Fronteras: Congratulations on the publication of your book, Made in Baja: The Lives of Farmworkers and Growers behind Mexico’s Transnational Agricultural Boom, published by University of California Press. Your book focuses on the effects of globalization on the agroexport economy of the San Quintín Valley in Baja, California. In terms of general trends or problems, what can the San Quintín Valley teach us more generally about globalization and labor in the Borderlands?
Dr. Christian Zlolniski: One overall trend is that the globalization of industrial agriculture has led to an increasing homogenization of agricultural production in both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border. This means that the fresh crops produced, the technologies to produce them, and the labor that produces them have become very similar, and in some cases overlap across the national boundaries. This is not surprising considering that a few large corporations dominate this industry in California and Baja California, a trend that speaks about the strong economic integration of a sector that has become a truly transnational and interdependent industry. Agricultural workers who produce these fresh crops have also become a transnational labor force. In both sides of the border, they are trained and perform very similar works tasks when planting, nurturing, and harvesting the crops into what I describe in the book as the “workplace labor regime of transnational agriculture.” In fact, farmworkers from Baja are now highly regarded and actively recruited by US growers and companies because of their skills and work experience. Growers hire them under the H-2A labor visa program, which allows the contract of temporary agricultural workers, a program that actually dates back to 1952, and has grown over the past decades. Mexican workers who come under this program, however, can only work for the employer who recruited them in the United States, a system that provides growers access to a highly flexible and vulnerable labor force. This trend speaks about the labor inequalities and unevenness that persist in the borderlands. It is also noteworthy, that under the current COVID-19 Pandemic, the White House and the Governor of California classified such workers as “essential workers.”
Fronteras: We were fascinated by an indigenous labor leader named Justino Herrera that you profile in your book. Can you tell us a little bit about Mr. Herrera and how he has mobilized the farmworkers in San Quintin to make change?
Dr. Christian Zlolniski: Justino Herrera is indeed a fascinating labor and community leader. He followed on the steps of his brother Bonifacio Herrera who died in 1996, with whom he and other workers denounced the complete abandonment by state government authorities of indigenous workers in Baja. Justino played a central role in demanding the government to open a public hospital in San Quintin in the late 1990s as many farmworkers would die even from non-threatening problems because of lack of health services. Later in the 2000s, Justino became increasingly engaged in community politics to improve living conditions in the farmworker colonias to bring schools, educational and recreational programs for the youth, and other public services. He is an unreeling fighter who speaks his mind and has a solid sense of the history and tribulations of indigenous workers in the region. His commitment and moral capital that earned him public recognition not only among workers, but also government authorities and even some powerful growers after a long trajectory of dedicated work and public service. In the book I discuss how he, along other indigenous leaders, led a major farmworkers’ labor strike in 2015 that blended labor and community demands, representing a type of community-unionism, that led to the formation of a new labor union in Baja to challenge the dominance of corporate and corrupt unions that for decades prevailed in the region. After I finished my book, Justino Herrera was appointed coordinator of the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples, the most important agency to represent the rights and demands of indigenous residents in the region.
“When reflecting on their experience as settlers, they told me how much they appreciated living with their families in their own space, providing their children a safe place to grow up, and having the freedom to decide when and for whom to work.”
Fronteras: Your book touches on the settlement patterns of farmworkers and the challenges that they face when they try to make a home out of an arid landscape without easy access to water or electricity. But you also pause to dwell on the affective dimensions of home and community building that farmworkers experience once they establish a foothold in their colonias in the San Quintin Valley. Can you tell us more about what farmworkers told you about what their homes mean to them, both at the level of family and their broader community?
Dr. Christian Zlolniski: The affective attachment to the land farmworkers developed over time is one of the findings that I found most interesting. Living on their own homes and land plots, as opposed to being housed in crowded and unsanitary labor camps in the past, was a dramatic change. When reflecting on their experience as settlers, they told me how much they appreciated living with their families in their own space, providing their children a safe place to grow up, and having the freedom to decide when and for whom to work. They also stressed the social solidarity and sense of belonging and community that developed among neighbors as they mobilized to improve the living conditions in their colonias. Women were particularly outspoken about the positive changes pointing out a sense of liberation, as they were able to meet and develop friendships with other women and find a space to respite from their jobs and multiple household responsibilities. Many residents, especially old-timers, also expressed a feeling of accomplishment and pride, as well as attachment and sense of place in the region. The way in which farmworkers transformed the land, built new and vibrant communities from scratch, and developed a sense of ownership and belonging speaks about their social and political agency, reminding us academics not to reduce them to passive victims of structural global forces.
“I spent long hours visiting with them in their homes, usually in the evenings after they got back from work. I attended their community meetings, helped however I could with their needs, and engaged in collective projects in their communities as, for example, when collaborating with them to apply for government and NGO’s programs to bring resources to their colonias.”
Fronteras: Your book is based on ethnographic field work. How did you connect with and gain the trust of the different agricultural workers you interviewed in Baja?
Dr. Christian Zlolniski: Gaining the trust of farmworkers and their families was time consuming but crucial to obtain in-depth information and rich personal testimonies about their lives as workers and settlers. I spent long hours visiting with them in their homes, usually in the evenings after they got back from work. I attended their community meetings, helped however I could with their needs, and engaged in collective projects in their communities as, for example, when collaborating with them to apply for government and NGO’s programs to bring resources to their colonias. Becoming involved in their everyday lives not only helped to win their trust but also made my fieldwork more enjoyable, meaningful, and rewarding. With time, the people who I get to know became my best advocates in the field, introducing me to their kin, friends, and neighbors to collaborate in my study. This is what makes ethnographic fieldwork truly rewarding, both as a research enterprise and as a personal experience.
“While the region has a long history of labor conflicts and mobilizations, what I call ‘water riots’ was a new development that forced me to readjust my research plan and pay attention to this important development.”
Fronteras: Researchers generally enter into projects with preconceived notions about what they will find. Did some particular finding or development in your fieldwork surprise you?
Dr. Christian Zlolniski: Yes, finding unexpected things in the field that either do not match your hypothesis or were not even in your radar screen is what makes ethnographic research attractive and intellectually stimulating. In my case, as I noted above, I was surprised about the high level of social integration, and sense of belonging and place among many farmworkers in the region. A more surprising finding I had not even contemplated was the high level of social and political upheaval about the problem of water scarcity. The big contrast between residents’ struggles to fetch water for the most basic needs in their homes, and large agricultural corporations operating desalination plants that provide water to grow their crops did not go unnoticed to farmworkers. They were upset at the state government for failing to provide water to their colonias, leading to multiple collective mobilizations to denounce the situation and demand access to this basic resource. While the region has a long history of labor conflicts and mobilizations, what I call “water riots” was a new development that forced me to readjust my research plan and pay attention to this important development. Indeed, the last chapter of my book focuses on the water insecurity farmworkers experience and the social unrest it unleashed. I use it as a window to analyze the environmental contradictions and inequities that the development of industrial agriculture has brought to this arid region of the Mexico-U.S. border.
Fronteras: Now that Made in Baja is out, what’s next for you?
Dr. Christian Zlolniski: I have started a new project in the same region that is taking me in new and exciting directions. It is about workers who harvest beach pebbles in Baja for export markets to the United States. The extraction of this natural resource is part of a larger trend in Mexico and other Latin American countries that use extractive industries, usually of minerals, to foster economic growth. In the United States beach pebbles from Mexico are used for decorative purposes as ornamental object as well as in commercial and private landscaping projects to replace lawns with materials that use less water and are easier to maintain. In Baja this is a cottage-industry that largely operates in the informal economy employing indigenous labor in rather precarious working conditions. I am interested in two main dimensions of this export sector. First the commodification process by which natural resources extracted from public beaches are turned into transnational market commodities for profit by large importing companies. I plan to study how pebbles are transformed both materially and symbolically into exotic commodities by consumer sectors in the United States. I am also interested in the environmental impact and ecological erosion this industry is causing in coastal communities in Baja. It is a window to investigate the growing environmental gap between the Global South as exporter of nature, and countries in the Global North that are net importers to ameliorate the costs and risks of water scarcity and climate change.
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