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People of the Harvest: A Photography Exhibition by David Bacon

The exhibit is available for viewing between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Monday-Friday from August 27 through the end of September.

Indigenous Mexican Migrants in California

People of the Harvest is part of a larger project, Living Under the Trees, that documents the lives of communities of indigenous Mexican farm workers in California through documentary photographs.

It’s no accident that the state of Oaxaca is one of the main starting points for the current stream of Mexican migrants coming to the United States. Extreme poverty encompasses 75 percent of its 3.4 million residents.

Thousands of indigenous people leave Oaxaca’s hillside villages for the United States every year, not only for economic reasons but also because a repressive political system thwarts the kind of economic development that could lift incomes in the poorest rural areas. Lack of development pushes people off the land.

The majority of Oaxacans are indigenous people—that is, they belong to communities and ethnic groups that existed long before Columbus landed in the Caribbean. They speak 23 different languages.

In California, indigenous migrants have become the majority of people working in the fields in many areas, whose settlements are dispersed in an indigenous diaspora. This movement of people has created transnational communities, bound together by shared culture and language, and the social organizations people bring with them from place to place.

People of the Harvest documents the experiences and conditions of indigenous farm worker communities. The project’s purpose is to win public support for policies helping those communities to achieve social and political rights and better economic conditions.

The communities documented in this show are locacted in Arvin, Taft, Oxnard and Santa Paula, Santa Maria, Fresno, Greenfield, Watsonville and Marysville. They include Mixtecos, Triquis, Zapotecos, Chatinos and Purepechas.

The photographs are digital color images taken in 2009, which focus on the relationship between community residents and their surroundings, and their relations with each other. They present situations of extreme poverty, but they also show people as actors, capable of changing conditions, organizing themselves, and making critical decisions.

The project is a partnership between David Bacon, documentary photographer, journalist and Working In These Times contributor, California Rural Legal Assistance and the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations (FIOB).

For more more information, contact Greg Morizumi at (510) 532-9692 or visit the Asian Resource Gallery website.

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