Immigration Matters: Mexican Strawberry Pickers Seek African American Help

New America Media, Commentary, Gerald Lenoir, Ted Quant, Damien Ramos, Posted: Feb 28, 2008

Editor’s Note: Thirty men from Mexico who came to pick strawberries in Louisiana and found themselves in “slave-like” conditions ended up approaching some African-American activists for help. Gerald Lenoir is coordinator for Black Alliance for Just Immigration. Ted Quant is a labor activist and teacher in New Orleans. Damien Ramos is an organizer in the homeless community of New Orleans. Immigration Matters regularly features the views of the nation's leading immigrant rights advocates.

AMITE, La. -- Thirty men came from the indigenous community of San Luis Potosin, in Mexico, last winter to work for Bimbo’s Best Produce, Inc. in Amite, La. U.S. trade agreements have destroyed their economy and forced these men to become cheap, exploitable workers. Recruiters in Mexico promised them the American dream, with one catch: they’d have to pay almost $1,000 in recruitment fees. They paid, and were brought to Amite, La. on H2-A visas on a bus that dropped them off at a Wal-Mart in the middle of the night. Then they found out that all of the promises recruiters had made them were false: steady jobs, decent wages, good conditions – none of it was true. They realized they had been trafficked to the fields of Amite.

The workers said their boss, Charles "Bimbo" Relan, confiscated their passports to hold them in his fields. They said he forced them to work for sometimes as little as $2 an hour. Picking strawberries is back-breaking work – the men were bent down over bushes for hours. When they stopped to stretch, they said, Relan yelled that he would deport them back to Mexico. They claim that they weren’t given water, or allowed to use the bathroom.

Yet under U.S. law, these men could only work for Relan. Guest workers can only work for one employer. They had a choice: work under slave-like conditions, or go back to Mexico to joblessness and poverty.

So they decided to organize. The workers invited us to a meeting and described their conditions. We told them that as African Americans, we recognized what they were describing, and we were with them. The next day the workers walked off the plantation to demand their dignity. A delegation of African Americans attempted to conduct a citizen’s arrest of Relan on charges of violating the federal laws that define slavery, peonage, human trafficking, and servitude in the United States. We read him his rights, and told him that he was violating the laws our ancestors fought for. He was forced to return the passports but Relan still struck back: He fired the workers and illegally evicted them.

In the coming days, the workers will pressure the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the U.S. and Mexican governments to take action. Relan, meanwhile, has fired them, evicted them, and intimidated them. The workers are now in hiding, in New Orleans.

The workers are continuing their fight. And they need our support.


For those wishing to contribute to the strike, checks can be made out to the National Immigration Law Center and mailed to 3435 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 2850, Los Angeles, CA 90010. The Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity is a project of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice. For more information about the campaign you can contact Saket Soni, Director, New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, at 504-881-6610.


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