California Story Fund
Overcoming Faceless Labor
Documenting the stories of Mexican immigrant farmworkersThe California-Mexico Health Initiative
Berkeley
Project Director: Xochitl Castaneda
Some 95 percent of California's field workers are immigrants, and of those 91 percent are Mexican. This project helped put a face on the Mexican farmworker population by documenting farmworker livesvia photographs and oral narratives.
Focusing on the Central Valley, folklorist and photographer Almudena Ortiz interviewed and photographed men and women who work in the agricultural fields as well as community leaders and organizers. The images and text were shared with local Mexican communities and exhibited at migrant education program offices and schools.
Project Director Xochitl Castaneda said, "When people are uprooted from their surroundings, they feel isolated and inadequate. The oral histories and photographs of the workers help validate them and give them and others in the community a sense of collective experience."