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

The Road from San Miguel

The book opens with ethnographic field notes written in the first person. Holmes describes his journey to the US-Mexico border alongside migrants from San Miguel, a Triqui village in the mountains of Oaxaca. The group traveled by van and bus for 49 hours, passing five army checkpoints financed by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). The bus driver instructed the Mexican migrants to say they were traveling to Baja California for work, while Holmes was told to identify himself as a hitchhiker going to the next tourist town. Among the passengers were three soldiers, one of whom assumed Holmes was a coyote.

Fieldwork on the Move

Holmes introduces his research methods. His book is based on 18 continuous months of fieldwork in 2003 and 2004 during which he engaged in participant observation, taped interviews, and immersed himself in the daily lives of migrants. He also studied media accounts about migrants and reviewed their medical charts. Holmes’s conducted his fieldwork on multiple sites as he moved from one place to another with migrants. He focused on Triqui migrants, an ethnic group new to US-Mexico migration with a reputation for being violent and unhealthy.

Next, Holmes describes his first visit to San Miguel, home to many Triqui migrants. Holmes introduced himself to local government officials in San Miguel, who didn’t respond to his questions about migration. Their silence underscores the challenges of doing fieldwork in Indigenous communities with a long history of distrusting outsiders. After his exploratory visit to San Miguel, Holmes began his fieldwork in earnest, moving to a Skagit Valley berry farm in Washington State. There, he lived and worked among Triqui, Mixtec, and mestizo Mexican migrants. His home was a one-room shack in the farm’s largest labor camp, which a friend described as “‘one inch above squalor’” (5). In November 2003, after several months on the berry farm, Holmes traveled in a migrant caravan to California’s Central Valley. The group spent a week sleeping in their cars and bathing in public parks until they rented a three-bedroom apartment in Madera, which Holmes shared with 18 migrants. They spent the winter in Madera doing occasional work pruning grapevines.

In spring 2004, Holmes lived in San Miguel with a migrant named Samuel and his extended family. The concrete house lacked plumbing and was built using money Samuel sent home from the US. In April, Holmes crossed the US-Mexico border with nine men, only to be apprehended by Border Patrol in Arizona. He was jailed and threatened with prosecution before being released with a fine. Holmes spent the rest of the month conducting interviews with border agents, activists, residents, and vigilantes. In May, he reconnected with the Triqui migrants in Madera and lived with them in another slum apartment. The group then migrated back to the berry farm in Washington State’s Skagit Valley. After working through the summer, Holmes resumed his medical training and started writing this book.

Traveling to the Border

These field notes describe Holmes’s bus trip from San Miguel to the US-Mexico border. His evocative writing style and first-person narrative lend vivid immediacy to the plight of migrants. Holmes describes dirty restaurants with “flies all over” (7) and feeling sick even before eating “because of the smells and unsanitary sights” (7). Holmes and the migrants often ate standing up because the restaurants didn’t have enough seats for everyone. As they ate, they discussed past experiences of violence on the border and shared their fears of being caught by Border Patrol. The migrants slept as the bus drove through the night.

Suffering the Border

Holmes introduces sufrimiento, or suffering, as a recurring theme of his research. Although suffering runs as a through line in the lives of undocumented migrants, the US-Mexico border is a significant site of suffering. Statistics support this claim. During Holmes’s first year of fieldwork, more than 500 people died of heatstroke, dehydration, and violence in the Tucson section of the border. Migrants also incurred nonlethal injuries during the crossing. Holmes’s long list of examples underscores the dangers of the journey:

One of my friends was kidnapped for ransom with her four-year-old boy. […] One young man I know described burns on his skin and in his lungs after being pushed by his coyote into a chemical tank on a train. Another man explained that he was raped by a Border Patrol agent in exchange for his freedom. All my migrant companions have multiple stories of suffering, fear, danger, and violence at the border (9).

Holmes chose to witness the suffering of undocumented migrants at the border firsthand rather than listen to accounts of their suffering after the fact. Triqui migrants expressed their misgivings at this plan, but they also stressed the importance of the border as a central site of their suffering:

They warned me of robbers, armed vigilantes, rattlesnakes, and heat. At the same time, they reminded me that the border crossing is a principal experience of sufrimiento that I should understand and began introducing me to people who might let me cross with them (9).

Lawyers, friends, and relatives also cautioned Holmes about crossing the border: “They warned me about death by dehydration and sunstroke, death by kidnapping and robbery, and death by rattlesnake bite, as well as the possibility of being mistaken for a coyote and charged with a felony” (9). Holmes took their input into account before making the decision to cross the border.

Spring in San Miguel

Holmes describes departing San Miguel for the border with 10 Triqui men in March 2004. Two were adolescents, including the nephew of their coyote. The rest were in their mid to late twenties. All the migrants planned to return to San Miguel at the end of the harvest in November.

The Mexican Side of the Border

These field notes document Holmes’s experiences in Altar, a village of 200 and a primary crossing place for undocumented migrants. Holmes describes the discomfort of walking from the bus to the town: “My skin is already peeling from the dry, hot wind in the bus and the sun that came in through the window. Now, I begin sweating profusely” (12). This description is a preview of the long, harsh journey into the US. Once in Altar, Holmes worried about being robbed and wondered why Border Patrol didn’t shut down businesses that were clearly designed to enable border crossers.

Externalization and Extraction

In the context of migrant studies, externalization and extraction refer to the off-loading of costs related to education, healthcare, and other social services to a country while also benefiting from that country’s migrant labor force. Holmes uses these terms to explain the dynamics of migrant labor in the US: The US extracts low-cost labor from Mexico and externalizes the costs of renewing the labor force through social services. Thus, it benefits doubly from migrant labor. Economic forces require cheap migrant labor, yet political forces hinder migrants from entering the country legally. Migrants not only lack the power to influence the institutions that exploit them but also face legal barriers to improving their plight. Holmes cites examples to explain this problem: Laws in California, Arizona, and Colorado, for instance, make it legal for American companies to pay migrant workers low wages, while also making it illegal to use government funds for their schooling and healthcare.

From Border Town to Border

In these field notes, Holmes shares how a coyote led him and 10 Triqui men to the border. The account is rich in description that captures visual images of the crossing. It begins with the migrants waiting for their coyote in a dilapidated shack:

The damp concrete floor is covered in several places by swaths of old, grimy carpet, presumably for sleeping. The bathroom has no water service and reeks of old garbage and urine. The shower behind the apartment is made of a hose connected to an iron rod with wet sheets for minimal privacy and a mud floor. (14)

The coyote agreed to allow Holmes to join the group. Their driver, however, expressed misgivings about traveling with Holmes, believing him to be a spy. After a night of fitful sleep, the migrants bought water, Gatorade, and mayonnaise jars to hide their money. Later that day, they traveled north in a van and pickup truck to a dusty outpost. Members of a Mexican organization dedicated to curbing border violence stopped the truck and asked Holmes pointed questions about his intentions. One of them wished the group well as they got on their way: “‘To my countrymen, good luck; to my friend from our sister country, God bless’” (17).

Individualism in Migration Studies

Holmes debunks a false dichotomy in the field of migration studies: voluntary migration versus forced migration. The US government affords people who are forced to migrate to the US, such as refugees from war-torn countries, political and social rights, whereas those who migrate voluntarily for economic reasons receive no rights. The underlying assumption is that labor migration is wholly voluntary, chosen, and economic. Holmes’s research on Triqui migrants proves otherwise: “My Triqui companions experience their labor migration as anything but voluntary. Rather, they have told me repeatedly that they are forced to migrate in order for themselves and their families to survive” (18).

Crossing

Holmes’s field notes describe crossing the border as a strenuous undertaking, both mentally and physically. Border Patrol activity forced his group to hide in the desert. Two migrants had diarrhea, and another had a sprained ankle. On the coyote’s signal, they ran toward the border and crawled under several barbed-wire fences. Holmes’s account conveys the difficulty of the crossing: “Though I am a runner and backpacking guide in the summers, we move faster than I have ever moved without taking breaks. My mouth gets dry quickly as I hike, and I drink through a gallon of water every few hours” (18). The migrants walked silently, careful to avoid the helicopters soaring above. Holmes compares the experience to being hunted: “I remember that Triqui hunters in the mountains of Oaxaca use flashlights at dusk to find the eyes of rabbits in order to shoot them. I feel like a rabbit, vulnerable and hunted” (19). The men stopped hours later to pull cactus spines from their legs and tend to their blistered feet. They slept on plastic garbage bags. Upon waking, they learned that the person they were counting on for a ride past the border checkpoint to Phoenix had backed out. Soon thereafter, Border Patrol agents caught them.

Framing Risk on the Border

Migrants make the dangerous journey across the US-Mexico border despite the risks. Holmes argues that risk in this context isn’t an individual choice, a stance used to justify the lack of empathy toward migrants in the US. According to this line of thinking, migrants choosing to cross the border illegally know the risks and therefore deserve whatever harm comes to them. Holmes points out that staying in San Miguel without work or access to food, money, and education is riskier than migrating to the US. He reframes common ideas about migrants, emphasizing that crossing the border isn’t a choice to take risks but a process necessary to make life less risky.

Apprehended

Holmes shares his field notes on the experience of being apprehended by Border Patrol. He produced letters from his school and a passport to prove he was who he claimed to be. The agents contacted a supervisor, whom Holmes describes in vivid terms: “He stands above me and raises his eyebrows, reminding me of an angry, patronizing schoolteacher” (22). Holmes was then place in a truck, which stopped to pick up Guatemalan migrants and to treat an agent who had been bitten by a rattlesnake during the chase. The agents took Holmes and the migrants to jail, where he learned he was being charged with “Alien Smuggling” and threatened with a $5,000 “Entry Without Inspection” fine. Holmes asked to make a phone call. Two agents refused, but a third acquiesced. Holmes spoke to his lawyer and then watched his Triqui friends get deported to Mexico. Agents informed him he was being released with a fine. On his way out, he filed a formal complaint against the two agents who refused to let him make a phone call, his right under US law.

“Is It Worth Risking Your Life?”

Holmes discusses the various views on individual risk behavior. Mainstream discourse presents migrants as deserving their fates because they chose to cross the border for economic gain. Holmes argues that Triqui migrants are forced to enter the US and that the line between voluntary and involuntary migration is blurred. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, 1994-2020) removed most economic barriers between the US, Mexico, and Canada. Although NAFTA prevented Mexico from placing tariffs on corn—the main crop produced by Indigenous communities in southern Mexico—the agreement didn’t ban government subsidies. Since the enactment of NAFTA, subsidized American corn has created an inverse tariff against Mexican corn and harmed Indigenous families. Corn from the US Midwest undersells local corn in the very Mexican villages that produce the crop. As Holmes notes, not migrating for work means “putting your life at risk, slowly and surely” (26). He proposes reframing risk and suffering to account for the economic, political, and social structures that produce or exacerbate them. Policies that uphold inequality must be renegotiated. Healthcare must be reformed to help vulnerable populations, including migrants. People must cease to individualize risk and blame and instead focus on addressing the structural inequities that fuel migration.

After Being Released

Holmes’s field notes relate his experiences after being released from jail. He traveled by bus to meet an acquaintance in Phoenix and then flew to California. A week later, he learned that many of his migrant friends made it across the border but that one man died en route.

Book Organization

The final section of the Introduction provides a roadmap of the book. Holmes describes his book as an attempt to present “the unfolding narrative nature of the experience of migration” (27). To this end, he describes various aspects of migrants’ lives. His multi-site fieldwork encompasses conversations and interviews as well as his experiences and observations. Chapter 2 addresses the importance of studying US-Mexico migration from the perspective of the body. Chapter 3 describes labor segregation in US agriculture, arguing that the hierarchical structure of farm labor is based on ethnicity, citizenship, and suffering. Chapter 4 focuses on suffering and presents sickness as an embodiment of various forms of violence. Chapter 5 shifts the emphasis to healthcare professionals and the lack of context with which they treat migrant patients, blaming them for structural inequities. Chapter 6 presents the normalization, naturalization, and internalization of inequities in social and health sectors as a form of symbolic violence. The Conclusion offers hope for Triqui migrants in the future but also addresses the challenges of engendering global change. Holmes ends his Introduction with a call to action for more humane and just policies toward migrant farmworkers.