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Once I consider Santiago Nieto and his walks, I think about him because the knight from Quixote de la Mancha, who in his loopy wanderings all over the world errors windmills for menacing giants. However Nieto isn’t loopy, really, he’s painfully sane and has determined to place his effort and time into serving to California farmworkers.
His approach of calling consideration to the impoverished circumstances by which tons of of hundreds of California farmworkers dwell, the overwhelming majority of them migrants from Mexico and Central America, is thru his marketing campaign “Por ti campesino, yo camino” (“For you farmworker, I stroll”), which leads him by means of mountains, rivers and deserts. He walks within the rain in addition to within the 115-degree warmth of the Central Valley.
On his final stroll, for which he traveled a complete of 530 miles and crossed 27 cities on his approach from Los Angeles to Sacramento, he was seeking to elevate $100,000 to provide to Cirugía Sin Fronteras, which at the moment wanted assist to proceed serving to working households hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The coronavirus was merciless to the poorest, to the marginalized, to those that had nothing,” Nieto tells me, recalling that march, which started on Sept. 16 (Mexican Independence Day) and ended on Oct. 16, 2020.
After 320 miles and 23 days on the highway, I interviewed Nieto as soon as once more. I discovered him skinny, sunburned and thirsty. “Of the $100,000 we needed to lift, we solely received $22,000,” he informed me, in a voice between disgusted and disillusioned.
“It’s like farmworkers and their households don’t exist, like no person cares what occurs to them,” he informed me, talking out of each frustration and brave dedication as he rubbed his blistered toes.
It touched me to see him enter dusty cities surrounded by strawberry fields with a dozen followers at his aspect. He jogged my memory of the scene the place Forrest Gump begins operating throughout the nation. However in contrast to Tom Hanks’ character, Nieto does have a trigger, and a really particular one: To assist elevate funds for Cirugía Sin Fronteras, whose mission is to assist low-income folks with out medical health insurance receive low-cost surgical procedures.
Primarily based in Bakersfield, Cirugía Sin Fronteras says that it has supplied entry to healthcare for greater than 3,500 folks; given out greater than 900 meals baskets to households in want; and distributed financial aid to 49 households by means of its COVID-19 emergency help program; linked greater than 4,500 households with neighborhood assets; and supplied preventive well being training and power illness administration to greater than 6,000 folks.
Realizing and seeing Santiago on these journeys has had a profound impression on me, as a result of he has all the time given me the impression that there’s a supernatural power behind him.
“It’s easy solidarity,” he tells me as we chat on the aspect of a dusty highway in Tulare County. As he rests, within the distance dozens of employees could be seen hunched over a subject dotted with strawberries.
“Once I really feel like I can’t take it anymore, I consider Don Abraham, a 73-year-old man, and I feel that he ought to be enjoying along with his grandchildren as a substitute of constant to select strawberries at 107-degree temperatures. Once I keep in mind the picture of him, I really feel dangerous, as a result of I understand that the topic is just like the elephant that’s within the room and that no person desires to show round to see.”
Nieto speaks slowly as he tries on a brand new pair of sneakers.
“Everybody prefers to show the opposite approach, though they’ve sacrificed their households to place meals on our tables. I feel now we have to place meals and well being of their houses.”
He pauses as he watches a aircraft drop insecticide from a really low altitude. “Do you assume that doesn’t make them sick?,” he tells me, staring on the automobile passing overhead.
Between abundance and poverty
In line with the California Division of Meals and Agriculture, one-third of the greens and two-thirds of the fruits and nuts produced in america are grown within the Golden State. And to get an thought of the earnings that this sector generated in 2021, it is sufficient to say that counting solely the highest 10 agricultural merchandise, amongst them dairy, grapes, almonds, strawberries, pistachios, lettuce, tomatoes, nuts and rice, California farmers took in additional than $32 billion.
In complete, the state’s farms and ranches generated $51.1 billion in 2021.
However this financial prosperity doesn’t attain the greater than 420,000 employees who make this gigantic agricultural manufacturing potential. Farmworkers in California earn a mean of $26,000 per yr, in keeping with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The group Middle for Farmworker Households estimates that 75% of California farmworkers are undocumented. Roughly one-third of the agricultural labor power are ladies, ranging in age from their teenagers to their 60s. Farmworkers are sometimes subjected to sexual insults, groping, threats, beatings and even rape within the fields. In California, 80% of farmworkers say they’ve skilled sexual harassment.
“Sure, California is a wealthy state, however nobody turns to take a look at their employees,” Nieto says as he prepares to renew his march.
Thus far Nieto has made 5 walks by means of the state and is getting ready his sixth, which can begin from the Mexican Consulate on Sept. 15 and can attempt to attain Bakersfield seven days later. On that event, he’ll be looking for to not elevate cash however to lift consciousness concerning the poverty by which tons of of hundreds of farmworkers dwell within the richest state in america.
For the incorrect causes
Initially from Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Nieto started his skilled profession at KAMA, El Paso’s first Spanish-language radio station.
“That’s once I realized that to maintain radio listeners it’s a must to do a circus and theater,” says Nieto, recalling the multitude of occasions he held to entertain audiences whereas serving to the neediest.
“I might do radio marathons to get orthopedic sneakers for kids with mobility issues, broadcast day and evening on the roof of 7-Eleven shops to lift funds for quite a few causes. On one other event, after we wanted to provide away a van to a nursing house, we put a automobile on a crane that lowered a couple of inches every time somebody donated one thing,” he says.
However all this was finished for the incorrect causes, admits Nieto, who’s the son of a well known Mexican politician. “I needed fame, I needed recognition, I needed to feed my ego.”
Again in Los Angeles, the place he was coordinator of “Don Cheto al Aire” Radio Community, Nieto was approached by the Cirugía Sin Fronteras Basis, asking that Don Cheto, some of the fashionable characters on Spanish-language radio, make a public service announcement to lift consciousness of Cirugía.
Nieto not solely managed to get Don Cheto however different celebrities corresponding to Rosie Rivera, Larry Hernández, Ana Barbara, Omar Chaparro and Juan Rivera, amongst others, to document movies and public service bulletins. However that didn’t fulfill his aspirations to do one thing extra.
“One evening I used to be sitting watching the film ‘The Approach,’ concerning the well-known Camino de Santiago and I felt that this was my name, that I needed to do one thing like that … so I ran downstairs and informed my spouse what I used to be pondering and he or she mentioned, ‘You’re loopy.’”
However the thought caught in his head.
“I knew in my coronary heart that this was what I needed to do, however not due to fame, recognition or scores, however as a result of that was my calling,” says Nieto, who confesses that he’s not moved by spiritual sentiments, however by the sensation that among the many faces of the women and men he sees working may very well be that of your mom, your sister, your aunts, your grandmothers or your brothers.
“They’re the faces of our folks, and I can not ignore that.”
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