| 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 |
