Vol. 79/No. 12      April 6, 2015

“We are paid starvation wages and we’re not going to take it anymore,” Fidel Sánchez, a spokesperson for the Alliance of National, State and Municipal Organizations for Social Justice, which is leading the strike, told the Militant by phone March 20 from the community of Vicente Guerrero.

There are at least 30,000 farmworkers in the valley. This is the first strike there in decades.

“About 80 percent of us are from the original peoples of Mexico. We come from Guerrero, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Puebla, Michoacán and San Luís Potosí,” said Sánchez, a farmworker for 32 years. “We speak Mixtec and Nahuatl along with Spanish. Half the workers are women.”

The valley, 200 miles south of San Diego, is one of Mexico’s largest sources of agricultural exports, including berries and tomatoes. While prices have risen, farmworkers haven’t received a pay raise in years, Sánchez said.

Workers are paid piece rate, most earning on average between $6.50 and $8.30 a day. “The young people can make more than that,” Sánchez said, “but you have to work at triple speed. Many of us are over 40, and that’s not possible. It’s modern day slavery.”

Twelve companies are on strike. Only one in the valley is Mexican-owned, he said. The rest belong to U.S., Japanese, Chinese, Arab and Chilean capitalists.

The farm owners have contracts with three government-allied unions — the Confederation of Mexican Workers, the Confederation of Revolutionary Workers and Peasants of Mexico, and the Regional Workers Confederation. “The contracts were signed behind the backs of the workers,” Sánchez said. The Alliance was formed a year and a half ago by workers who wanted to fight. Sánchez said it is growing rapidly.

“We are demanding these agreements be revoked,” Sánchez said. “We demand a minimum wage of 300 pesos a day,” about $19.50, and higher piece rates.

Other demands include overtime pay and six weeks paid maternity leave before and after a worker has a child.

“We are demanding an end to sexual harassment of women workers by the supervisors,” Sánchez said. The Alliance is also demanding farmworkers be covered by the country’s National Social Security Institute, making them eligible for government-funded medical care.

On the first day of the strike hundreds of workers blocked highways throughout the region. They were attacked the next day by police using rubber bullets and tear gas. More than 230 farmworkers were arrested. The Alliance protested their arrests, and most were released.

“This is very fertile land, everything grows here,” Sánchez said. “Our strike is having an impact on the companies, on the bosses, the state. They will see how important the work we do is for the life of the country.”  

 
 
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