For decades, migrant workers have been among the least-protected and lowest-paid workers in the country.
They are often forced to work under inhumane conditions: Intense heat, long hours and in some documented cases, held at gunpoint while in the fields and behind barbed wire at night to keep from escaping.
A particularly cruel existence awaits female farmworkers — facing assault and rape in the very fields where they toil to provide food for the masses.
Far too many have suffered in silence for decades. Some though, such as Silvia Perez, are finding their voices.
Active with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Perez has been doing outreach to draw interest in the group's first-ever Farmworker Freedom Festival.
The festival is meant to highlight the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' gains with the Fair Food Program. The 30-year-old coalition is a farmworker-driven program seeking to provide protection to farmworkers. The program ensures workers know their rights, farmers adhere to them and retailers do their part as well.
The Festival runs from March 8 through 10. The bulk of it will be at Bradley Park, at the foot of the Royal Palm Bridge on the island of Palm Beach. There will be art, music, speakers and street theatre with giant puppets.
One of those puppets — named Esperanza — towers some 15 feet off the ground. A three-person puppeteer team will parade her through the pristine and mansion-lined streets of Palm Beach for the three-day celebration and demonstration.
Esperanza’s face is made of paper-mâché. Perez, who is Guatemalan, served as a model for the puppet’s likeness.
Perez came to the U.S. to pick tomatoes in 1993. She was told to wear tighter-fitting shirts to accentuate her breasts — she was then manhandled and groped in the tomato fields.
In 2008, Perez sought help and protection from the coalition. In addition to outreach, Perez is on the Art Team helping to create Esperanza.
The name Esperanza was chosen because it means hope: Hope for better wages, better treatment, such as water and shade breaks, and hope for continued growth of a key component of the coalition, the Fair Food Program.
Though Palm Beach is just 140 miles away from Immokalee, the east coast Florida city might as well be worlds away.
Immokalee is the epicenter for tomato production in the U.S. Nearly one-third of the residents live below the poverty line. The coalition and many other human rights groups say Immokalee is the birth-place to modern-day slavery.
Palm Beach is world-renowned for its beauty, quality of life. small-town charm ... and its billionaires — it has more with that status than any other Florida city.
The island of Palm Beach was chosen as the site of the festival because Nelson Peltz, chairman of the board of fast food outlet Wendy's, winters on the island. For a decade, the coalition has been waging a campaign for Wendy's to join the Fair Food Program — something the fast food outlet has yet to do.
The premise of the Fair Food Program is simple. Retailers agree to purchase harvested crops from suppliers who comply with a worker-driven code of conduct. That includes zero tolerance for forced labor and sexual assault.
Retailers also pay a premium, which for tomatoes is typically a penny more per pound. That premium is passed down through the supply chain and paid out directly to the workers.
Since it’s inception in 2011, buyers have paid over $45 million in premiums. McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, all the fast-food giants aside from Wendy's, have signed on to the Fair Food Program.
Esperanza, her three-person puppeteers and perhaps thousands of followers will march to Peltz's house on Sunday.
Through an interpreter Perez explains that she hopes the decade-long stand-off with Wendy’s will come to an end and the chairman and company will begin to understand the plight of farmworkers like herself.
For additional information on the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Fair Food Program go to https://ciw-online.org.
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