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 world wide errors windmills for menacing giants. However Nieto isn’t loopy, truly, he’s painfully sane and has determined to place his effort and time into serving to California farmworkers.
His manner of calling consideration to the impoverished circumstances during which tons of of 1000’s of California farmworkers stay, 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.
Santiago Nieto has used this motto to name society’s consideration to the tough circumstances during which farmworkers stay.
(Santiago Nieto)
On his final stroll, for which he traveled a complete of 530 miles and crossed 27 cities on his manner from Los Angeles to Sacramento, he was seeking to increase $100,000 to offer 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 street, I interviewed Nieto as soon as once more. I discovered him skinny, sunburned and thirsty. “Of the $100,000 we wished to boost, we solely bought $22,000,” he informed me, in a voice between disgusted and upset.
Fatigue overtakes Nieto after a number of days of strolling.
(Mónica Nieto)
“It’s like farmworkers and their households don’t exist, like no one cares what occurs to them,” he informed me, talking out of each frustration and brave willpower as he rubbed his blistered ft.
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 working throughout the nation. However in contrast to Tom Hanks’ character, Nieto does have a trigger, and a really particular one: To assist increase funds for Cirugía Sin Fronteras, whose mission is to assist low-income individuals with out medical insurance get hold of low-cost surgical procedures.
A farmworker eats throughout a break at camp.
(Santiago Nieto)
Primarily based in Bakersfield, Cirugía Sin Fronteras says that it has supplied entry to healthcare for greater than 3,500 individuals; 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 assist program; linked greater than 4,500 households with neighborhood sources; and supplied preventive well being training and power illness administration to greater than 6,000 individuals.
Figuring out and seeing Santiago on these journeys has had a profound influence on me, as a result of he has all the time given me the impression that there’s a supernatural drive behind him.
“It’s easy solidarity,” he tells me as we chat on the aspect of a dusty street in Tulare County. As he rests, within the distance dozens of staff will 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 must be taking part in along with his grandchildren as a substitute of continuous to select strawberries at 107-degree temperatures. Once I bear in mind the picture of him, I really feel unhealthy, as a result of I notice that the topic is just like the elephant that’s within the room and that no one 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 manner, although they’ve sacrificed their households to place meals on our tables. I feel we have now 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 suppose that doesn’t make them sick?,” he tells me, staring on the car passing overhead.
Between abundance and poverty
A farmworker picks oranges within the subject the place Carlos Garcia, 73, works, close to Reedley within the San Joaquin Valley.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Occasions)
Based on the California Division of Meals and Agriculture, one-third of the greens and two-thirds of the fruits and nuts produced in the USA are grown within the Golden State. And to get an concept of the income 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 whole, the state’s farms and ranches generated $51.1 billion in 2021.
However this financial prosperity doesn’t attain the greater than 420,000 staff who make this gigantic agricultural manufacturing potential. Farmworkers in California earn a mean of $26,000 per 12 months, in response to 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 drive are girls, 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.
Gloria Lopez, 65, works in a tomato subject in French Camp, Calif., in July 2020. Greater than 70% of recent coronavirus circumstances in California’s fertile San Joaquin Valley had been amongst Latino and Latina staff, due partially to the shortage of exams and lack of entry to medical care.
(Max Whittaker / For The Occasions)
“Sure, California is a wealthy state, however nobody turns to take a look at their staff,” Nieto says as he prepares to renew his march.
Up to now Nieto has made 5 walks by means of the state and is getting ready his sixth, which is able to begin from the Mexican Consulate on Sept. 15 and can attempt to attain Bakersfield seven days later. On that event, he’ll be in search of to not increase cash however to boost consciousness in regards to the poverty during which tons of of 1000’s of farmworkers stay within the richest state in the USA.
For the flawed causes
Initially from Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Nieto started his skilled profession at KAMA, El Paso’s first Spanish-language radio station.
“That’s after I realized that to maintain radio listeners you need to do a circus and theater,” says Nieto, recalling the multitude of occasions he held to entertain audiences whereas serving to the neediest.
Santiago Nieto on one in every of his walks known as Step by Step by means of El Paso.
(Archivo Santiago Nieto)
“I’d do radio marathons to get orthopedic sneakers for kids with mobility issues, broadcast day and evening on the roof of 7-Eleven shops to boost funds for quite a few causes. On one other event, after we wanted to offer away a van to a nursing dwelling, we put a car on a crane that lowered a number of inches every time somebody donated one thing,” he says.
However all this was completed for the flawed causes, admits Nieto, who’s the son of a widely known Mexican politician. “I wished fame, I wished recognition, I wished 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, one of the vital standard characters on Spanish-language radio, make a public service announcement to boost consciousness of Cirugía.
Nieto not solely managed to get Don Cheto however different celebrities equivalent to Rosie Rivera, Larry Hernández, Ana Barbara, Omar Chaparro and Juan Rivera, amongst others, to file 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 Manner,’ in regards to 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 stated, ‘You’re loopy.’”
However the concept 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 could possibly be that of your mom, your sister, your aunts, your grandmothers or your brothers.
“They’re the faces of our individuals, and I can’t ignore that.”
Santiago Nieto in entrance of the Capitol in Sacramento, after a stroll of 530 miles and 31 days.
(Mónica Nieto)
