By Arcenio J. López, mixed community leader*
Oxnard, California.– Three members of my family, all Mixtec farmers from California, died last year from coronavirus.
As we recover, we also wonder if diabetes played a role in their deaths.
As the omicron variant spreads rapidly throughout California and the country, my family and many in the Mixteco farmworker community face a two to four times increased risk of severe illness or even death.
Many of them suffer from diabetes and other chronic diseases that make patients more vulnerable to complications from the virus.
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For Mixtec farmworkers in California, preventing deaths from COVID-19 will take more than a new pill from Pfizer (which
many of us without health insurance
probably won't be able to afford).
We need more effective solutions to the problems that have historically been part of our lives for as long as I can remember.
Mixtec community leader Arcenio J. López protests with members of his community in Oxnard, California, to demand better working conditions.Arcenio J. López
I don't remember exactly the first time I heard about diabetes.
I only know that I was a child when I heard my aunts share stories in the Mixtec language on the subject, every time they came from the United States to visit our little indigenous town in Oaxaca.
They shared diabetic stories.
My aunts didn't know much about the causes of the disease, only that it could cause high levels of stress and frustration or anger, and that it was associated with excessive consumption of soft drinks, which, they said, "turned the blood into sugar."
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In my ignorance, it was unclear to me how people's blood could be turned into sugar and why some even had their feet amputated as a result of chronic diabetes.
These stories were about members of my family, my relatives, the workers in the strawberry fields in Oxnard, the grape pickers in Madera, or the jalapeno pickers in the fields of Gilroy.
My family's story is that of many indigenous Mexican families.
My grandparents and parents began their lives as migrant workers in the 1950s and 1960s
, first in the cotton fields of Tapachula, Chiapas, and later in the sugar cane industry in Veracruz.
Then, in the early 1970s, they started picking tomatoes in Culiacán, Sinaloa.
I grew up listening to my grandmother's stories about her time as a day laborer.
She told me that saving money was her family's main goal.
For that reason, they could not afford to spend on soft drinks.
Instead, he would bring a liter or two of coffee to the fields to fuel him during the long day at work, earning 30 pesos ($1.50) a day.
"I had to do it so I wouldn't buy soft drinks at the Tienda de la Raya and get into debt," he told me.
La Tienda de la Raya was a company market that charged exorbitant prices, a form of exploitation and wage theft from day laborers.
no health benefits
I don't remember hearing my grandmother talk about any benefits for day laborers: she never mentioned giving them any kind of health insurance.
He always spoke of the precarious conditions he suffered.
In Tapachula, Chiapas, they even slept and cooked under the trees.
A man grows lettuce in California. Gomez David / Getty Images
It was only in Culiacán, Sinaloa, where they were offered a room with a roof so they could live temporarily during the tomato harvest.
They lived in houses for farm workers, but had no access to clean water.
They used the water from the irrigation canal for bathing, cooking and drinking.
In fact, at the age of 10, my mother had a job carrying water from the canals to farm workers in the fields.
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My grandparents, both maternal and paternal, were among the day laborers hired under the Bracero program, which brought the first workers from Mexico to the United States to work in the fields.
They decided to try their luck in California, and were among the first indigenous Mexicans to arrive in the United States.
Later other members of the family followed.
Working conditions for California farmworkers have not improved."
Arcenio J. López community leader
More than 20 years ago, a survey of the health of California farmworkers was published, a study titled Silent Suffering.
It revealed that 70% of farmworkers lacked health insurance and a third of men who worked in the fields reported that they had never been to a doctor's appointment in their life.
Working conditions for California farmworkers have not improved since that study.
Today, tens of thousands of people who work in agriculture in this state
do not have health insurance or any other benefits
that allow them to take care of their health.
The Mixtec community of Oxnard, California, demands better working conditions. Arcenio J. López
And diabetes has become a silent epidemic that invades our lives.
I remember my grandmother, who told me that she didn't drink soda because she was too poor.
Today, California farmworkers drink soda instead of water as a way to show their social status.
If you can afford to drink soda, it is thought, it puts you on a higher level than those who only drink water.
I see this as another form of colonialism that persists in our agricultural system, where workers are exploited, forced to adapt an unhealthy diet and lack basic benefits.
Exposed to junk food
When I came to this country in 2003, at the age of 21, I worked in the strawberry fields.
There I realized that high-caffeine sodas and energy drinks pose a serious health risk to my indigenous community.
I remember one of my aunts telling me about her health problems, like high blood pressure and prediabetes.
"I think it's because I started drinking too much soda and eating fast food," he told me, as this was sometimes quicker and easier, after long hours at work, in the 1990s.
According to the late Don Vallejo, one of the foremost researchers on farmworker health and wellness, about 30% of the state's 800,000 farmworkers are indigenous.
We know that farmworkers are exposed to sugary drinks every day in order to have enough energy to endure the long hours and pick as many boxes of fruits and vegetables each day as possible to pay for rent, child care, transportation and food.
I was able to see firsthand what scientists are saying: that high rates of diabetes among farmworkers are due to poor diets related to long work hours.
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Farmworkers consume mostly carbohydrates and protein in their diet, which increases their risk of diabetes, and ironically they rarely have access to the vegetables and fruits they grow themselves in the field.
It is known that many workers with diabetes are unaware that they have the disease.
Without proper treatment in time
this can lead to cardiovascular problems leading to amputations, strokes, heart attacks and blindness.
According to a University of California Merced study published in 2015, three-quarters of farmworkers in the state are undocumented and uninsured, and many suffer from poor health conditions.
Diabetes has become one of the main health epidemics among this population, of which my community is a part.
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Illnesses linked to the poor working and living conditions that my grandparents and aunts endured now make farmworkers more vulnerable to COVID-19.
breaking the cycle
It's time to stop the abuse and exploitation of farmworkers.
It is time for their work to be considered essential and for them to receive fair pay, access to health services and better nutrition.
The current system is racist and expensive and falls far short of providing equity for First Peoples.
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As we face a new and even scarier phase of the pandemic, we must learn from this moment and address the abuses of the past to put us on the path to a better future, so that farmworkers can have hope of emerging from this crisis even stronger.
It's time to stop abuse and neglect.
As the omicron variant spreads, farmworkers must be paid a fair wage and have access to better food and health care, something now being seriously considered in Sacramento, California for those who are undocumented.
The pandemic showed us early on that the job of feeding America is essential.
The people who do the work must also be treated as essential.
*Arcenio J. López is executive director of MICOP (Mixteco/Indígena Community Organizing Project) and produced this story while participating in the
USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism 's California 2021 fellowship program
, with support from Ethnic Media Services.