Investigate Midwest (https://investigatemidwest.org/tag/migrant-farmworkers/)
The rollout of coronavirus vaccines provides hope that the end of the pandemic is near. But the virus is still spreading across the U.S. and efforts to expand access to testing and build trust with the farmworker community are still needed, Tellefson Torres says.
Nely Rodríguez stands in front of 43 farmworkers and supervisors who sit side by side at picnic tables wearing various protective workwear—hats, ski masks, bandanas, socks as sleeves.
Rodríguez, a member and worker-leader of the Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), points to a drawing of a female farmworker bent over picking tomatoes while a male supervisor stands over her saying, “¡Mamacita, qué rico te vez!” or “Hot momma, you look so sexy!”
Since June, there have been 21 COVID-19 cases linked to the hotel where an entire crew of migrant workers are living, according to the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District, which tracks COVID-19 cases across Champaign County. The hotel is tied for third largest outbreak in the county, based on internal statewide public health data from July through September obtained by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.
“When the pandemic first started, and we were just beginning to hear information about the impact on farmworkers, we knew it was coming,” Partida says. “You just knew that it was going to get worse and worse and worse.”
The lax inspection process led to an incident in summer 2018 where workers lived in a former jail, a motel with bed bugs and a house with a leaking toilet.
During an incident in Kennett, Missouri, in summer 2018, H-2A workers labored through high temperatures while denied breakfast and with little access to water. Their legal status was supposed to protect them.
DURAND, Wis. — Twenty-six-year-old Rosa Jiménez and her husband, Manuel, 36, used to do the grocery shopping together. They would take the kids and make a day of it. But, lately, Manuel goes alone. Read on in this new report from Wisconsin Public Radio.
Gabriel and Sara Ruiz, husband and wife, were neighbors who fell in love and moved from Michoacán, Mexico, to California in the early 1990s to work on farms with hopes of realizing the American Dream. They brought with them their two children, Gabriel Jr. and Maria.
Mexico isn’t home anymore for Agustín Chavarria — Lexington, Missouri, is.
Newlyweds Alvaro Porras Loza and Maricruz Martinez Hernandez moved in early June from the Kansas City area to work the farm fields of New Haven, a town that hugs the banks of the Missouri River and stationed about an hour west of St. Louis.