Farmworker rebellion spreads along almost the entire Pacific coast
Farmworker rebellion spreads along almost the entire Pacific coast
by: David Bacon
August 31 2015
A burned-out concrete blockhouse - the former police station - squats on one side of the only divided street in Vicente Guerrero, half a mile from Baja California's trans-peninsular highway. Just across the street lies the barrio of Nuevo (New) San Juan Copala, one of the first settlements of migrant farm workers here in the San Quintin Valley, named after their hometown in Oaxaca.
Behind the charred stationhouse another road leads into the desert, to a newer barrio, Lomas de San Ramon. Here, on May 9, the cops descended in force, allegedly because a group of strikers were blocking a gate at a local farm. A brutal branch of the Mexican police did more than lift the blockade, though. Shooting rubber bullets at people fleeing down the dirt streets, they stormed into homes and beat residents.
By then a farm labor strike here was already two months old. Some leaders say provocateurs threw rocks and egged on a confrontation, but the beatings undeniably set off smoldering rage in the Lomas and Copala barrios. In addition, a government official who'd agreed to negotiate had failed to show up to talk with strike leaders.
By the end of the day, the police headquarters was a burned-out shell. One of the armored pickup trucks (called "tiburones," or sharks) driven by police at breakneck speed down the dusty alleyways had been torched as well. It would be hard to imagine a more dramatic demonstration of workers' fury over four decades of hunger wages.
More:
http://peoplesworld.org/farmworker-rebellion-spreads-along-almost-the-entire-pacific-coast/