X-WebTV-Signature: 1 ETAsAhQlV7RBqnxgqt16jGlSkso3SqUCZAIUH7suKRB6Sk0lpCfuQBPQeN7mjXY= From: xcruz@webtv.net (Robert Chavez) Date: Sat, 8 Aug 1998 13:15:15 -0600 (MDT) To: Labor-Rap@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Fwd: Fruit pickers' summer of squalor --WebTV-Mail-649867796-213 --WebTV-Mail-649867796-213 [207.79.35.92]) by postoffice-121.bryant.webtv.net (8.8.5/po.gso.24Feb98) by mailsorter-102.bryant.webtv.net (8.8.5/ms.graham.14Aug97) with Date: Sat, 8 Aug 1998 12:32:29 -0600 (MDT) Reply-To: lared-l@lmrinet.ucsb.edu Sender: owner-lared-l@lmrinet.ucsb.edu From: Robert Vazquez To: lared-l@lmrinet.ucsb.edu Subject: Fruit pickers' summer of squalor Local News : Sunday, August 02, 1998 Fruit pickers' summer of squalor by Lynda V. Mapes Seattle Times staff reporter As Washington's $1.7 billion tree-fruit industry booms to record harvests, the state is losing ground in the battle for decent housing for tens of thousands of farmworkers who bring in the crop. Gray light seeps through the pines as first one car door, then another, creaks opens. It is barely 4 a.m. as this encampment awakens. Families yawn from cars and tents, and stumble amid piles of beer bottles, clotheslines strung with raw meat and grocery sacks stuffed with clothing. The morning fills with hasty rituals of ablution: feet shoved into shoes damp with dew, a toothbrush stuck in a stump to keep it out of the dirt; the rustle of bushes pressed into use as a bathroom. A nearby stream serves as kitchen sink, laundry, shower and, sometimes, toilet for the 60 or so migrant pickers camped here for the brief cherry harvest. "It's part of the battle of life," says Eloisa Alonzo, 56, groggy after a poor night's sleep in the back of a car. The camp, perched on Department of Natural Resources land outside Wenatchee, empties within minutes as the workers head for the cherry trees on Stemilt Hill. There they will provide the delicate, arduous labor needed to harvest some of the most profitable orchard land in Washington. As they leave, Alonzo goes to work in her woodland kitchen - under a blue plastic tarp stretched atop a length of irrigation pipe. She shreds cooked chicken meat, left unrefrigerated overnight, into a vat of chili. She leans to her elbows in the red sauce, stirring with her hands, making the first of hundreds of tamales she hopes to sell in the orchards that day. For seven years, Alonzo and her mobile tamale kitchen have trailed the harvest, from crop to crop, while the men in her family pick the fruit - oranges in California, then cherries and, finally, apples, in Washington. They travel together, a family of seven spanning three generations. Alonzo's 6-month-old great grandson stays tucked in the tent, his stuffed animals lying outside in the dirt "It is very hard like this," says Alonzo. "You see us, how we walk around on the earth like pigs? It makes me feel embarrassed for you to see how we live." Check out the rest of the story at: http://archives.seattletimes.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display? storyID=53402&query=farmworkers ** Note: The best way to access the site is to first copy the url from this message, and then paste it to your web browser. "LaRed Latina" WWW site: http://www.inconnect.com/~rvazquez/sowest.html ************************************************************************ --WebTV-Mail-649867796-213--