# A Gringo in the Lettuce Fields



## MaggieMae (Feb 5, 2010)

Would you do this for $10 an hour?

The last word: A gringo in the lettuce fields
_Author Gabriel Thompson expected farm work to be backbreaking. It also turned out to be a real test of skill._

I WAKE UP staring into the bluest blue Ive ever seen. I must have fallen into a deep sleep because I need several seconds to realize that Im looking at the Arizona sky, that the pillow beneath my head is a large clump of dirt, and that a near-stranger named Manuel is standing over me, smiling. I pull myself to a sitting position. To my left, in the distance, a Border Patrol helicopter is hovering. To my right is Mexico, separated by only a few fields of lettuce. Buenos días, Manuel says. 

I stand up gingerly. Its only my third day in the fields, but already my 30-year-old body is failing me. I feel like someone has dropped a log on my back. And then piled that log onto a truck with many other logs, and driven that truck over my thighs. Lets go, I say, trying to sound energetic as I fall in line behind Manuel, stumbling across rows of lettuce and thinking about the five-day rule. The five-day rule, according to Manuel, is simple: Survive the first five days and youll be fine. Hes been a farmworker for almost two decades, so he should know. Im on day three of fivethe goal is within sight. Of course, another way to look at my situation is that Im on day three of what I promised myself would be a two-month immersion in the work life of the people who do a job that most Americans wont do. But thinking about the next seven weeks doesnt benefit anyone. Day three of five.

Manuel! Gabriel! Lets go! ¡Vámonos! yells Pedro, our foreman. Our short break is over. Two dozen crew members standing near the lettuce machine are already putting on gloves and sharpening knives. Manuel and I hustle toward the machine, grab our own knives from a box of chlorinated water, and set up in neighboring rows, just as the machine starts moving slowly down another endless field.

SINCE THE EARLY 1980s, Yuma, Ariz., has been the winter lettuce capital of America. Each winter, when the weather turns cold in Salinas, Calif.the heart of the nations lettuce industrytemperatures in sunny Yuma are still in the 70s and 80s. At the height of Yumas growing season, the fields surrounding the city produce virtually all of the iceberg lettuce and 90 percent of the leafy green vegetables consumed in the United States and Canada.

Americas lettuce industry actually needs people like me. Before applying for fieldwork at the local Dole headquarters, I came across several articles describing the causes of a farmworker shortage. The stories cited an aging workforce, immigration crackdowns, and long delays at the border that discourage workers with green cards who would otherwise commute to the fields from their Mexican homes. Wages have been rising somewhat in response to the demand for laborers (one prominent member of the local growers association tells me average pay is now between $10 and $12 an hour), but its widely assumed that most U.S. citizens wouldnt do the work at any price. Arizonas own Sen. John McCain created a stir in 2006 when he issued a challenge to a group of union members in Washington, D.C. Ill offer anybody here $50 an hour if youll go pick lettuce in Yuma this season, and pick for the whole season, he said. Amid jeers, he didnt back down, telling the audience, You cant do it, my friends. 

On my first day I discover that even putting on a lettuce cutters uniform is challenging (no fieldworkers, I learn, pick lettuce). First, Im handed a pair of black galoshes to go over my shoes. Next comes the gancho, an S-shaped hook that slips over my belt to hold packets of plastic bags. A white glove goes on my right hand, a gray glove, supposedly designed to offer protection from cuts, goes on my left. Over the cloth gloves I pull on a pair of latex gloves. I put on 
a black hairnet, my baseball cap, and a pair of protective sunglasses. Adding to my belt a long leather sheath, Im good to go. I feel ridiculous.

The crew is already working in the field when Pedro walks me out to them and introduces me to Manuel. Manuel is holding an 18-inch knife in his hand. Manuel has been cutting for many years, so watch him to see how its done, Pedro says. Then he walks away. Manuel resumes cutting, following a machine that rolls along just ahead of the crew. Every several seconds Manuel bends down, grabs a head of iceberg lettuce with his left hand, and makes a quick cut with the knife in his right hand, separating the lettuce from its roots. Next, he lifts the lettuce to his stomach and makes a second cut, trimming the trunk. He shakes the lettuce, letting the outer leaves fall to the ground. With the blade still in his hand, he then brings the lettuce toward the gancho at his waist, and with a flick of the wrist the head is bagged and dropped onto one of the machines extensions. Manuel does this over and over again, explaining each movement. Its not so hard, he says. Five minutes later, Pedro reappears and tells me to grab a knife. Manuel points to a head of lettuce. Try this one, he says.

I bend over, noticing that most of the crew has turned to watch. I take my knife and make a tentative sawing motion where I assume the trunk to be, though Im really just guessing. Grabbing the head with my left hand, I straighten up, doing my best to imitate Manuel. Only my lettuce head doesnt move; its still securely connected to the soil. Pedro steps in. When you make the first cut, it is like you are stabbing the lettuce. He makes a quick jabbing action. You want to aim for the center of the lettuce, where the trunk is, he says. 

Ten minutes later, after a couple of other discouraging moments, Ive cut maybe 20 heads of lettuce and am already feeling pretty accomplished. Im not perfect: If I dont stoop far enough, my stabinstead of landing an inch above the groundgoes right through the head of lettuce, ruining it entirely. The greatest difficulty, though, is in the trimming. I had no idea that a head of lettuce was so humongous. In order to get it into a shape that can be bagged, I trim and trim and trim, but its taking me upward of a minute to do what Manuel does in several seconds.

Pedro offers me a suggestion. Act like the lettuce is a bomb, he says. Imagine youve only got five seconds to get rid of it.

Surprisingly, that thought seems to work, and Im able to greatly increase my speed. For a minute or two I feel euphoric. Look at me! I want to shout at Pedro; Im in the zone. But the woman who is packing the lettuce into boxes soon swivels around to face me. Look, this lettuce is no good. Shes right: Ive cut the trunk too high, breaking off dozens of good leaves, which will quickly turn brown because theyre attached to nothing. With her left hand she holds the bag up, and with her right she smashes it violently, making a loud pop. She turns the bag over and the massacred lettuce falls to the ground. She does the same for the three other bags Ive placed on the extension. Its okay, Manuel tells me. You shouldnt try to go too fast when youre beginning. Pedro seconds him. Thats right. Make sure the cuts are precise and that you dont rush. 

So I am to be very careful and precise, while also treating the lettuce like a bomb that must be tossed aside after five seconds.

THAT FIRST WEEK on the job was one thing. By midway into week two, it isnt clear to me what more I can do to keep up with the rest of the crew. I know the techniques by this time and am moving as fast as my body will permit. Yet I need to somehow double my current output to hold my own. Im able to cut only one row at a time while Manuel is cutting two. Our fastest cutter, Julio, meanwhile can handle three. But how someone could cut two rows for an hourmuch less an entire dayis beyond me. Oh, you will get it, Pedro tells me one day. You will most definitely get it. Maybe hes trying to be hopeful or inspiring, but it comes across as a threat.

That feeling aside, what strikes me about our 31-member crew is how quickly they have welcomed me as one of their own. I encountered some suspicion at first, but it didnt last. Simply showing up on the second day seemed to be proof enough that I was there to work. When I faltered in the field and fell behind, hands would come across from adjacent rows to grab a head or two of my lettuce so I could catch up. People whose names I didnt yet know would ask me how I was holding up, reminding me that it would get easier as time went by. If I took a seat alone during a break, someone would call me into their group and offer a homemade taco or two.

TWO MONTHS IN, I make the mistake of calling in sick one Thursday. The day before, I put my left hand too low on a head of lettuce. When I punched my blade through the stem, the knife struck my middle finger. Thanks to the gloves, my skin wasnt even broken, but the finger instantly turned purple. I took two painkillers to get through the afternoon, but when I wake the next morning it is still throbbing. With one call to an answering machine that morning, and another the next day, I create my own four-day weekend.

The surprise is that when I return on Monday, feeling recuperated, I wind up having the hardest day of my brief career in lettuce. Within hours, my hands feel weaker than ever. By quitting timesome 10 hours after our day startedI feel like Im going to vomit from exhaustion. A theory forms in my mind. Early in the seasonsay, after the first weeka farmworkers body get thoroughly broken down. Back, legs, and arms grow sore, hands and feet swell up. A tolerance for the pain is developed, though, and two-day weekends provide just enough time for the body to recover from the trauma. My four-day break had been too long; my body actually began to recuperate, and it wanted more time to continue. Instead, it was thrown right back into the mix and rebelled. Only on my second day back did my body recover that middle ground. I dont think the soreness goes away, I say to Manuel and two other co-workers one day. You just forget what its like not to be sore. Manuel, whos 37, considers this. Thats true, thats true, he says. It always takes a few weeks at the end of the year to get back to normal, to recover.

AN OLDER CO-WORKER, Mateo, is the one who eventually guesses that I have joined the crew because I want to write about it. That is good, he says over coffee at his home one Sunday. Americans should know the hard work that Mexicans do in this country.

Mateo is an unusual case. There arent many other farmworkers who are still in the fields when they reach their 50s. Its simply not possible to do this work for decades and not suffer a permanently hunched back, or crooked fingers, or hands so swollen that they look as if someone has attached a valve to a finger and pumped vigorously. The punishing nature of the work helps explain why farmworkers dont live very long; the National Migrant Resources Program puts their life expectancy at 49 years.

Are you cutting two rows yet? Mateo asks me. Yes, more or less, I say. I thought Id be better by now. Mateo shakes his head. It takes a long time to learn how to really cut lettuce. Its not something that you learn after only one season. Three, maybe four seasonsthen you start understanding how to really work with lettuce.


*From the book Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs That (Most) Americans Wont Do ©2010 by Gabriel Thompson. Excerpted by arrangement with Nation Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group.*
The last word: A gringo in the lettuce fields - THE WEEK


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## uscitizen (Feb 5, 2010)

Real americans think they are above manual labor.  Just get a degree and earn above average wages for doing less.

I guess Americans do not need lettuce though...


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## Skull Pilot (Feb 5, 2010)

I've done a lot of shitty work for less than $10 an hour in my day.


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## MaggieMae (Feb 5, 2010)

uscitizen said:


> Real americans think they are above manual labor.  Just get a degree and earn above average wages for doing less.
> 
> I guess Americans do not need lettuce though...



For me, the excerpt drove home how Mexicans who work the fields are actually valuable assets to our economy. It's sad when they are _all_ lumped together as leeches and/or criminals.

I hope the immigration problem is brought to the fore within the year. One thing never mentioned whenever policy is revived is a return to the well-organized seasonal worker programs, where Mexicans were picked up at the borders and bussed to wherever a crop was ready for harvest. They were housed, fed and monitored for however long it took to pick the crops, then paid for the work and bussed back over the border. That's a start, imo.


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## &#9773;proletarian&#9773; (Feb 5, 2010)

What's the damn point?


If they want to work, then they can get a visa, work legally, pay their taxes- it's all good. Hello, Mr Mexican, can i see your documentation? Thank you, have a nice day.


If they hop the border, then they should be warned once, then shot as potential terrorists. No more playing games with our sovereignty.


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## uscitizen (Feb 5, 2010)

Did CO ever start using prisoners to replace the illegal workers after the roundups started?
I know they were talking about it.


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## Oddball (Feb 5, 2010)

> I stand up gingerly. Its only my third day in the fields, but already my 30-year-old body is failing me. I feel like someone has dropped a log on my back. And then piled that log onto a truck with many other logs, and driven that truck over my thighs.


So what? I feel like that the first couple weeks of a new construction job and ski season after a few months of off time...What else is new?



> THAT FIRST WEEK on the job was one thing. By midway into week two, it isnt clear to me what more I can do to keep up with the rest of the crew. I know the techniques by this time and am moving as fast as my body will permit.



Anyone with a scintilla of sense knows it takes you longer than a mere week to pick up a new skill and be as quick and efficient as old hands.

What's the point of that story, anyways?


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## Luissa (Feb 5, 2010)

Skull Pilot said:


> I've done a lot of shitty work for less than $10 an hour in my day.



I literally did "shitty" work for less than $10.


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## Angelhair (Feb 5, 2010)

_Hey! Somebody has to do it.  Why not the mexicans?  So that makes the 'gringo' less than human?? Crazy liberals!!_


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## Angelhair (Feb 5, 2010)

'Anyone with a scintilla of sense knows it takes you longer than a mere week to pick up a new skill and be as quick and efficient as old hands.  What's the point of that story, anyways?'

_The point of the story is to send 'whites' on the proverbial guilt trip.  Don't buy into it.[/I]_


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## Truthmatters (Feb 5, 2010)

Americans dont honor honest work anymore.


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## MaggieMae (Feb 5, 2010)

&#9773;proletarian&#9773;;1977833 said:
			
		

> What's the damn point?
> 
> 
> If they want to work, then they can get a visa, work legally, pay their taxes- it's all good. Hello, Mr Mexican, can i see your documentation? Thank you, have a nice day.
> ...



Most seasonal workers do have temporary visas. But the sheer volume of workers needed for the fields could be dealt with much more expiditiously the old-fashioned way. There is a wait time at the Mexican Embassy following an application for a visa, then another waiting period once it reaches the US State Department which must approve it.

Your solution to just shoot them is, of course, ludicrous. Once we began doing that, we would be in an all out REAL war with Mexico, not just a drug war.


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## MaggieMae (Feb 5, 2010)

Dude said:


> > I stand up gingerly. Its only my third day in the fields, but already my 30-year-old body is failing me. I feel like someone has dropped a log on my back. And then piled that log onto a truck with many other logs, and driven that truck over my thighs.
> 
> 
> So what? I feel like that the first couple weeks of a new construction job and ski season after a few months of off time...What else is new?
> ...



Duh...you wouldn't get the humanitarian point anyway, and even if there were some glimmer that you did, you'd have one of your insulting comebacks. Nevermind, Dud, everybody knows where you stand.


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## Big Black Dog (Feb 5, 2010)

$10.00 an hour is a pretty good wage to simply pick lettuce.  Pretty easy.  Doesn't take a rocket scientist to do it.  If you screw it up, you've only screwed up a head of lettuce.  If I was unemployed and needed to earn some money I would do it.  Beats just sitting around watching them haul your Chevy away or not being able to buy a gallon of milk.


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## MaggieMae (Feb 5, 2010)

Luissa said:


> Skull Pilot said:
> 
> 
> > I've done a lot of shitty work for less than $10 an hour in my day.
> ...



So did I, housekeeping for a major hotel chain at $4.25 per hour. But I still wouldn't want to think that's what I'd be doing until the day I died because the work itself had killed me. Americans know that they at least have the opportunity to do better.


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## MaggieMae (Feb 5, 2010)

Angelhair said:


> _Hey! Somebody has to do it.  Why not the mexicans?  So that makes the 'gringo' less than human?? Crazy liberals!!_



--->whoosh--->


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## Oddball (Feb 5, 2010)

MaggieMae said:


> Dude said:
> 
> 
> > > I stand up gingerly. Its only my third day in the fields, but already my 30-year-old body is failing me. I feel like someone has dropped a log on my back. And then piled that log onto a truck with many other logs, and driven that truck over my thighs.
> ...


I get the shameless appeal to emotion, alright.

I also understand, through experience, that a rank amateur at any given labor isn't going to perform at the level of someone who does it for a living.

I wonder how those lettuce pickers would fare compared to the "news" reporter, in whipping up some sob piece on a word processing program.


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## MaggieMae (Feb 5, 2010)

Big Black Dog said:


> $10.00 an hour is a pretty good wage to simply pick lettuce.  Pretty easy.  Doesn't take a rocket scientist to do it.  If you screw it up, you've only screwed up a head of lettuce.  If I was unemployed and needed to earn some money I would do it.  Beats just sitting around watching them haul your Chevy away or not being able to buy a gallon of milk.



Didn't read the story, did you... It _ISN'T_ "easy." And you do have the option of going without a vehicle. To paraphrase all of you strict constitutionalists, "where in the Constitution does it guarantee you a car?" And if you can't afford milk, you probably would qualify for food stamps to buy your milk. But I suspect that's not your real problem with this.


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## Vel (Feb 5, 2010)

MaggieMae said:


> Big Black Dog said:
> 
> 
> > $10.00 an hour is a pretty good wage to simply pick lettuce.  Pretty easy.  Doesn't take a rocket scientist to do it.  If you screw it up, you've only screwed up a head of lettuce.  If I was unemployed and needed to earn some money I would do it.  Beats just sitting around watching them haul your Chevy away or not being able to buy a gallon of milk.
> ...





I don't think most Americans have a problem with legal migrant workers coming to the U.S for the harvest season. What we have problems with are those that cross the borders illegally and end up overwhelming the resources of our communities.


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## Queen (Feb 5, 2010)

Interesting story. I'd like to read that book.


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## &#9773;proletarian&#9773; (Feb 6, 2010)

MaggieMae said:


> &#9773;proletarian&#9773;;1977833 said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Them applying for citizenship or resident alien status?


> Your solution to just shoot them is, of course, ludicrous. Once we began doing that, we would be in an all out REAL war with Mexico, not just a drug war.




Right...because we should care about Mexico. Didn't we already march to Mexico City and decide we didn't want it?


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## Angelhair (Feb 6, 2010)

_A real war with Mexico??? Yeah right! And.....they might win! LOL! LOL! LOL!_


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## uscitizen (Feb 6, 2010)

Lets just give Texas and California back to Mexico?


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## Skull Pilot (Feb 6, 2010)

MaggieMae said:


> Big Black Dog said:
> 
> 
> > $10.00 an hour is a pretty good wage to simply pick lettuce.  Pretty easy.  Doesn't take a rocket scientist to do it.  If you screw it up, you've only screwed up a head of lettuce.  If I was unemployed and needed to earn some money I would do it.  Beats just sitting around watching them haul your Chevy away or not being able to buy a gallon of milk.
> ...



Milk isn't good for you anyway.

Cows milk is good for one thing and one thing only.  Making baby cows fat.

We'd all be a lot better off if we stopped drinking milk.


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## Angelhair (Feb 6, 2010)

'Lets just give Texas and California back to Mexico?'

_We already have - or haven't you noticed? _


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## MaggieMae (Feb 6, 2010)

Vel6377 said:


> MaggieMae said:
> 
> 
> > Big Black Dog said:
> ...



And that's a given, but not what the article was about. For me, it was about the tendency to group and label an entire nationality as being rotten to the core _because of _the illegal alien problem this country has.


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## MaggieMae (Feb 6, 2010)

&#9773;proletarian&#9773;;1979886 said:
			
		

> MaggieMae said:
> 
> 
> > &#9773;proletarian&#9773;;1977833 said:
> ...



Huh?


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## MaggieMae (Feb 6, 2010)

uscitizen said:


> Lets just give Texas and California back to Mexico?



The Nation of Texas would have a real problem if it ever succeeded in seceding. That's why even talking about it is pure bullshit, and unbelievable that some Texans actually think it would be a good idea.


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## Angelhair (Feb 7, 2010)

_Giving Texas back to Mexico at this point does not matter as it's 'little mexico' anyway._


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