Earlier this month I had the opportunity to interview Christian Zlolniski about his ongoing work in Baja California, Mexico. I contacted Zlolniski in hopes of getting some more insight about the farmworker strikes in the San Quintin Valley that began this past March. Zlolniski is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Mexican American Studies (CMAS) at the University of Texas at Arlington. His research focuses on economic globalization and immigrant labor, with regional emphasis in the US Southwest and Mexico.  He is the author of the book Janitors, Street Vendors, and Activists: The Lives of Mexican Immigrants in Silicon Valley (UC Press, 2006) and co-author of De Jornaleros a Colonos: Residencia, Trabajo e Identidad en el Valle de San Quintín (COLEF, Mexico 2014).

Ryan Anderson: When did you first start doing fieldwork in San Quintin? Why San Quintin?

Christian Zlolniski: I began doing fieldwork in 2005 with two professors at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (Colef) in Tijuana, Mexico –Laura Velasco a sociologist, and Marie Laure Coubes a demographer. We wanted to study the settlement of thousands of indigenous farmworkers in the region who in the past were seasonal migratory workers. It was evident to us that San Quintin was changing fast and becoming a major agro-export enclave in Northern Mexico. It combined advanced agricultural production technologies with the massive employment of indigenous workers as a source of cheap and flexible labor. Except for a few pioneering studies, the academic literature on this region was rather thin and San Quintin was not in the radar screen of politicians, the media or scholars. We also felt that the academic literature on border studies in Mexico had an urban bias with special focus on the economic, demographic and cultural changes in large border cities (and studies on the maquila industry) while important transformations in rural society and economy, including the rapid growth of export agriculture, were largely ignored.

RA: Can you give us some insight into the lives of the jornaleros (ie migrant farmworkers) in the San Quintin Valley? Where are many of these workers from? What is it like to live and work in San Quintin?

CZ: The lives of farm laborers in San Quintin experienced significant changes since the 1990s. In the past many were migratory workers housed in labor camps who after the harvest season left the region. With the expansion of employment opportunities year-round because of the growth of commercial agriculture, many of these workers settled with their families and severed links with their home communities. To settle, they had to buy land plots and work very hard over the years to build and improve their homes and sustain their families. Often they lived in one-room shacks made of cardboard and plastic until they could save enough money to add more rooms and build a roof on their homes. Many of the jornaleros in San Quintin are indigenous peoples from poor regions in southern Mexico such as Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Chiapas among others. Thus San Quintin is one of the most ethnically diverse regions in Baja and Mexico as a whole. This is quite remarkable considering this is not a big city but a rural region, which shows that like in other parts of the world agro-export enclaves are magnets for labor immigration of the most vulnerable segments of the population.

While San Quintin is a beautiful region along the Pacific coast that attracts some tourists from California, the lives of farmworkers remain largely invisible for outsiders passing by. They live in colonias difficulty accessible in dusty roads and lack the basic infrastructure and service we take for granted in the United States such as sewage, paved roads, water, clinics, and the like. With time and thanks to the collective mobilization of their residents who organized to press the local government to respond to their needs, the conditions in some colonias have improved. Yet San Quintin is one of the least developed regions in Baja despite having one of the most productive and affluent horticultural industry in the country. Despite the big challenges they confront, farmworkers in San Quintin have adopted this region as their own and are proud citizens of the region and committed to build a better future for their children so they don’t have to work as jornaleros like them and find employment in better-paid and less strenuous jobs.

RA: Much of your work focuses on the social costs of export agriculture. Elsewhere, you talk about the price we pay for having access to fresh produce all year long. Can you briefly outline your argument? What is the price we pay?

CZ: My argument is that we are used to expect easy access to fresh vegetables and fruits year round at reasonable prices to sustain our lifestyles without thinking about what is takes to produce these crops. One or two generations ago, our parents and grandparents did not expect access to off-season veggies unless they were willing to pay high prices in premium stores. Today things have changed and we can find tomatoes, berries, grapes, and all types of tropical fruits all year round regardless of the season with some but not dramatic price fluctuations. How is this done? To meet our demands commercial agriculture has gone through a major restructuring over the past few decades with the formation of large multinational companies that outsource and buy these produce from developing countries around the world. It has also fueled the development of the so-called counter-seasonal agriculture, which is growing crops in protected environments such as greenhouses to “liberate” agriculture form traditional nature constrains and increase productivity. The result is that in Mexico and many other regions in Latin America, agro-export enclaves have emerged as part of the global food commodity chain which are fully dedicated to export agriculture.

But while providing jobs for farmworkers, agro-export enclaves also generate high ecological, economic and social costs. In San Quintin which is an arid region, water-intense crops such as tomatoes and berries are irrigated with underground water. As a result the underground table has dramatically receded and farmworkers and other residents have increasing problems having access to water for their basic needs. The work in the fields and greenhouses is also very demanding, and field workers when reaching the forties or fifties are often replaced by a young cohort of indigenous workers without having access to pensions or any support after having worked in the region and the same employers. These workers cannot afford to buy the very vegetables they grow, most of which are destined to export markets alone. And because they cannot grow their own food staples any longer, their diets have deteriorated and have health problems such as diabetes they did not have before when they lived as peasants growing their own foods. The social transformation from peasants to rural wage workers employed in commercial agriculture has come with a price tag for them. I think as consumers we have to be aware of these implications and just we have become more socially sensitive about the labor conditions of the workers overseas who build our computers or make our clothes and garments, we ought to ask the same questions about the food and vegetables we consume.

RA: The migrant farmworkers have received a lot of coverage this year because of the strikes that began back in March of this year (see here and here). As an anthropologist, what’s your take on the media coverage and public response to these strikes? What are the root causes of the current strike?

CZ: The strikes that started last March took everybody by surprise, including growers, government officials and the media. There are several factors that explain the resurgence of labor unrest in the Valley which, since the late 1990s, did not experience large strikes. First, while horticultural companies have been doing very well with impressive productivity gains, workers who contribute to this wealth have barely received any benefits from their labor. On the contrary, wages have only modestly increased over the past ten years, and many farmworkers still do not receive the basic labor benefits mandated by the law, including health coverage through the Seguro Social (IMSS). Also since the early 2000s, companies implemented a new pay system based on piece-rate rather than daily wages to enhance workers’ productivity which has led to the intensification of work and, often, more labor exploitation. Labor subcontracting has also become a common practice by many growers and companies to reduce labor costs and increase labor flexibility.

A second factor is the inclusion of labor claims as part of a larger agenda of community activism by farm laborers in San Quintin. In the past when many migratory workers settled in San Quintin they concentrated their time and energies to get a land lot where to build their homes and to mobilize to press government authorities to get the basic infrastructure and services such as water, electricity, schools, and clinics for the colonias. For a while labor-related issues and demands took a back seat as farmworkers and their families were setting up roots in the region. Now after many years of community-based activism, labor issues have come back at the center of the political agenda. Many farmworkers are eager and ready to mobilize for old demands that were never met, including their registration in the Seguro Social, higher wages, and stop abuses by mayordomos (crew leaders) and labor contractors.

A final factor is the emergence of a new independent labor union to articulate workers’ demands and feelings. In San Quintin farm workers have been represented by what in Mexico are known as “sindicatos patronales” state-sanctioned yellow unions that represent more the interest of the companies than the workers. Local growers and the Mexican government have always opposed, sometimes through the use of violence, the formation of independent unions that could threaten the political status quo in the region. Yet this time a new independent organization –the Alianza de Organizaciones Nacional, Estatal y Municipal por la Justicia Social– has emerged to challenge the historical shady association between growers, “official” unions like the CTM, and government officials to demand a seat and voice in the table when labor contracts for farmworkers in the Valley are negotiated. There is also new blood in the labor leadership brought by the Alianza, including Mixtec and Triqui farmworkers with experience of labor organizing in Florida and Mexico. And while in the past when labor strikes erupted, growers and government officials tried to regionalize the conflict to control it, this time the Alianza has internationalized farmworkers’ strike to galvanize the support of sympathizers in the United States where the crops they produce are sold. These innovative strategies have paid off and the labor strike in San Quintin has captured the media attention in the U.S., especially in California, Mexico as a whole, and even reached Europe in countries like Spain. I hope the media does not forget San Quintin and keeps bringing attention to the labor conditions of farmworkers employed in this important agro-export enclave.

Lorenzo continues with his version. This elder had no idea the land would become valuable one day, so he sold it piece by piece, often without papers. Some also say he gambled it away. According to one anthropologist who worked in the community in the early 2000s (see Weiant 2005), the land was informally sold, traded, gifted, and passed around for decades. These practices led to an incredibly complex and confusing land tenure situation, which worsened in the early 1970s when the Mexican government tried to clarify and formalize land titles in preparation for impending tourism and real estate development. This transformation from informal to formal tenure systems led to decades of conflict.

Lorenzo talks about increasing land disputes in Cabo Pulmo, especially over the course of the past ten years. All of these disputes can be tied to rapidly rising land values and real estate speculation. These conflicts include a couple of “land invasions,” the last one in 2009. According to Lorenzo, in that instance, about forty people from outside the community invaded Cabo Pulmo point, cut fence wires, and tried to claim the land. Members of one local family sent their own people, armed with machetes, shovels, and even Molotov cocktails. There was a confrontation. Someone smashed a person’s car. The invaders finally backed down and retreated.

Later, Lorenzo tells me, he saw one of the men who took part in the invasion in the nearby town of La Ribera. “Why are you doing this?” he asked the man. He answered: “Because there’s no work.” Lorenzo thought for a minute, then summed up the whole situation…in terms of money and value. It comes down to the valor de la tierra (land value), he tells me. The conflicts, he explains, are all because “people are walking on money.” He finishes the story with a question: “Who could have guessed that this land would someday be worth so much?”

Who could have guessed?

The Baja peninsula as a whole has been marginalized from Mexican politics — and history — for generations. The East Cape is just one of its many formerly unknown and disparaged hinterlands. It was long seen as an impediment to development, a barren, worthless place (see Alvarez 1987; Krutch 1986). But the people who lived there — descendants of missionaries, native peoples, migrants, 19th century colonists, even fabled castaways — have found ways to survive. They have created places of meaning and community, places with long histories and deeply ingrained values. Still, for many outsiders, much of the Baja peninsula remained worthless, valueless, and undesirable.

Times have changed. Today, small communities along the East Cape, such as Cabo Pulmo, are increasingly recognized by the outside world — not to mention the Mexican government — as high value destinations. They are places worthy of investment (see Li 2014), and exploitation. This change of heart was undoubtedly influenced by the East Cape’s beauty, ecological diversity, and uniqueness. But this is also because it’s a place where many outsiders hope to make money. This reconsideration of the East Cape as a renewed place of value, worthy of effort and attention, has also resulted in a broad “conceptual shift” (see Elyachar 2005). It’s a shift in which the formerly valueless is suddenly recast as vital and important. It’s a shift through which supposedly desolate, barren coastlines become conceptually and discursively transformed into places of solitude, beauty, and luxury — ripe for capitalist investment.

This shift occurs through the work of realtors, developers, government officials, planners, and others who help to inscribe the land, ultimately, as a commodity that is commensurable with other commodities (i.e. real estate) around the world (see Li 2014). The East Cape is in the early stages of this process of commoditization. Los Cabos, on the other hand, has been thoroughly transformed into a location that is dominated by the global tourism and real estate economies. The future of the East Cape has not yet been determined. But will it follow the path of Los Cabos?

The East Cape is no longer depicted as a dangerous, remote place. It’s no longer the worthless, “forgotten peninsula” (Krutch 1986) of the Mexican nation. It’s a place ripe for pride and promotion. It’s a safe, appealing, inviting place that promises high returns on investment. It also promises exclusivity — lonely beaches, wide open spaces, and distance from overdeveloped urban centers. For Mexican businessmen, government officials, and politicians, and a slew of international investors, it’s a place that’s primed and ready for integration into the global market. Suddenly, there’s a lot of money to be made from this place with no value. But at whose expense?

Marx’s task was to expose and radically challenge a system that he felt put things ahead of people. Marx’s theoretical work was meant to reverse this dynamic, to free people from the capitalistic tyranny of things (see Hart 2011:8). As David Graeber explains, Marx viewed the capitalist system as perverse because “it saw human beings primarily as a means to produce wealth rather than the other way around” (2005:223). Most debates about Marx’s theory of value, Graeber continues, completely miss the point. The point of Marx’s theory was to critically question why “we continually recreate a world we don’t like, that we find unjust, and in which we have lost control” (2005:222). Marx’s question was why making money has come to take precedence over making humanity.

Graeber argues that value theory gives us a way to understand that the “ultimate stakes of politics are the ability to define what’s important in life to begin with” (2005:15; see also 2013:226). “In value terms,” he continues, “the question becomes: who has the right to translate their money into what sorts of meaning?” (2005:14). Elyachar writes of the expanding neoliberal market as a process that is “simultaneously a mode of dispossessing the poor” (2005:13). What is being dispossessed, ultimately, is the ability to meaningfully participate in defining value — or, what truly matters in human social life.

The East Cape of Baja California Sur is one more site, among many, of dispossession. In the name of social and economic progress, places and communities are being made subservient to development models and real estate markets that, unmistakably, make the needs of people — and communities — subservient to making money. The slow, grinding process of commoditization continues to push many local residents aside, especially those who do not have access to enough money to stay afloat and survive the rising economic tide.

Money reigns supreme in this new conceptual order. It is the access pass that allows some people in and pushes others to the margins. The East Cape, like Cabo San Lucas, Cancún, and so many places before it, is in the midst of a process in which money is rapidly becoming the defining value system. This dispossession eliminates other possibilities, meanings, and potential values. It all begins when the unique values of a place are subsumed by and transformed into the commensurable, comparable value of global markets.

This process of transformation is incomplete. It is also highly contested. Many residents of the East Cape feel that Cabo San Lucas’s path is their inevitable future. So they prepare their exodus accordingly. Others, however, hold out hope for an alternative future. Because for them, the meaning of their land (and home) goes far beyond money. And yet, despite this resistance, and attachment to place, the speculative draw of the land remains powerful. While some residents continue to hope for that alternative future, others find it hard to resist the feeling that they might indeed be walking on money, and now is the time to sell. Trapped within this tension—between making money and making community—lies the future.

*This is not his real name.

References

Alvarez Jr., Robert R. 1987. Familia: Migration and Adaptation in Baja and Alta California 1800–1975. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Elyachar, Julia. 2005. Markets of Dispossession. Durham: Duke University Press.

Graeber, David. 2005. Preface. In the Carnival of Values and the Exchange Value of Carnival. The Commoner. Link.

—2013. It is value that brings universes into being. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3(2): 219–243.

Krutch, Joseph Wood. 1986[1961]. The Forgotten Peninsula: A Naturalist in Baja California. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Li, Tania M. 2014. What is land? Assembling a resource for global investment. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 39 589–602 doi: 10.1111/tran.12065

Weiant, Pamela. 2005. A Political Ecology of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs): Case Study of Cabo Pulmo National Park, Sea of Cortez, Mexico. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara.