Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States

Embodied Anthropology of Migration

Holmes explains that this chapter takes its title from a 2004 conversation between Holmes and Samuel, who (like other Triqui migrants) identifies as a field worker. Triqui migrants in the US are far from their homeland and families. Their time, energy, labor, skills, and identities are inextricably tied to the fields and work that injure their bodies. US agriculture is organized around hierarchies of ethnicity, labor, and suffering. Certain processes normalize these hierarchies, making them invisible. American farm labor is structured along ethnic and citizenship lines, and this structure leads to suffering and disease, particularly among Indigenous Mexican workers. Holmes maintains that this hierarchy isn’t deliberate or planned. Rather, it results from broader social structures, which are accepted by people on the farms, including those who suffer most.

Explaining and Being Explained

This section addresses the challenges of explaining anthropological research to non-specialists. Holmes introduced himself to Triqui migrants as a medical and anthropology student, which prompted some workers to ask him for medical treatment. He lived among migrants, yet he didn’t have a place in the farm hierarchy. Outsiders assumed he was a jefe, or boss on the farm. Samuel summarized Holmes’s purpose to a fellow migrant as follows: “‘He wants to experience for himself how the poor suffer’” (33). Holmes realized that this concise phrase wasn’t only apt but was readily understandable to people outside academia.

Embodied Anthropology

This section focuses on Holmes’s embodied approach to ethnographic research. Anthropologists used to imagine that their presence didn’t alter the behaviors of the people they studied and that they recorded “pure data,” or “facts.” They viewed their bodies primarily as tools for observation. Starting in the 1980s, however, scholars rejected the mind-body dichotomy and turned toward embodied anthropology. For example, in 1987, Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock developed the notion of the “mindful body”—the idea that the body not only feels but also thinks. In 1997, Paul Stoller coined the term “sensuous scholarship” to promote the incorporation of the senses into ethnographic research. More recently, Loïc Wacquant used the term “carnal” to refer to ethnographic fieldwork that attends to the body of the researcher. Holmes draws on this body of scholarship, arguing that his bodily experiences offer important insights into the suffering of migrants:

It was not only my eyes and ears that collected valuable field observations but also the back of my neck as cold rain seeped down the inside of my farm-issued rain gear; my sore knees, hips, and lower back from bending over all day in strawberry fields; my acidic stomach showing signs of stress before a day of racing against the clock to keep my picking job; my foggy and tired mind from night after night of sleep interrupted by rain leaking on my face as well as freezing wind and noises surging through the permeable walls in the migrant camp (34).

In addition to providing information about the living and working conditions of migrant workers, Holmes’s embodied ethnography underscores the responses to researchers from those around them. Different bodies engender different responses. Farm supervisors didn’t react to Holmes’s white, American-born body in the same way as they did to the bodies of Triqui laborers:

The supervisors on the farms never called me deprecatory names like they did the Oaxacan workers. Instead, they often stopped to talk and joke with me, all the while picking berries and putting them into my bucket to help me make the minimum required weight (36).

Because social categories are inscribed on bodies, farm supervisors treated Holmes as a friend, an equal, or a superior. The same can’t be said, however, of Triqui laborers: “Oaxacans were treated most often as inferiors, sometimes as animals, or machines” (36). The automatic respect Holmes received extended beyond the farm. During an outing at Burger King, Samuel marveled at the respectful response Holmes received from a cashier when he pointed out an error in their order. This anecdote underscores the power of white, male, American-born bodies relative to others.

The Importance of Migrant Farmworkers

This section explains the phenomenon of migration primarily through data. The UN Population Division estimates the worldwide migrant population at 175 million, almost twice the number a decade earlier. The total US population is around 290 million, including 36 million immigrants. Of the immigrants, five to ten million are undocumented. Researchers estimate that about 95% of agricultural workers in the US are Mexican-born and that 52% of them live in the country without authorization. Additionally, Data elucidates the perception and treatment of migrants. At the time Holmes published his book, the US deported about 4,000 people every week, most of them to Mexico.

Holmes cites data in discussing anti-immigration policies. For example, in 1994, California passed an initiative called “Save Our State,” which denied public services to anyone suspected of being undocumented. In 2004, Arizona passed an act requiring proof of citizenship to vote and receive public benefits. Neoliberal policies, which set out to promote development and free trade, have negatively impacted vulnerable communities. As noted in the Introduction, NAFTA hurt farmers in Mexico and fueled migration. Migration and displacement, in turn, led to the development of military and paramilitary groups to curtail population movement. Migration is intimately tied to broader problems, including market policies, global inequities, and decentralized warfare. Migrant workers are essential to US farming, yet their everyday lives are largely hidden from view. Holmes seeks to draw attention to the suffering of migrants. In addition, he investigates why laborers migrate and probes the responses migrants elicit from healthcare professionals and policy makers.

The US-Mexico border became more militarized in the wake of 9/11. Triqui migrants used to travel to Washington State to pick berries in the spring and returned to San Miguel in the fall. Now many remain in the US for several years at a time because of the risks and expenses associated with crossing the border: Triqui migrants earn no more than $5,000 per year; crossing the border costs as much as $2,500. There are one million Indigenous Mexicans in the US. Their history is one of violence and domination by Spanish conquerors, religious missionaries, Mexican politicians, and neighboring mestizo groups. The current plight of the Triqui people has fueled migration and forced them to live and work at the bottom of America’s social and labor hierarchies.

The Violence of Migrant Farmwork

Holmes aims to expose the links between suffering, social inequities, and structural violence related to race, ethnicity, class, and citizenship. His account of the suffering of Indigenous migrants is informed by Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic violence, which operates through ideas of domination. Social groups understand their “natural” positions—and those of others—in the social hierarchy. Those in power believe that they deserve their success and that the powerless have brought their problems on themselves. In other words, symbolic violence naturalizes inequities and harmful stereotypes. For Holmes, structural violence and symbolic violence are central concepts that “form the nexus of violence and suffering through which the phenomenon of migrant labor in North America is produced” (44).