In Memory of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez and Her Unborn Child and All Farm Workers Who Have Died to Make our American Life Easier From: laprensa-sandiego.org

Every day Mexican citizens work in the United States. For instance, these hardworking individuals toil in the fields, assist and bathe babies and old people, clean homes, wash dishes, mow lawns and even build homes and businesses destroyed by fire, flood and hurricanes in the sun, cold and rain. In some of the Katrina states, police would pick up Mexican citizens at the local home building store in buses to take them to work cleaning up the toxic waste left behind by the storms. The police would make sure that they were taken to places they were needed most. Today, those same police now arrest for deportation the same workers that helped to rebuild their communities.

In Lodi California last week, a 17 year old Mexican citizen working in a field (so that you could have wine grapes) died in 95 degree heat from lack of water. She worked for a contractor who denied all the fieldworkers regular access to potable water and adequate rest in severe heat conditions. He may be the direct reason for her death, but what about the indirect influences? Are we all the real culprits? Are you silent when it comes to assuring that vulnerable workers like Mexicans, who do hard labor that we do not wish to do, have decent working wages and conditions? [Spring break used to be necessary when communities worked together to harvest its fields and all hands were needed – especially the strong hands of teenagers! How long would your teenager last in a field in these conditions without water?] She and her unborn child died for our strawberry shake, our tree bean salad, our farm fresh corn; so we can eat organic and drink wine with our dinner!

Here is the question of the day – why is it that the Mexican worker is suddenly the devil incarnate in the United States?”*

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