For years, farm workers have streamed to these fields from Mexico to toil among the blueberry bushes. Under the searing sun, they grimly load trucks with buckets of fruit for little more than the minimum wage.
In many ways, these Spanish-speaking migrants worked at the bottom rung of the economic ladder.
But in recent years, a new group of indigenous workers has arrived from Mexico and Guatemala. In many cases, they speak only obscure languages, which leaves them vulnerable to mistreatment from employers, even as they face racism from some fellow workers.
Decades of hard-fought battles for workers’ rights have created a safety net in places like Michigan for Spanish-speaking migrant laborers.
But growers, government officials and worker advocates have been stumped by this new wave of workers who speak only Mum, Quiche and other pre-Columbian languages of Latin America.
If a grower doesn’t pay them for overtime work, or houses them in shanties just feet from overflowing outhouses, these workers cannot communicate with the Spanish-speaking lawyers who could help them.
Health clinics in Grand Rapids report women rushing into the emergency room, about to give birth. When the patients don’t speak Spanish–or any of about two dozen other languages used on a phone translation service–panicked doctors are forced to resort to hand signals.
Mario Catalan, 21, a native of Guerrero state in Mexico, speaks the language of Tlapanec in addition to Spanish. Fellow workers who speak no Spanish, he said, often are subject to mockery and hostility from others in the camps.
Though Catalan said he has no complaints about his employer, he also knows that some of his countrymen who don’t speak Spanish would feel powerless to take action against a grower who was acting harshly.
“When you are that alone, when you cannot communicate, it feels like you are drowning,” said Catalan, in a dirt-stained shirt and a backward San Diego Chargers baseball cap.
To protect workers whose presence in Michigan dates back only a few years, a Grand Rapids legal-aid agency has become one of the first in the nation to focus on indigenous workers in the state’s orchards and fields.
The Michigan Migrant Legal Assistance Project, based in Grand Rapids, has filed lawsuits on behalf of indigenous workers and is set to roll out CDs and audiocassettes in the Mixtec dialects common in the Mexican state of Oaxaca.
Experts estimate that immigrants make up about 80 percent of agricultural workers. An estimated 60 percent of farm workers are illegal immigrants.
Michigan attracts up to 100,000 migrant workers, sixth most in the country. After working in Michigan’s fields, most workers head to Florida to pick oranges or tomatoes.
The National Center for Farmworker Health estimates that 4 percent of farm workers primarily speak languages other than English or Spanish.
Robert Alvarez, a staff attorney at the Michigan legal project, said that in late 2001, the agency began getting reports of workers who spoke strange languages no one could understand.
Now lawyers, crew supervisors and farm workers say the fields are a sort of Babel with small groups clustered around various dialects. In this field near Holland, at least a third of the 45 workers used native dialects as their first language, although all spoke at least a little Spanish.
In a sense, the arrival of indigenous workers is a sign that other migrant workers have made their way to greater prosperity and stability.
Martha Gonzalez-Cortes, director of the state’s office of migrant affairs, said many who were part of the traditional migrant flow, including her own family, have landed permanent jobs outside of agriculture.
“There has been this trickle of new and vulnerable workers that have made their way into the migrant stream,” she said. “These indigenous workers happen to be the next one. The industry as a whole has always counted on this vulnerability.”
Suit alleges verbal abuse
The demographic shift comes even as western Michigan has adapted to the traditional Hispanic population. The United Way’s service line features bilingual help, while Spanish-language radio stations and newspapers keep citizens informed.
Those who don’t speak Spanish or English, however, find themselves more vulnerable to injuries and abuses by their employers, said Mariza Gamez-Garcia, director of the legal aid agency’s Indigenous Populations Project.
Gamez-Garcia is representing about 80 indigenous workers in a suit alleging that their employers subjected them to verbal abuse and harmful pesticides in addition to denying them clean water, adequate bathrooms and the minimum wage.
To better inform workers of their rights, the agency will distribute audiocassettes in two Mixtec dialects, because the language does not have a written form.
Sometimes the dangers for indigenous workers are even greater than simply failing to get the wages they deserve.
In a case that drew global attention, a Mexican immigrant of Mixtec descent was convicted in 1986 of fatally knifing a fellow farm worker in Oregon. Five years later, a judge threw out Santiago Ventura’s conviction, in part, because he was provided a translator in Spanish, not the Mixtec dialect that is his first language.
In the Michigan camps, the indigenous workers are in a world of their own.
SIL International, a non-profit group that documents lesser-known languages, reported that Mexicans speak nearly 300 languages, from Amuzgo to Zapotec.
Gonzalez-Cortes acknowledges that Michigan “could and should be doing more.” But she said it often is difficult to persuade public agencies and nonprofit groups to expand services as long as indigenous workers remain a minority.
“There isn’t a sense that the numbers are at a critical mass,” she said.
Even as the official world struggles to accommodate the indigenous workers, the newcomers face a different challenge from fellow migrants, especially from some lighter-skinned countrymen who look down on them.
“We have a lot of clients who will complain about those indios,” Alvarez said. “They are considered a second-class citizen.”
Because of this, many indigenous workers in Michigan are reluctant to acknowledge their background to outreach workers. This wariness complicates efforts to track the migration network from rural towns.
`We are all children of God’
Jacobo Argueta, 54, has gotten the nickname “Guate” because he is a Quiche Indian from the highlands of Guatemala. A bony man who keeps his white plastic bucket hanging from his belt, Argueta said the treatment from fellow workers can be harsh.
“There are some people like that, but not all,” said Argueta, in his first Michigan harvest. “We are all children of God, right?”
And as long as economic disparities in the Americas persist, indigenous workers will continue coming to this country, Argueta said.
In Guatemala, he harvests tomatoes, onions and beans to support his 10 children. He makes 75 quetzales a week, the equivalent of $9.
In Michigan and in a previous stint harvesting squash in North Carolina, he makes nearly that much in an hour. So each morning he goes back to the fields, usually chatting in Quiche with his 20-year-old son, also named Jacobo.
Argueta said he would like to be in Guatemala with the rest of his family, but he plans to migrate to another state this fall to continue earning money to pay off debts back home.
“No one else wants to do this,” he added as the faint sounds of a banda song crept from an idling pickup truck. “The tourists come to these fields for a visit, but they would never work here.
“That is why we’re here, to earn just a little bit,” Argueta said. “Yes, the sun is burning us, but we don’t care. This is our life.”
