Immigration Matters: Mexican Strawberry Pickers Seek African American Help

Carolyn Hileman - The Voice* | February 29, 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.