Global Courant 2023-05-15 17:30:04
When I think of Santiago Nieto and his walks, I picture him as the knight from Quixote de la Mancha, who mistakes windmills for menacing giants during his crazy wanderings around the world. But Nieto is actually not crazy, he is painfully healthy and has decided to put his time and effort into helping California farm workers.
His way of drawing attention to the impoverished conditions in which hundreds of thousands of California farm workers live, the vast majority of them migrants from Mexico and Central America, has been through his campaign “Por ti campesino, yo camino” (“For you farm worker, I walk”), leading him through mountains, rivers and deserts. He runs in the rain as well as in the 115-degree heat of the Central Valley.
Santiago Nieto has used this motto to draw society’s attention to the harsh conditions in which farm workers live.
(Santiago Nieto)
On his last walk, which covered a total of 530 miles and crossed 27 cities on his way from Los Angeles to Sacramento, he wanted to raise $100,000 to donate to Cirugia Sin Fronteraswho at the time needed support to continue helping working families who were hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The coronavirus was cruel to the poorest, to the marginalized, to those who had nothing,” Nieto tells me, recalling that march, which began on September 16 (Mexican Independence Day) and ended on October 16, 2020.
After 520 miles and 23 days on the road, I interviewed Nieto again. I found him thin, sunburned and thirsty. “Out of the $100,000 we set out to raise, we only got $22,000,” he told me in a voice between disgust and disappointment.
Fatigue overcomes Nieto after several days of walking.
(Monica Nieto)
“It’s like farm workers and their families don’t exist, like nobody cares what happens to them,” he told me, both out of frustration and courageous determination as he rubbed his blistered feet.
It moved me to see him enter dusty towns surrounded by strawberry fields with a dozen followers at his side. He reminded me of the scene where Forrest Gump starts running across the country. But unlike Tom Hanks’ character, Nieto does have a goal, and a very specific one: to raise money for Cirugía Sin Fronteras, whose mission is to help low-income people without health insurance get cheap surgeries.
A farm worker eats during a break in the camp.
(Santiago Nieto)
Cirugía Sin Fronteras, based in Bakersfield, says it has provided access to health care for more than 3,500 people; more than 900 food baskets distributed to families in need; and economic aid distributed to 49 families through its COVID-19 emergency response program; linked more than 4,500 families with community resources; and provided preventive health education and chronic disease management to more than 6,000 people.
Knowing and seeing Santiago on these trips has left a deep impression on me as he has always given me the impression that there is a supernatural power behind him.
“It’s simple solidarity,” he tells me as we chat on the side of a dusty road in Tulare County. As he rests, dozens of workers can be seen in the distance bent over a field strewn with strawberries.
“When I feel like I can’t take it anymore, I think of Don Abraham, a 73-year-old man, and I think he should be playing with his grandchildren instead of picking strawberries in 47 degrees. Remembering the image of him makes me feel bad because I realize the subject is like the elephant that’s in the room and no one wants to turn around to see.
Nieto speaks slowly as he tries on a new pair of sneakers.
“Everyone prefers to turn the other way, even though they sacrificed their families to get food on our tables. I think we should bring food and health into their homes.”
He pauses as he watches a plane drop an insecticide from a very low altitude. “Don’t you think that’ll make them sick?” he says, staring at the passing vehicle.
Between abundance and poverty
A farm worker picks oranges in the field where 73-year-old Carlos Garcia works near Reedley in the San Joaquin Valley.
(Tomas Ovalle / Before The Times)
According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, one-third of the vegetables and two-thirds of the fruits and nuts produced in the United States are grown in the Golden State. And to get an idea of the profits this industry generated in 2021, suffice it to say that if we count only the top 10 agricultural commodities, which include dairy, grapes, almonds, strawberries, pistachios, lettuce, tomatoes, tree nuts and rice, California farmers brought in more than $32 billion.
In total, the state’s farms and ranches will generate $51.1 billion in 2021.
But this economic prosperity does not reach the more than 420,000 workers who make this gigantic agricultural production possible. Farm workers in California earn an average of $26,000 a year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The organisation Center for Farmers’ Families estimates that 75% of California farm workers are undocumented. About one-third of the agricultural labor force are women, ranging in age from teens to sixties. Farm workers are often victims of sexual insults, groping, threats, beatings and even rape on the land. In California, 80% of farm workers say they have experienced sexual harassment.
Gloria Lopez, 65, works in a tomato field in French Camp, California, in July 2020. More than 70% of new coronavirus cases in California’s fertile San Joaquin Valley have been among Latino and Latina workers, in part because of the lack of testing and lack of access to medical care.
(Max Whittaker / For The Times)
“Yes, California is a wealthy state, but no one looks at its workers,” Nieto says as he prepares to resume his march.
So far, Nieto has completed five walks across the state and is preparing his sixth, which will depart from the Mexican consulate on Sept. 15 and attempt to reach Bakersfield seven days later. On that occasion he will not try to raise money, but to make people aware of the poverty in which hundreds of thousands of farm workers live in the richest state of the United States.
For the wrong reasons
Originally from Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Nieto began his professional career at KAMA, El Paso’s first Spanish-language radio station.
“That’s when I learned that to keep radio listeners, you have to do a circus and theater,” says Nieto, recalling the many events he organized to entertain the public while also helping those most in need.
Santiago Nieto on one of his walks called Step by Step through El Paso.
(Archivo Santiago Nieto)
“I did radio marathons to get orthopedic shoes for kids with mobility issues, broadcast day and night on the rooftops of 7-Eleven stores to raise money for numerous charities. On another occasion, when we had to give away a van to a nursing home, we put a vehicle on a crane that lowered a few centimeters every time someone donated something,” he says.
But all this happened for the wrong reasons, admits Nieto, who is the son of a well-known Mexican politician. “I wanted fame, I wanted popularity, I wanted to feed my ego.”
Back in Los Angeles, where he was the coordinator of the “Don Cheto al Aire” radio network, Nieto was approached by the Cirugía Sin Fronteras Foundation asking if Don Cheto, one of the most popular characters on Spanish-language radio, would do a public service. grant. announcement to highlight Cirugía.
Not only did Nieto manage to get Don Cheto, but also other celebrities such as Rosie Rivera, Larry Hernández, Ana Barbara, Omar Chaparro and Juan Rivera to record videos and public announcements. But that fell short of his ambitions to do something more.
“One night I was watching the movie ‘The Way’, about the famous Camino de Santiago and I felt that this was my calling, that I had to do something like this… so I ran downstairs and told my wife what I thought and she said, ‘You’re crazy.’”
But the idea stuck in his head.
“I knew in my heart that this was what I had to do, but not because of fame or popularity or ratings, but because that was my calling,” says Nieto, who confesses that he is not moved by religious feelings, but by the feeling have that among the faces of the men and women he sees at work may be those of your mother, your sister, your aunts, your grandmothers or your brothers.
“They’re the faces of our people, and I can’t get around that.”
Santiago Nieto in front of the Capitol in Sacramento, after a 530-mile, 31-day hike.
(Monica Nieto)
