SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

December 29, 2005

Giving farmworkers hope for better life

Program's focus on health, housing, labor conditions

By Elena Gaona
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Farmworker Giovani Rosales had such bad migraines he couldn't work.

He would have stayed in bed, except for a van from the Vista Community Clinic that visited the homeless shelter in Carlsbad where Rosales is staying. He was taken to the doctor three times in the past three months to get treatment for the crippling headaches.

"It's much better," Rosales said. "They were very cool to me."

Rather than wait powerless for a network of public and private agencies to assist them with such basic needs as doctor visits, local farmworkers will soon become more organized, informed and visible in their communities, local nonprofit officials said.

The California Endowment, a private, statewide health care foundation, has chosen San Diego as one of the regions to receive $600,000 over the next three years to implement the farmworker program, Poder Popular, meaning "power of the people."

The program's goals are to improve the workers' health care, nutrition, housing and labor conditions and to integrate them into the cities where they live.

The money locally will go to the nonprofits National Latino Research Center in San Marcos, Vista Community Clinic in Vista and Community HousingWorks in San Diego and Escondido.

"It's a very ambitious project," said Ale Ricardez, a research project coordinator with the National Latino Research Center at California State University San Marcos.

The Poder Popular program will rely heavily on identifying and training promotores,  or farmworker leaders who become community resources to their co-workers.

In the next six to eight months, the promotores,  both men and women, will be trained in such topics as doctor visits, water quality, tenant/landlord laws and fair housing. They also will go into the fields and ask workers what other needs they have, possibly bringing cameras to document living and working conditions.

The promotores  may eventually speak up for the needs of workers in front of city councils, mayors, community clubs and other groups, said Patti Hamic-Christensen, a director with Community HousingWorks.

Several local attempts already have been made to improve the lives of workers, mainly related to better health care, Hamic-Christensen said. This effort is the first time local groups will team with dozens of farmworkers to teach them to advocate for their own needs.

If successful, it will not only lead to better lives for the workers but also encourage the San Diego community to appreciate them more, Hamic-Christensen said.

"They're part of our economy in this county, and their work enriches it and gives it its flavor," she said. "The strawberry fields, the flower fields, the avocados – these are all things the county has been noted for, largely because of the work of these farmworkers and the farmers."

Yet often, San Diego County farmworkers remain marginalized in the societies where they reside, according to previous research by local clinics and academics. They often live in cramped garages with no running water, sharing space in small apartments or surviving outdoors in makeshift shelters in canyons.

Their food often comes from lunch trucks, and they see a doctor only in emergency situations or sporadically through the assistance of community clinics.

Besides high rental costs, NIMBYism is one more issue facing San Diego County farmworkers, said Mario Gutierrez, a director with the California Endowment.

The Poder Popular program is part of the California Endowment's $50 million Agricultural Worker Health Initiative, which since 1997 has documented the status of farmworkers and worked to improve it.

In November 2000, the California Endowment published the report "Suffering in Silence: A Report on the Health of California's Agricultural Workers." The endowment has used the report to plan solutions to improve the lives of the mostly immigrant workers not only in San Diego County, but across the state.

The report said that for overall better quality of life, California agricultural workers need public policies that include them at the local, state and national levels; better relationships between workers and their farm employers; more cultural aspects that could lead to better health care; and new ideas to connect the workers to the places they live – solutions sought through the Poder Popular program.

North San Diego County is one of eight California regions approved to participate in the program. Two test regions have been operating the program, though it's too early to measure the results, Gutierrez said.

In San Diego County, the program may run up against anti-illegal-immigration sentiments even though not all farmworkers are undocumented, organizers said. Still, workers say they are ready for the help.

"I've been living here two years," said farmworker Aaron Canseco, 53, pointing to a field of brush that hides his hut home in Carlsbad. "It's impossible to pay rent. Anything you can do to help us is appreciated."

Farmworkers part of statewide survey

By Adam Klawonn
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Vista, which one book recently pegged as family-friendly, is now getting attention from researchers studying the health of migrant farmworkers.

The men and women who gather near downtown Vista street corners or near the hillsides of Gopher Canyon are represented in Chapter 2 of "The Ties That Bind Us: Mexican Migrants in San Diego County."

The book was published in September for the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California San Diego.

It was marketed to academics nationwide, making Vista a known commodity to groups such as the Latin American Studies Association in Pittsburgh and the American Political Science Association in Washington, D.C.

Mayor Morris Vance said he wasn't aware of the study, but added that he supported it as a way to understand immigration's effects and how people assimilate.

Bonnie Bade, a California State University San Marcos professor who wrote about Vista, said: "These folks are doing jobs that are needed. Is it killing them? Certainly the work involves very difficult conditions."

The book discusses incidents of discrimination, overcrowded housing and health care shortages facing migrants coming to San Diego County.

It also proposes solutions. One of them is "legalization of the migrant population so that migrants can access the full range of services available in the transborder region," according to an abstract on the publisher's Web site.

The book is based on recent field interviews and data from a November 2000 study published by the California Endowment.

It was the first statewide health survey of farmworkers based on research in Vista and the California cities of Mecca, Gonzales, Cutler, Firebaugh, Calistoga and Arbuckle.

The largest health problems among the 971 people surveyed included malnutrition, tooth decay, high cholesterol and an overall lack of medical attention.

In Vista, the larger issue was shelter. Researchers said they found migrants packed into apartments in Townsite, a heavily Latino neighborhood, or living in the fields they worked near the city's boundaries.