Farm Workers: Half Moon Bay

First dubbed San Benito and then "Spanishtown," Half Moon Bay is a coastside town with a long and intriguing story. Many know it for its lovely natural surroundings, quaint downtown architecture, and relaxed atmosphere, but not many people know that this town was the first to be established in San Mateo County as a result of 1840s land grants to early Spanish settlers. Isolated on the coast for a time, it became home to Mexican, Chilean, Italian, Portuguese, and other cultures after the 1850s, when roads finally reached over the mountains. During the 20th century, a wide variety of businesses thrived here, as people arrived by road, water, and even railroad. Farms, churches, schools, businesses, and homes sprang up, and the town modernized, though today's Half Moon Bay looks much like it did 100 years ago.

An intimate examination of the everyday lives and suffering of Mexican migrants and indigenous people in our contemporary food system.   An anthropologist and MD in the mold of Paul Farmer and Didier Fassin, Seth Holmes shows how market forces, anti-immigrant sentiment, and racism undermine health and healthcare. Holmes's material is visceral and powerful. He trekked with his companions illegally through the desert into Arizona and was jailed with them before they were deported. He lived with indigenous families in the mountains of Oaxaca and in farm labor camps in the U.S., planted and harvested corn, picked strawberries, and accompanied sick workers to clinics and hospitals. This "embodied anthropology" deepens our theoretical understanding of how health equity is undermined by a normalization of migrant suffering, the natural endpoint of systemic dehumanization, exploitation, and oppression that clouds any sense of empathy for "invisible workers."   Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies is far more than an ethnography or supplementary labor studies text; Holmes tells the stories of food production workers from as close to the ground as possible, revealing often theoretically-discussed social inequalities as irreparable bodily damage done. This book substantiates the suffering of those facing the danger of crossing the border, threatened with deportation, or otherwise caught up in the structural violence of a system promising work but endangering or ignoring the human rights and health of its workers. All of the book award money and royalties from the sales of this book have been donated to farm worker unions, farm worker organizations and farm worker projects in consultation with farm workers who appear in the book.

There is no better time than now to consider the labor history of the Golden State. While other states face declining union enrollment rates and the rollback of workers' rights, California unions are embracing working immigrants, and voters are protecting core worker rights. What's the difference? California has held an exceptional place in the imagination of Americans and immigrants since the Gold Rush, which saw the first of many waves of working people moving to the state to find work. From Mission to Microchip unearths the hidden stories of these people throughout California's history. The difficult task of the state's labor movement has been to overcome perceived barriers such as race, national origin, and language to unite newcomers and natives in their shared interest. As chronicled in this comprehensive history, workers have creatively used collective bargaining, politics, strikes, and varied organizing strategies to find common ground among California's diverse communities and achieve a measure of economic fairness and social justice. This is an indispensible book for students and scholars of labor history and history of the West, as well as labor activists and organizers.