Death in the sun

Migrant Latin labourers are the unseen force driving California's agriculture, but, writes Dan Glaister, there is growing alarm at the conditions under which they are forced to work

Friday August 5, 2005


You only need to drive for an hour from the centre of Los Angeles before you see them. From a distance they look like coloured markers in the fields. But then, as you draw closer, you realise they are moving. Gradually they take on the form of figures, bobbing up and down in the rows of crops, as if hiding from some unseen sniper. Hunched down in the fields, caps on their heads, cloths draped over their necks, slowly, very slowly, they make their way up and down the fields.

Article continues
These are the labourers, the unseen and unacknowledged force behind the wealth of California's agriculture. They are all Latin Americans, most of them from Mexico. And many of them are "illegals", in the parlance of the time, undocumented migrants, illegally employed by legal Californian companies. Many of the estimated 11 million undocumented aliens in the US work in agriculture, picking oranges in Florida, strawberries in California, and everything in between. Without them, there would be little to show for US agriculture.