first continued to look at him in the eyes as I asked and as he answered the questions. I began to notice

that he continuously looked away. By looking at him in the eyes more often he became more and more uneasy. I looked him in the eyes when I asked the question I wanted to ask him and then looked away from him as he answered, and I immediately noticed that the questions I asked were being answered more openly and personally rather than robotically as I had heard before. I continued this tactic with the rest of the family that we interviewed.

Scott Pryor, 2001 Since I hadn’t yet been able or comfortable enough to take many photos of Gabriel, I decided to spend the evening with ‘the guys’ at the labor camp. Since I only need portraits of Gabriel to accompany the interview component, I’ve decided to try and document the labor camp as a whole taking photos of all the workers. I feel somewhat liberated by this decision because it allows me to take more pictures and to not focus so completely on Gabriel, which I’ve felt uncomfortable doing.

After work, a trip to the grocery store, and an hour or so of rest, I drove to the camp right at 7 p.m., when the guys get home from work. I just hung out for a while in the kitchen while people cooked and washed up. I had my camera bag on the table in plain view to try and get people accustomed to it. Eventually I asked every-one in the room if they’d be alright with me taking some pictures, and they said, sure, go ahead. They gave each other a hard time about it, and I joined in. It ended up being a very comfortable thing—a testimony, I think, to the strong relationship we’ve established with each oth-er. The evening light was amazing—deep orange and

pouring through the kitchen windows. I shot black and white with my manual camera and a couple color with my snapshot camera. They encouraged me to document not only themselves, but their housing. For the first time they invited me into their dormitory room and asked me to take pictures of their beds. I hung out snapping shots until about 8:30, at which point I left.

All in all I felt really good about the evening. It was fun and everyone seemed to be at ease. We were all laid back about it, which was nice. I hope to spend at least one more evening there taking shots. I’d like to get a good three rolls of black and white, and hopefully a roll of slide film too.

Coby Jansen, 2002 We arrived [at the camp] in the early evening and spent quite a while doing the HIV tests. Then, [the nurse] left and we began to talk to the guys about the documentary. All of a sudden [wire, hand-crafted] scorpions appeared left and right. Since the last time that we had been there, yet another one of the guys had begun to make them. They call him . . . Araña (Spider). We talked for a bit, but it was beginning to get dark and starting to drizzle, so we went inside their comedor, dining room. There was a big group of us in there—a whole crowd around the table. We told them that we wanted to ask a few questions about the scorpions. . . and they began to tell us stories. I asked if it was ok if I got out my camera, and they agreed. So, while sitting across the table from Romauldo and being surrounded by other farmworkers, I took photos of the scorpions and their makers while

they told stories about scorpions in Mexico.

This was the first time that I ever spent a significant amount of time with farmworkers. We talked about the scorpions, but we also talked about all sorts of other things. It was funny because one of the farmworkers came up to me and pointed to his belly (that was pretty inflated) and said lombrices. I just looked at him kind of funny as I asked him what he was talking about. He just said lombrices again and then told me that there were two other workers who had the same problem. One of the younger guys looked at me and said parásitos. Oh! Parasites! They asked if I had any medication for this and I told that that I wasn’t sure. I was still a little paranoid as I figured out that they were joking around. Later on when we were chatting, Nkechi took a picture of me and the guy who had blown his stomach out for me competing to see who could make their tummy stick out more. We were all practically rolling around on the floor we were laughing so hard.

This was one of the most fun nights that I ever had at a camp. Everybody seemed so excited and happy that we were there. They gave us a number of scorpions to take home and I felt like we had really bonded with them. As we left to drive home later that night, they thanked us for the rain that we had brought, it was the first time that it had rained in ages . . . all the more reason to have permanent smiles on our faces.

RESOLVE

The summer concludes for many interns with moments of celebration. In some moments, interns and farm-workers celebrate together, be it the conclusion of a documentary project or the last day of a class together. Other moments are shared by the group of interns, at the

Photograph by Nereida Arguijo

gathering that brings the internship to a close. We have few written records of the group celebration that closes the summer, since by then all required written work is submitted.

What we do have are records of the feelings of resolve that many interns conclude the summer with—resolve to honor the memory of the farmworkers they have met, to honor the memory of family members, to continue to be a part of the farmworker movement. This resolve feels somewhat celebratory, especially when compared with the feelings of inadequacy and distress that some record earlier in the summer. Resolve is rooted in relation-ships established with farmworkers and with other SAF interns. Some interns write of their ability to make a difference not just as individuals, but as members of a movement, as “we.” This sense that justice will be achieved collectively seems key to countering the inevitable challenges interns will face if they do, as many say they will, continue in the movement.

Nereida Arguijo, 2005 I will always remember this summer. It was a great, wonderful experience to work with farmworkers. I was lucky because I think that health outreach is one of the best positions in the internship. I had the opportunity to work one on one with them, and sometimes even establish a relationship with farmworker families. I had the opportunity to go to the fields and tell them how they should protect themselves from tobacco and pesticides. First I did not know what I was supposed to, but after a while I felt comfortable with my job.

This internship exposed me to many things that I would never have the opportunity to experience. I am a shy person, and I do not like to be around a lot of people. In this internship, I got to know many beautiful, open- minded people that have the passion to be against injustice. Before this internship, I did not know that this big nation had a lot of poor people that work so others can have food on their table. This internship changed the way I pictured this country. When I used to think of the United States, the picture of big and industrialized cities used to come to mind, cities like New York with the Statue of Liberty, or San Francisco and its big bridge. Now when I think of the United States, I see people living in terrible conditions, people that get up very early to harvest the food I eat, I see people getting sick from pesticides, I see people lacking information, I see children of 16, 17 years old working under the hot sun; but what is worse, I see people dying in the fields. I see injustice in a first world country. I see a country wanting to solve other countries’ problems leaving behind its own problems. But when I think of farmworkers, I also see the talent, art, and culture that they have.

I know that nine weeks are not enough to make a social change. Nine weeks are not enough in the farmwork-er movement, but it is only the beginning. I just started in this movement, and I want to continue. I want to be helping those in need. In whatever field I might choose, I want to continue in this movement.

Julia Finkelstein, 2005 [Señora Nuñez, documentary project participant] then posed a question to me. She asked me why I was doing this internship, what made me want to get involved in this cause. Surprisingly, this question caught me off guard. Sure, I was used to giving an academic answer about globalization, agribusiness, and immigration laws in this country. I have explained many times my reason-ing for getting involved with farmworker issues and the inhumane conditions they face in the fields as well as within their communities. I had never really been asked this question before out of an academic context though, by a Hispanic person with genuine curiosity in her eyes for why a white, seemingly middle class American woman would actually care about the lives of farmwork-ers. Seeing this look in her eyes made me want to give her the most honest and genuine answer back. ‘Because we’re all human beings and we deserve to be treated with the same amount of respect no matter where we’re from, what our legal status is, what kind of job we have, or what language we speak.’ These were the words that began flowing out of my mouth. I then told her that, know-ing about the conditions of farmworkers and that people that try to cross the frontera [border] every day are met by violence and discrimination, I could not separate my own life and my own humanity from the lives of these people. I told her that myself and other Americans don’t need to travel to another country to speak Spanish or to witness oppression. We simply need to open our eyes to what is going on around us and strive to make changes within the system and our own lives.

Angelita Morado, 2005 I have had a great time here in North Carolina, but I have also learned important lessons that no school, no matter how great and expensive, will ever teach me. I come from a poor family—a family who also lived in camps, poor housing, worked long hours under the hot, scourging sun, rainy weather, and what not. But I started to forget what all this felt like since I started attending UTPA [University of Texas-Pan American] four years ago. Coming back to this same area I lived in twelve years ago and work with people like my family and me, has taught me once again, that I should never forget where I come from.

This summer has taught me to be more humble than what I thought I already was. I have relearned to appre-ciate and value what I have simply because it has cost me hard work; it has not been handed to me on a silver platter. I have learned to value my family more; I must live as if it were my last day on the face of the earth. The men out here yearn to go back to Mexico to see their families. I should be grateful I still have my family with me.

Moving on, I would like to introduce you to John Riggs, the physician assistant (PA) with whom we do outreach two evenings out of the week. John is a retired respiratory therapist who recently graduated as a PA. He is passionate about farmworkers and related issues. Unfortunately, John has been in three car accidents in the past two years; he was rear-ended all three times. As a result, he has severe back problems—pain to which

has found little, if any, relief despite seeing different neurologists, surgeons, and what not. In spite of this, he is willing to travel the distance and provide care for the farmworkers in their own homes. He doesn’t complain about the pain, but I often see him sitting in the front seat, quietly, as if praying that the pain will go away. I feel awful knowing I am not able to do anything to help; I wish I could carry some of his burden to help relieve some of his pain.

You see, John speaks very little Spanish, and so, he needs an interpreter. Nonetheless, John tries his mighty hardest to speak the language and communicate with the workers. In fact, he has learned some of the basic phrases. Each time we arrive at a camp, he will get off the van and shake every one of the men’s hands and say, ‘Buenas tardes. ¿Cómo están hoy? Mucho calor, ¿verdad?’ Every time he needs to tell a worker something, he makes sure he looks him straight in the eye and tells him—not me or any other interpreter—what he has to say. He is always looking out for their best interest.

He takes into account that I am a nursing student and tries to accommodate to my learning needs as well. He will often explain other things once he gets in the van and leaves—things that may not be appropriate to say in front of the patient himself. He will often be reading an article in a magazine and passes it down to me to read—topics that range from hypertension to nail fungi to diabetes to what not. He encourages me and says I can do just about anything with my degree; he says, ‘You pretty much have your ticket to do whatever you want.’ I mentioned I recently thought about going to medical

school and specialize in psychiatry after getting my master’s degree in nursing. He explained, ‘Being a smart girl like you, I would have imagined you thought about this a long time ago.’ It really makes a difference when I hear encouraging comments like this.

Ever since before I stumbled upon this internship, I wanted to come back to North Carolina and build upon my nursing career. However, working with all these wonderful people and researching on job opportunities on the area, has only strengthened this decision.

CONCLUSION

Throughout my study, I was motivated by a feeling that social justice work is daunting work, that many never

Photograph by Christopher Sims, 1995

take it up, and that those who do the work sometimes burn out. In his book about college student activism, Generation at the Crossroads, Paul Loeb analyzed the barriers to student involvement. One barrier was the relative absence of activist role models on college campuses, particularly in the pages of books assigned for classes. I thought about this absence a lot when I was writing my dissertation and as I have been writing this piece.

I am motivated in my own writing by a conviction that the interns in these pages are role models for other young people who are considering standing up against something they believe is wrong. Not just any role models, but ideal role models, because students, to borrow Felipe Olvera’s words, can see themselves in other students. I hope that readers will use the excerpts shared here as starting points for their own critical reflection into what motivates them to work for social justice, as well as what inhibits them.

When I finished my analysis of the students’ writing for my dissertation, I emailed a draft to the interns whose work I had read. I also met with several interns over lunch. The interns were surprised and gratified to read back through what they had written, to celebrate the enduring record of their work. Some wrote to me over email, following the train of thought they had begun years ago in their journals. One intern from 1996 wrote, “The writing captures that moment [a particular moment she had remembered] clearly, but it also holds many other stories that I have totally forgotten.” One intern wanted to go back and write more about a family she knew to make the record fuller and more representative of her

experience. These responses indicate to me that writing is a powerful act for writers because each time we write, we reconsider, go deeper, and because each time we have the privilege to go back and share what we have written, we remember.

Paulo Freire tells us in the quote that opened this collection that agents of social change act and reflect. We see problems when either action or reflection is shortchanged. In college, many students grow frustrat-ed with writing assignments that feel irrelevant. As they become activists, they may feel that writing is a selfish activity that does not reach the people they hope to reach or address the issues that anger them; there’s too much to do, no time to write. But without occasion to explore the complexities of their work and consequently redirect that work, activists burn out.

The writing in these pages suggests one tool to find balance: a regular writing habit focused on experience. The form of writing may vary depending on the writer; SAF offers solitary journals as well as collaborative documen-tary projects with photographs and interviews. Solitary writing offers a chance to check in with oneself—how am I feeling about my actions? what should I do next? Collaborative writing offers a chance to know others and to deepen solidarity, a key ingredient of social change. Both kinds of writing can bring the depth and clarity that sustain action. Writing is oxygen to action’s fire.