Watsonville-Register-Pajaronian
March 21, 2007
BY: AMANDA SCHOENBERG
Filipino farmworkers pose on the back of a truck in a Pajaro Valley lettuce field in the early 1930s. On the fender (third from left) is foreman John Gospodnetich. Photographer Mary Olive, the driver of the truck, donated the photo to the PVHA. The new radio documentary "Pastures of Plenty," which premieres April 23, will highlight the diverse mix of farmworkers who have contributed to California's history.
As a child in Watsonville, Kitako "Kay" Izumizaki hustled to school after spending her mornings picking strawberries alongside her parents, sharecroppers who arrived by boat from Shikoko Island, Japan, in about 1915. The last of her family still in the Pajaro Valley, Izumizaki, 85, returned to Watsonville after she and her family were sent to an internment camp during World War II.
Izumizaki recounts the shock of returning home in the new radio documentary "Pastures of Plenty: A History of California Farm Workers," produced by Peabody Award winner Rachel Anne Goodman and hosted by Luis Valdez of El Teatro Campesino.
"One day, I went to drive my mother-in-law to get groceries," Izumizaki tells Goodman in the documentary. "We got baskets of stuff and went to the counter and they just don't wait on us. We say, 'Gee, what's the matter?' and all of a sudden I look and I say, 'Oh My God, let's go home.' It says, 'No Japs wanted.'"
"Pastures of Plenty," featuring oral histories of farmworkers in California from the 1850s until today, will premiere April 23 at 10 a.m. and run for four consecutive days on KUSP 88.9 FM, as well as on public radio stations across the country.
Goodman, inspired by the California Agricultural Workers History Center planned for the new Watsonville Civic Plaza, spent the last year compiling the project, which was funded by the California Council for the Humanities.
Goodman was struck by the familiarity of the stories, whether they honed in on widespread racism faced by Chinese workers at the turn of the century or Mexican farmworkers facing immigration raids and policy reform.
"It's a story really waiting to be told -- people don't get to hear from these voices," Goodman said. "It's about the pride and dignity that farmworkers bring to this country."
Divided into four parts, "Pastures of Plenty" begins with the story of Chinese, Japanese and Filipino farmworkers in California. In the first section, Goodman delves into racial tensions that erupted in riots in January 1930 in Watsonville. Touched off by a new "taxi dance" hall opening in Palm Beach, where Filipino men danced with white women for 10 cents per dance, the riot reached its peak when hundreds of Filipinos were dragged out of their homes, beaten and thrown off the Pajaro River bridge. On Jan. 23 of that year, bullets were fired into the Murphy ranch on San Juan Road, killing Filipino farmworker Fermin Tobera.
The documentary continues with descriptions of waves of immigration from Europe, featuring the voices of Croatian, Spanish and Italian farmworkers.
With help from Salinas resident Ed Maples, who discusses his hardscrabble childhood in the San Joaquin Valley as a "fruit tramp," Goodman also provides a window into Dust Bowl and Depression-era life for California agricultural workers.
In the third segment, the documentary describes the bracero movement that introduced thousands of Mexican laborers to California's agricultural landscape and the rise of the United Farm Workers labor union. Many locals are featured, such as Leon Ventura, father of former Mayor Ana Ventura Phares, who with a fourth-grade education created a lettuce harvester and rose up the ranks to become a vice president at Dole. In the documentary, Ventura described his experience coming to California from Jalisco, Mexico, in the bracero program.
"The roughest part of the bracero program was living in the barracks with 150 people," he explained to Goodman. "Some were noisy, some were drunk, some were good people. The way they were in those days they had to house you, give you a place to stay, blankets, bed, doctor care and everything. And now ... they are on their own, living sometimes in very poor conditions."
Goodman also describes the future of farm labor, including what "farmers are doing right" through innovative approaches such as Salinas' Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association, which helps workers start their own organic farms. She also speaks with cut flower worker Gabriella Lara, who describes attempts to unionize at Monterey Bay Bouquet, as well as her own harrowing story of crossing the border from Mexico.
Although the documentary centers on the Salinas and Pajaro valleys, Goodman also visited the tiny town of Locke, near Sacramento, which was purchased in 1915 by the local Chinese community. With its share of whorehouses and gambling halls, Locke was where "Chinese farmers would go whoop it up on the weekends," Goodman said. The segment features resident Connie King, Locke's "founding mother," who has spent years caring for aging workers.
"She was kind of their mom, because they had nobody in the end," Goodman said. "She felt so strongly that they were going to be forgotten, that their contributions to the Delta levee and the pear orchards would be forgotten."
In completing the radio project, Goodman was reminded how often the stories of California's agricultural laborers remain untold.
"It's going to take a perfect storm of political, social factors to have the focus return to farmworkers," Goodman said. "Interest waxes and wanes and suddenly we rediscover there are farmworkers. I don't know whether it will come back to that level of concern, but if we close the border and have more and more crops rotting in the field, it will come to a head."
Historian Sandy Lydon, featured throughout the documentary, underscores her goal for the project, Goodman said.
"He says, 'Those people bent over there, they are people, they are our grandmothers. They're not just them out there, they're us.'"
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