Video and Text by Viji Sundaram, Video by Josue Rojas, New America Media
Oxnard, Calif. – In the two summers teenager Rodrigo Perea worked in the lush strawberry fields of Oxnard to supplement his family income, he more than once experienced what scores of farmworkers do from working long hours in the scorching sun: nausea, dizziness and fainting spells.
When he came to after one such spell, the foreman told the youngster — 15 years old at the time — to go rest under the shade of a nearby tree for a while and then return to his job.
“I was feeling so bad, I wanted to throw up,” the Oaxacan native, now almost 18, just over 5 feet tall and a junior at Rio Mesa High said on a recent day. “But I went back to work in a few minutes because I needed the money.”
Indigenous farmworkers in the United States – who range from 17 to 25 percent of all farmworkers — have higher rates of acute illnesses, chronic diseases and injuries compared with the general population, due largely to the demands of their jobs and dismal living conditions. Yet, too few receive health care.
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