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Details:
Florida's Farmworkers in the Twenty-First
Century.
Nano Riley and Davida Johns,University
Press of Florida, 2002.
ISBN 0-8130-2592-3; 208 pp.; $24.95
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July
26, 2004: Nano Riley and Davida Johns should be pleased
to learn that they have accomplished their primary goal in
Florida's Farmworkers and more. Riley writes, in
the tradition of Edward R. Murrow's "Harvest of Shame,"
Florida's Farmworkers "is an attempt to make
people aware of these invisible workers and their lives at
the beginning of the twenty-first century" (preface).[1]
I know they were successful because more than ever, when I
peruse fresh vegetables at the store, I find myself consciously
thinking about the workers I know had helped raise and harvest
these foods. Moreover, Florida's Farmworkers raises
issues which reach beyond agricultural, labor, Florida, and
Southern studies, to touch on Florida's very identity. Riley
is a Florida native and her vested interest in the future
of the state is admirable. As such, this is a work valuable
to a variety of readers in the general public and academia
alike.
Johns's abundant photographs are a rich supplement to Riley's
text. Together, these representations spotlight the many,
and significant, challenges embedded in the farmworker experience.
Riley introduces readers to a host of issues, ranging from
pesticides to education, facing farmworkers in Florida today.
"Moving with the Crops" and "Immigration"
examine the often illegal and typically dangerous process
workers endure to find work, and most of the remaining text
spotlights the particular problems, such as wages, housing,
health, and safety, which workers and their advocates struggle
to control. Finally, Riley and Johns explore family and community
life, those rituals of affection, devotion, and tradition
that sustain workers over the long term.
Before I discuss what Riley and Johns have done well, let
me mention some areas I think could have been stronger, though
the shortcomings do not detract from the overall impact of
their work. Since not everyone who reads this book will be
familiar with Florida or the East Coast, some simple but good
maps could effectively illustrate the seasonal work migrations
of workers, their places of origin, and where they tend to
concentrate within the state. At the very least, a map of
Florida and its counties could be quite helpful, especially
since Riley discusses migrant workers not only in the southern
tip of the state, but in its center and in the Panhandle.
Next, though Riley's descriptions of worker hardship is compelling,
it could be even more so were it to focus intently on the
most salient issues--rather than mentioning repeatedly that
the labor itself is hard (all non-mechanized agricultural
work is laborious), Riley could more effectively drive home
the central necessity for compensation that matches the work.
She does this, for example, in her discussion of the Coalition
of Immokalee Workers' campaign against Taco Bell and the farms
supplying the corporation. She notes that the ultimate concern
of the coalition was that workers are not being appropriately
compensated for their labor, that they are "denied the
rights to organize and to receive overtime pay, and they receive
no health insurance, no sick leave, no paid holidays, no paid
vacation, and no pension" (p. 60). Likewise, more visual
records of what advocates and workers have accomplished could
be an illuminating balance to the majority of Johns's photos,
which depict neglect and hardship. Like the pictures of worker
schools, which demonstrate that there are people on workers'
sides and that their efforts have been fruitful, some photos
of the housing, for example, which prudent and concerned farm
owners or advocates have built and maintained, could serve
to illustrate more fully the fabric of the farmworker world,
and the concrete developments underway to improve that world.
That said, Florida's Farmworkers has a number of
notable strengths. First, its photography is illuminating
and compelling; it reinforces the reality of these people's
lives, at once spotlighting hardship and endurance. Johns's
experience in the Peace Corps clearly has influenced her ability
to portray her subjects with compassion. Second, Riley highlights
the very diversity of the farmworker population in Florida.
Probably most Americans associate migrant farm labor with
Latino, usually Mexican, men and women (and usually with the
western United States). In fact, among Florida farmworkers
are Haitians, Jamaicans, Dominicans, Guatemalans, and, relative
newcomers, political refugees from southern Mexico and Central
America. Within these groups is still more variation. Employers
and advocates who can speak Spanish are not guaranteed easy
communication with workers; some laborers, notably those of
Mayan descent, speak a dialect foreign to all but their own
community. Another excellent distinction is Riley's repeated
differentiation between workers who arrive and work in families,
which include children and grandparents, and those who work
here alone, usually single men, in order to someday return
to or send for families left at home. In addition to these
categories, Florida also hosts a population of temporary workers
known as H2-As, who are allowed to enter the country and work
during harvest. These distinctions are significant, because
they impact how workers are hired, paid, and housed, and how
they respond to challenges. For instance, since many single
men are in the country illegally, and most expect to return
home as soon as possible, they are less likely to complain
or seek redress for inadequate working or living conditions.
On the other hand, workers who have families and have been
in the United States for some time often work toward "settling
out," and many have succeeded. They have constructed
permanent lives here, and naturally regard their circumstances
differently. Some long-term workers have become crew bosses,
and others have joined the ranks of advocacy. In either case,
their experience and permanency makes them an effective voice
among farmworkers. It is clear that farm laborers comprise
a sizable, but hardly monolithic, portion of Florida's population.
Finally, Riley's evaluation takes into account the impact
of Florida's environmental health on agrarian livelihoods
and lifestyles. Florida is a fertile land, and no decent study
of its agriculture can ignore the centrality of the environment
in the state's history and development. Acknowledging the
battle between agriculture and conservation to claim that
fertility, Riley devotes a good discussion to the impact of
first draining and then reclaiming the muck. As we might expect,
she addresses the annexation of parts of the Everglades for
farmland early in the twentieth century, and the continued
pressure on the area as agriculture continues to expand. Particularly
effective, however, is her discussion of "Lake Apopka:
Natural Wonder to Disaster." In this tale, human interference
in nature, first draining wastewater into the once pristine
lake and then draining the lake's edge, created a body of
farmland and a wealth of jobs for farmworkers. Those farms'
success, though, depended on chemicals and practices that
killed Lake Apopka. So severe was the damage that it captured
international attention as an environmental disaster and spawned
a massive restoration project. Eventually, restoration meant
buying up farms on the muck and allowing the land to revert
to its natural state. The cost of the original mistake has
been high, for not only have the restoration efforts been
stymied by seemingly overwhelming environmental distress,
but all those who once found employment on the muck farms
found themselves out of a job. Clearly, those who are concerned
for the fate of Florida's farmworkers must take into account
their inherent ties to the fate of Florida itself.
Ultimately, if not explicitly, Florida's Farmworkers
raises some "big picture" issues. The most significant
for the Florida History and Culture Series deals with the
identity of the "real" Florida. Riley writes, "Tourists
think of the Sunshine State in images of warm beaches, sultry
breezes, glitzy hotels on palm-lined avenues, and Disney World,
and they seldom venture off the interstate" (p. 1). The
implication seems to be that, unlike the working world of
rural Florida, the tourist-friendly parts of the state are
not real. And those familiar with Florida are aware of its
State Park slogan, "the Real Florida," designed
to distinguish natural Florida from anything manmade, including
agriculture. Florida's image seems torn between paradise and
labor, environment and agriculture, native and exotic, solitude
and crowds. Riley and Johns highlight some of this in their
book, especially since so much of the farmworker story takes
place in south Florida, where the boundaries between Miami,
sugar, and the Everglades are tenuous. For those who live
in Florida, we know that there is no single, or simple, definition
of reality. This is a place of diverse and interdependent
populations (human and animal), habitats (natural and manmade),
and pursuits, and it all has to be accounted for as we struggle
to define the state's future amidst rapid change and phenomenal
growth. Riley and Johns have made an important contribution
to the debate by making it clear that Florida's farmworkers,
and agriculture, are an inextricable part of the state's composition.
Note
[1]. Riley and Johns are continuing the tradition of what
Cindy Hahamovitch calls "writer-reformers, authors whose
aim was to reveal farmworkers' poverty" (p. 7). Though
Florida's Farmworkers deals with a host of issues related
to labor and agricultural studies, it really is a narrative
of current hardship more than an in-depth analysis of what
has gone wrong and how it can be made right. It is a window
onto one part of the Florida experience. For those interested
in the history of working conditions and lifestyles among
Eastern farmworkers, see Hahamovitch's The Fruits of Their
Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant
Poverty, 1870-1945 (Chapel Hill and London: University
of North Carolina Press, 1997). Hahamovitch's study is a good
introduction for Riley and Johns, because the first explains
how the conditions facing twenty-first century farmworkers
developed. Additionally, Hahamovitch explores some of the
ideology related to farmworker conditions, such as the conflicting
Progressive ideal of farm life supremacy and Progressive knowledge
of farm life degeneration. Her primary concern is highlighting
the "relationship of labor and capital to the state,"
thus pulling farmworkers away from the "no-man's land
of poverty studies," where they have been relegated to
the "lumpen proletariat," and dealing with them
as an integral part of the agricultural labor dynamic (p.
7).
Kelly A. Minor, Department of History, University of
Florida |
