January 24, 2006 12:00 AM
Jesus Estrada is a trim, compact man with strong hands and a face like carved oak, a former strawberry picker who now works in the political arena on behalf of other Mixtec laborers who still toil in the fields of Santa Maria.
Estrada was one of about 50 Mixtecs, Mexicans from the state of Oaxaca, among an opening night crowd Thursday at the Betteravia Art Gallery to view "The New Okies," a News-Press photo exhibit that documents the lives of the immigrants who harvest strawberries, the county's No. 1 cash crop. Asked by a stranger for his thoughts about the exhibit, Estrada paused to reflect, then answered carefully and precisely.
"This makes us visible," he said through an interpreter.
"It's like seeing our own history. These pictures will remain as history, and other generations will also see us."
For our paper, the exhibit of more than 50 staff photos, hung with nine Depression-era images of Dust Bowl refugees, is an unusual project that offers a different kind of storytelling than we publish daily on newsprint. Through the project, we sought not only to share with our community in a new way the craft and talent of our photo staff, but also to tell the story of one part of that community that is all but invisible to the rest of us.
Produced in partnership with the county Arts Commission and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the exhibit was the personal vision and, for the last year, the professional passion of senior writer Melinda Burns, who has written extensively about the Mixtecs; last year her coverage won a prestigious "Best of the West" journalism award. Producing an annotated exhibit about the Mixtecs was perhaps a more daunting challenge, requiring her to overcome the fears and to earn the trust of her subjects by spending time in the fields, their homes, churches and social gatherings.
"The farmworkers toil in public view in the fields, but they often live in the shadows," said Burns, who directed the project with the aid of a $20,000 grant that the California Council of the Humanities awarded to the partnership. "We wanted to shine some light on the strawberry pickers, so people would know who they are."
As someone whose main contribution to the project was to carp about it, I confess to being surprised and pleased with the final product. Beyond my own emotional reactions to the images, it was moving to watch the farmworkers experience the photos, sometimes laughing or gently touching the glass at seeing themselves or a friend or family member.
"I've never seen this big a crowd here," said Rita Ferri, special projects coordinator for the arts commission, as she stood in front of a table offering chicken tamales and horchata at the opening.
"Fifty years from now, these images will be the Dorothea Langes of our time," she added, referring to the famed Depression-era photographer whose work is included in the exhibit. Then she pointed to several small children being held or carried by their parents: "These little kids will say, 'My mother took me to see that exhibit.' ''
The photos themselves are the stars of the show.
From the day I arrived at the News-Press, it was clear to me that the single greatest strength of our paper is our daily photo report. That is in large part a tribute to our photo editor, Len Wood, whose energy and soft-spoken demands for excellence from his staff shapes it, day in and day out. Wood himself has several photos in the exhibit, along with staff shooters Mike Eliason, Rafael Maldonado and Ana Elisa Fuentes, and former staff photographers Ryan Hawk and Spencer Marley.
On Thursday night, the most discussed photo was an Eliason shot of a picker holding up his work-scarred hands, which are deeply stained blood red from the crops. Other images vividly capture the combination of material poverty and emotional richness of the workers' lives: Three little girls crowd onto a single bed with their mom, watching TV beneath a teddy bear hung on the wall for lack of space; a dozen boots are heaped outside the cheap wood door of a motel room, where many Mixtecs live together.
The exhibit is scheduled to come to Santa Barbara in May. It will be shown at the county Administration Building, and the paper will publish a special photo section featuring the images.
Until May 5, it may be viewed at the Betteravia Government Center at 511 E. Lakeside Parkway in Santa Maria. The Guadalupe Cultural Arts and Education Center, and CARES, a Santa Maria community center at 1619 S. Thornburg St., have satellite exhibits.
On opening night, Pastor Patricia Muran, who ministers to many Mixtecs at the Santa Cruz Lutheran Church, gave this two-word description of the collection: "It's true."
"It shows the reality of these lives and of this work," the Rev. Muran added. "It's a very true depiction."
We get letters: Berl Golomb was one of several readers who wrote me about our failure to cover a Jan. 16 speech by Al Gore, a blistering critique of Presidents Bush's unapologetic use of the National Security Agency domestically to gather intelligence: "(D)id you censor it as too unimportant to mention?" he wrote.
News judgment consists of deciding which few of hundreds of stories to publish in a finite amount of space each day. On this day, several national stories we ran seem, in retrospect, less important than the Gore speech. We omitted it, not because of "censorship," but because of misjudgment. In Super Bowl terms, we dropped the ball.
Jerry Roberts is editor of the News-Press. You can reach him by e-mail at jroberts@newspress.com.
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