Exclusive David Bacon Photography: Mixtec farm workers pick blueberries, melons and chiles

Here are some more exclusive pictures from noted writer and photographer David Bacon.  They were taken in TAFT and LAMONT, CA in June 2009.  Here is Bacon's description:

Migrant indigenous Mixtec farm workers from the Oaxacan town of San Pablo Tijaltepec pick blueberries outside of Arvin. Jose Guadalupe Silva, son of Prisciliano Silva, the leader of the Mixtec community in Taft, picks Korean melons in a crew of migrant Mixtec farm workers. In the packing shed, other Mixtec farm workers wash, sort and box the melons. Almost all are also from San Pablo Tijaltepec. In a nearby field outside of Taft, Irma Silva from Tlaxiaco, in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca, picks chiles with other migrant Mixtec farm workers.

    

Copyright David Bacon.  Photographs reprinted with permission.

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Bacon just received the C.L.R. James Award for best book of 2007-2008 by the Working Class Studies Association: Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants.  For more articles and images on immigration, see here.  See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US Communities Without Borders (2006) See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004).  For David Bacon, Photographs and Stories, click here.

KJ