Local migrants settle into farms

Author: Dina Magaril

"Here's the deal. I'm looking for some help. You'll need to be up at five in the morning and working till six o'clock at night and it's going to be dirty, dusty, smelly dangerous work for about 10 dollars an hour. So how many of you want to do this. Just raise your hands please."

Sheryl Connor, a co-founder of the Addison County Migrant Workers Coalition often begins discussions regarding issues faced by migrant workers in Vermont with the above-mentioned speech. Her plea for help reflects the serious issue of securing workers who are willing to work under less than desirable conditions for as many as six days a week. No one ever raises their hands, a fact that doesn't surprise Connor, and would not surprise the majority of the farmers in Addison County.

"No one wants to do this job," said Connor regarding the day-to-day job description required of dairy farm work. Connor and her husband own a dairy farm with nearly 250 cows that need to be milked twice a day, fed and washed.

"Without these migrant workers, dairy farming would not be able to survive," she said.

Four years ago, Connor's husband was involved in a serious farming accident, requiring him to be hospitalized for several weeks. Connor recalled hiring some workers temporarily, but to her dismay they lasted for less than a week before they left for less-stressful climates. It was at this point that Connor began employing migrant workers, many of whom had come from Mexico looking for work.

"Our first Mexican workers were just like family to us," said Connor, referring to the husband-wife pair who came to work on the Connor's farm along with the young woman's brother for over a year.

Associate Professor of Spanish Gloria Gonzalez-Zenteno has been working with Connor and other members of the coalition in conjunction with her independent book project entitled "Invisible Mexico." Through a compilation of interviews Gonzalez hopes to tell the story of the Mexican migrant worker population living in Vermont, or as she said, the pioneering immigrants in Vermont.

"I say pioneer because in Vermont we are seeing the beginnings of the process of a new, very young immigrant community being formed," said Gonzalez-Zenteno. But like with any new community, this one too comes with its own set of issues regarding stereotypes and prejudice.

"People are distrustful and afraid of others when they have had no personal contact with them," continued Gonzalez-Zenteno, referring to the often-homogeneous nature of the racial breakdown of the Addison community.

"Five, 10 years ago, the distrust was much less," she said, adding that negative depictions of this population on the news is one of the main factors that is propagating prejudice. A fabricated image coupled with little interaction of with members of the community is a disheartening fact that Gonzalez-Zenteno, as well as other members of the coalition, is hoping to address.

Laura Budzyna '08 was one of the students in Gonzalez-Zenteno's 2006 class "The New U.S. Latino Writings," who was deeply affected by the community service aspect of her coursework. The class' service component involved student involvement in accompanying workers to medical appointments and offering their translation services wherever necessary.

"I was visiting a pregnant woman whose husband worked on a dairy farm that basically needed companionship," said Budzyna, who went from visiting the woman once a week to bi-weekly meetings, including one during the summer. "We were very connected."

While studying abroad in Chile, Budzyna received an e-mail from her former professor offering her a research assistant position and language coordinator responsibilities for Gonzalez-Zenteno's independent project. Budzyna accepted and spent this past year going from farm to farm conducting interviews with workers who had been in Vermont anywhere from several months to several years. Through her research, Budzyna saw a clear need in the migrant worker population that could not be adequately serviced in one class semester.

During Winter Term Budzyna decided to take matters into her own hands and started a group on campus that would assist migrant workers in various areas including teaching English and offering interpretation services. Budzyna teamed up with Michael Fletcher '08 and the two applied to the Tree House Fund for a grant that would enable the group to purchase supplies to aid in teaching, including such basics as notebooks, dry erase boards and reimbursement for gas.

Additionally, Fletcher is one of several students who visit a farm weekly, where he meets with a 23-year-old Mexican dairy farm worker. While Fletcher, as well as almost any other volunteer involved in teaching English, has seen tremendous improvement in his student's language ability, he cites the social aspect of the Middlebury program as his main reason for staying involved.

"Many of these guys are working 80 hours a week with no contact with Americans or the opportunity to integrate into American culture. We talk to them and teach them English but we're also providing a social outlet and friendship," said Fletcher.

The student group cites the help they have received from the Alliance for Civic Engagement (ACE) as integral to their survival. "They're really the people that facilitate the link between the students and the outside community that is involved [with these migrant workers]," said Fletcher.

When Gonzalez-Zenteno came to Middlebury in 1996, she estimated that there were no migrants workers living in Vermont. Then, in about 2005, Gonzalez-Zenteno began to hear from various acquaintances that a small community of Mexicans was living in Vermont. Gonzalez-Zenteno, who is Mexican, made it her mission to find these people and speak to them about their experiences.

"For me, personally, going from a situation where I am living in a community that doesn't resemble me at all to having people I can communicate with in my own language and culture was really exciting for me," said Gonzalez-Zenteno. She said she recognized her unique position as an ambassador between the students she was teaching and the Mexican workers that she wanted to teach and the farmers they were working for, nearly all of whom speak little to no Spanish.

Gonzalez-Zenteno envisioned her community service project based class as an ideal opportunity for students at Middlebury to use their Spanish outside the classroom setting.

"[These students] didn't have to wait to go abroad to advance their language skills," said Gonzalez, who added that the students were an integral part of the project, whose services were invaluable to working with migrant workers.

As an educator, Gonzalez-Zenteno felt personally responsible for combating the negative rhetoric that exists about these groups both through community awareness and by providing the workers she visits with the tools they need to express themselves in a culture that is often impatient with foreigners.

"There's always a need for something," said Gonzalez-Zenteno regarding her work.

While Gonzalez-Zenteno and Budzyna are confident that the service projects they are involved with will continue to grow and reach more people, the two admit that there are still many loose ends that need to be addressed.

"We should be reaching the farmers too and teaching them Spanish," said Gonzalez-Zenteno, adding that time constraints of the job often do not make this a very viable option.

The Coalition's future plans center around securing documentation for workers so "they're not fearing for their life in prison when they're out in the street or in a car or anywhere," said Connor, being quick to add that while Middlebury is a generally safe place from local police, state police and border police pose the greatest threats to many of these workers' security.

And while
Budzyna may be graduating this year, she is confident the younger members of the group will continue her enthusiasm and expand both in size and scope.

"[The group] has become really relevant and popular, and students are finding the prospect of using Spanish in a real life context to be very appealing," she said.