On Tuesday, May 14, a pickup truck driven by a man with a history of arrests for driving with a suspended license struck a bus carrying 53 farmworkers, mainly Mexican nationals being transported to their jobs picking watermelons in Marion County, Florida. Eight bus passengers were killed. See www.latimes.com/…
According to the news report:
“Authorities in several states have been pushing for greater regulations for the safety of farmworkers, who are overwhelmingly migrants…[T]he U.S. Labor Department announced new seat belt requirements for employer vehicles used for farmworkers on temporary visas, among other worker protections that take effect June 28. The Florida Fruit & Vegetable Assn. [FFVA] has been opposed, calling the seat belt requirement “impractical.”
Apparently sensing a public relations disaster in the making, the FFVA posted a “statement of condolences.” See www.ffva.com/… The FFVA denied opposing the seat belt requirement, instead averring that they had merely filed comments on making such a requirement ”...a meaningful and workable regulation.”
You can judge for yourself by reading the full comment. The text features phrases such as the “extreme cost and burden” on growers to retrofit fleets of vehicles, a request that existing vehicles be considered compliant, and a request for delayed implementation.
In other words, the cost and inconvenience to business owners still comes first over threats to human health and safety.
According to US Government statistics, vehicle crashes in transit to work are a major cause of death for farmworkers. It remains a nationwide problem. For example: “...between 2015 and 2022 in California, 58% of agricultural workers who died on the job were killed in transportation incidents, compared with 47% nationwide. See calmatters.org/...
This latest tragedy triggered memories. History long past but made vivid again.
In 1948, Woody Guthrie released a protest song called “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” which he wrote to honor the memories of 32 victims of a January 28, 1948, plane crash in Fresno County, California. The mainly Mexican farmworkers were being deported back to Mexico. The song called out how the national news reporting listed the names of the non-farmworker dead, but not the farmworkers — merely referring to them as "deportees.” The lyrics are haunting:
***
The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again.
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane
All they will call you will be "deportees"
My father's own father, he waded that river
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees
And they rode the truck till they took down and died
Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves
We died in your hills, we died in your deserts
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes
Both sides of the river, we died just the same
The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"
***
Here we are, over 75 years later. Farmworkers are the life blood of the economy. But all too often, they remain people apart. Shapes glimpsed, bowed in the distance, across the wide fields as we drive past on the highway. The United Farm Workers were founded in 1966. Conditions, they say, have improved. But how much remains the same?
What role did the right-wing leadership in the Florida Governors’ Office and state legislature play in hindering farmworker safety in their state? What is the position of the GOP majority in the US House of Representatives? Do they even hold hearings on this topic, assuming they’d have time after all the Hunter Biden hearings? I suspect the GOP is aligned with the “extreme cost and burden” line of thinking. One dares to ask — would they care less about the “extreme cost and burden” if the seat-belt wearers were students from wealthy families traveling to their Christian academy and not “just migrants”?
We don’t know for sure if the injuries and deaths in this particular crash in Florida would have been prevented by seat belts. We do know that not having seat belts greatly increases the chance of injury and death. And we know that encouraging seat belt use has become a priority across the United States.
Just not for everyone.