Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States, Updated with a New Preface and Epilogue

by Seth M. Holmes

Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies provides an intimate examination of the everyday lives, suffering, and resistance of Mexican migrants in our contemporary food system. Seth Holmes, an anthropologist and MD in the mold of Paul Farmer and Didier Fassin, shows how market forces, anti-immigrant sentiment, and racism undermine health and health care. Holmes was invited to trek with his companions clandestinely through the desert into Arizona and was jailed with them before they were deported. He lived with Indigenous families in the mountains of Oaxaca and in farm labor camps in the United States, planted and harvested corn, picked strawberries, and accompanied sick workers to clinics and hospitals. This “embodied anthropology” deepens our theoretical understanding of the ways in which social inequities come to be perceived as normal and natural in society and in health care. In a new epilogue, Holmes and Indigenous Oaxacan scholar Jorge Ramirez-Lopez provide a substantive update about the protagonists in the book, focusing on the ways in which they have been involved individually and collectively in movements for Indigenous immigrant rights, farmworker rights, and the right to health over the last decade.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, Ethnography, Food, Politics, School, Sociology

324 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Jessaka · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has been a subject that has been of interest to me in recent years, especially since reading online about the horrors that Hispanics go through in the fields. I have even read a few other books on this subject, but no book has really gone into it as deeply as this one or at least none that I just read.

Seth Holmes is an anthropologist who is also studying to become a medical doctor, if he hasn't gotten his degree by now. He went down to Oaxaca and then crossed the border with the Mexicans into the United States, where he was arrested and then released. He then went to work in the fields with the migrant workers, interviewed them, their doctors and their bosses.

It is a crime what big corporations and our government do by making it impossible for farmers to increase their wages or improve their living conditions. If they do, it would cause the farmer to go bankrupt. And yet many farmers would like to help their workers. As I am typing this, I realize that perhaps a farmer can’t afford to pay the white man to work in his fields.

If anyone wants to know what it takes to put food on our tables and what Mexicans go through while here, and why they must come to America, I would suggest this book. If I were young I would want to become an activist but all I can do is write poetry on it that no one will see and then tell others what is happening.

I am adding a poem to this that I had written shortly after writing my review. The second stanza part about the sleeping bags is what I saw when living in Del Mar, CA where the Mexicans work for the fairgrounds during the horse races:

GRINGO, DO YOU REALLY WANT MY JOB?

i work seventeen hour days
on u. s. soil—
a dollar an hour
at a fairgrounds, one,
maybe, near you.

i sleep in a flea and bedbug infested
bag down by the river
and defecate in bushes
by the same river that gently
flows into your ocean
where you go swimming
In the summer and
play Frisbee with your dog.

are you sure you still want my job?

i am fed one meal a day
and suffer from dehydration
but you americans always cry
that we are taking your jobs away.
while i
only want more than one meal,
bottled water,
and some rest.

i am a farm worker—
my nose bleeds, i vomit,
and my skin breaks out
in a rash—
my hands so swollen
it is hard to touch the fruit
that i must pick
to put food on your table.

The doctor claimed
it is just the flu,
but i knew,
it was from your beloved
fungicides,
and pesticides
that you spray on crops
just to keep food on your table.

is my life worth only that much?

my years are not
long in these fields
my body grows weak,
my back hurts
middle aged,
I go back to mexico
or south america.
unemployable.

but i needed the money
more than you, gringo
or you would have my job.

Written by Jessica Slade

[Marilyn McEntyre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Those of us who eat fruit need to read this book. Those of us who have driven by strawberry fields without asking ourselves about what it's like to pick strawberries all day need to read it. Those of us who wonder why migrant workers risk their lives to live in crowded, squalid housing, work at backbreaking jobs, and die early of preventable diseases need to read it. Seth Holmes, anthropologist and MD, spent months living and working with the poorest class of Mexican migrant workers from southern Mexico to try to understand their plight not in terms of personal choices individuals make, but in terms of the social and economic structures that normalize a very real kind of violence to the poor and dispossessed. The book is not only readable but compelling, though it is also scrupulously scholarly. Holmes writes with lively compassion for those whose lives he documents. The book left me with renewed resolve to support those who are challenging the profound inequities built into the food production and healthcare systems we inhabit. And to ask more questions. And to eat the berries on my oatmeal with deepened respect and gratitude, and a measure of indignation on behalf of those who pick them but can't afford to eat them.

[sdw · Rating 5 out of 5]

This ethnographic study of indigenous Mexican migrant farm workers in Washington state exposes the structural and symbolic violence such workers face. Holmes carefully enumerates the ways that the racialized hierarchies of agricultural labor are naturalized. The author is a medical anthropologist and as such reveals a particular concern with public health issues.

The book starts with an incredibly compelling first person narrative of the author crossing the border with his undocumented subjects. In this introduction, the author does a great job dealing with the ever-present question in anthropology of positionality.

This would be a great book to teach undergraduates. The majority of the book is very readable and the author goes to pains to explains the terms he uses.

"The United Nations Population Division estimates conservatively that there are 175 million migrants in the world . . .In the United States, researchers estimate that there are over 290 million residents, including 36 million immigrants, approximately 5 million to 10 million of whom are unauthorized. In addition, it is estimated that approximately 95 percent of agricultural workers in the United States were born in Mexico, 52 percent of them unauthorized."

[Dragoș · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies Seth M. Holmes uses his extensive fieldwork amidst the Triqui people to paint us a rather depressing picture of the US agricultural sector and US border policy in general. Trained as both an MD and an anthropologist Holmes gives us a dual perspective that blends medical positivism with the anthropological knack for data interpretation and ferreting out hidden ties and patterns.

The book is at its best when Holmes is narrating. The man seems destined for a career as an ethnographer. He situates himself not as a ‘fly on the wall’ observer but as an active participant taking part (sporadically) in the gruelling labour, his informants he refers to as his ‘friends’. Holmes has a strong ethnographic voice, an eye for detail and knows just how to present a vignette to make it both interesting to an audience consisting of non-anthropologists and to tie it to larger themes of structural violence and global income and opportunity inequality. And that’s where the problems start.

While he paints a stunning, captivating picture of the US Borderlands, Mexican highlands and rural Washington Holmes’ analysis is a bit sophomoric. He constructs a flimsy structure for analysis based on ‘the usual suspects’: Bourdieu, Wacquant, Bourgois, with a few forays into philosophy through Gramsci and Levinas. While it is true that the analysis is aimed at a wider audience rather than, say, people such as ourselves who obsess endlessly over theoretical frameworks the scope of it requires a more judicious use of theory to back up some of the more extraordinary claims. Otherwise bits like Holmes’ analysis of three case studies, all suffering from various illnesses related to their labour and the migration process, falls flat. The structural explanations that he builds between these bodily afflictions and large-scale structural problems in the market economy and the persecution of migration, come out as stylistic flourishes rather than serious analysis.

Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies does however raise some very interesting points. The multi-level analysis of the fruit trade gives us a cross picture of how different levels of inequality build up from the top down. Nobody is left unaffected by the structural pressures of the neoliberal status-quo: executives worry about market pressures and business survivability, crop managers worry about that and also crop minutiae, crew bosses also about making quotas and so forth down to the bottom level of the pickers who worry about everything for the lowest amount of pay, with bad housing and next to no job security.

Perhaps the most important thing to come out of the book is something that is by no means revolutionary but that still has to be said, particularly to a non-academic audience: the tightening of border regimes is discriminatory, dangerous and above all counter-productive. To drum up political support politicians support the tightening of border regimes and thus the professionalization of people smuggling networks. People smuggling has become a lucrative business opportunity for coyotes and the high costs associated with border crossings have led to more permanent irregular migration, rather than less.

One has to think back to the posters described by Seth Holmes in the border town of Totem that asked Is it worth risking your life? With the tightening of border regimes and the persecution and disenfranchisment of a vital part of the American labour force the answer is clear. It is, but perhaps only one way. The seasonal migrant is caught in a trap. He or she needs to work and there is plenty of work available but no rights come with his/her status as a labourer. The ‘illegal’ migrant is stripped of his humanity and with it, his human rights. He is a machine and a machine has no rights, a machine doesn’t get sick or earn overtime pay. A machine does its job and is replaced when it breaks down.

Weak in its analytical and theoretical framework Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies is nonetheless a captivating ethnographic read that gives us a complex picture of the exploitation apparatus built around the modern ‘illegalized’ migrant as well as the devastating health effects that it has on individuals.

[Mari Stusser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow- super aggravating that migrant farm workers cannot receive healthcare and respect and safe working conditions after crossing the most violent border between two countries not at war. Upsetting the teenagers checking their harvest lower the weight count and it’s impossibly hard to pick fast enough to make minimum weight daily and there’s massive exposure to pesticides with no warnings in their language on that. I’d recommend this book and it made me #fired up.

[rachel ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

read this for my anthropology: food & culture class. both a horrifying and necessary look into the lives of undocumented migrants and their systematic exploitation within the agriculture industry.

i work at a very progressive, pro-immigrant, human-rights-advocate college; i’ve likely worked personally with undocumented students. this is definitely a topic that interests me greatly and i am so grateful to my anthro professor for requiring this book. disturbing, eye-opening, and important.

[casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not to compare apples with oranges -- after all, comparison is the thief of joy -- but in the small and jostled arena containing medical anthropology, thick ethnographies, and neoliberal Reaganomics, some amount of comparison is largely inevitable.

And so, I tried to read Dr. Seth Holmes' Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies thinking of apples (and strawberries, of course as thematically appropriate), only to inevitably have my mind drift back to Dr. Jason De León's The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. Oranges! Drat.

Of course, I would love to have the best of both worlds, and as the lucky reader -- I do! Thanks Seth and Jason for doing most of the hard intellectual work for me. And to the unseen, invisible, and backbreaking labour of migrant workers who toil through the most inhumane conditions with the most superhuman resilience to bring us oranges, strawberries, and apples at the cost of their human rights--and lives.

I really do think reading Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies and The Land of Open Graves together is a sobering reminder, call to action, and reflection of the broader structural injustices that are present in our society that reinforce themselves to beget more institutionalised suffering. As someone whose social positionality means that I am far distanced from el sufrimiento y dolor de sobrevivir in my daily life, I am both humbled and reminded of the importance of la lucha.

[Eduardo Santiago · Rating 5 out of 5]

We know that our food is artificially cheap. At some abstract level we know there's suffering involved. Holmes beautifully lets us see and almost feel what that suffering is really like: the terror of the border crossing, the social circumstances that make it necessary; the back-neck-knee-and-body-breaking misery of picking strawberries seven days a week for unending hours; waking to rainfall as condensed breath drips from your uninsulated ceiling; the humiliation and insults and violence. Seth Holmes walked the walk, spending years living with (excuse the term) migrant workers roaming between Oaxaca, California, and Washington. People who turn out to be (gasp!) actual human beings who experience love, joy, fear, sadness, pain (only much, much more of the latter than you or I ever will).


Holmes writes engagingly, with more grace and heart than I could ever muster. Even when interviewing truly contemptible hatemongering bigots he refrains from editorializing, letting their own words damn them. But those are just small parts of the book. The vast majority takes you into the lives of these families, into their days and hopes of finding better lives. And into the systems that make that almost impossible.

Recommended reading for anyone who eats food. Required for anyone who has influence over immigration, agricultural, medical, or other cultural policies.

[Alan]

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the situation of the ~1.5 million undocumented farmworkers in the US. The most compelling parts were those in which he talked about the interaction of the farmworkers with the medical system. No surprise: the healthcare providers turn out to be clueless and complicit, even the best-intentioned among them. It's in these sections that he manages to draw on his training as a doctor and an anthropologist to develop (what seems to me) a truly new perspective on the role of medical practitioners in challenging oppression.

Shortly after beginning this book, I realized that Seth Holmes's office is down the hall from where I've just begun medical school! I'm looking forward to learning more about his ongoing projects - especially one (together with an older student in my program) about training residents in "structural competency" (http://structuralcompetency.org/) and measuring the impact of this training on their practices down the line.

[Ahmed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly moving and thought provoking. Radically shifted my understanding of migrant labor and the grounds for social change.

His commentary and mention of Bourdieu's concept of "symbolic violence" is extremely eye-opening and highly relevant to the issue of migrant health and more broadly the high-horsed American "debate" on illegal immigration.

His book does a powerful job expounding on how the American agriculture industry completely depends on migrant labor while simultaneously accepting racism, denigration, stereotyping, and indecent living standards against this population.

[Jacque · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic. One of the best ethnographies I've ever come across; this has motivated me to contemplate what types of advocacy I can do in order to support this population. It will blow you away.

[Seth Rumbley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Issues surrounding undocumented migration to the United States have been the subjects of heated debate in the American political system for decades. As Seth Holmes explains, however, there is a sense of irony in the fact that policymakers often contribute to the structures that perpetuate undocumented labor migration and legitimize the resulting social inequalities. These inequalities and the embodied suffering that coincide become normalized, Holmes argues, often remaining unnoticed by those at all levels of the social hierarchy. At other times, the oppressed are blamed for their own suffering.
As both a physician and an anthropologist, Holmes is invested in understanding the health outcomes that result from political and economic social structures and how these outcomes are normalized. In this critical ethnography, he does so by conducting extensive fieldwork amongst the Triqui, an indigenous group from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, as they migrate to the United States to work in agricultural fields.
​ His research pairs Eric Wolf’s theory of political economy with the concept of symbolic violence introduced by Pierre Bourdieu. He notes the impact of international policy on labor migration, citing the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as a source of economic hardship for Mexico’s indigenous corn producers, many of whom were subsequently forced to migrate in order to provide for their families. As Holmes’ observations reveal, Triqui migrant workers experience numerous forms of violence and domination that become socially justified through symbolic interpretations of their bodies. These notions regarding bodies are described by pairing Bourdieu’s ideas of doxa and habitus. The normalization and structural support of these social perceptions constitute symbolic violence, which Holmes explains as “the interrelations of social structures of inequalities and perceptions” (p. 44).
​Holmes’ book is organized into a foreword and seven chapters. The foreword, written by Philippe Bourgois, speaks to timeliness of Holmes’ work. Most of the following chapters are cleverly titled using quotes obtained in the field that are relevant to that chapter’s content. In chapter 1, “Introduction: ‘Worth Risking Your Life?,’” Holmes provides a background to his research, which is intermingled with sections of ethnographic narrative detailing his initial encounters and subsequent journey across the border with the Triqui. His second chapter provides a holistic definition of the body and argues for the inclusion of the anthropologist’s perspective in research on body politics. During his fieldwork, Holmes relied heavily on participant observation in order to ascertain the effects that structural, symbolic violence has on the bodies of migrant farmworkers. Understanding the embodiment of migrant suffering through personal experience not only served to build rapport with his research subjects, but also provided ethnographic richness to his narrative, as he was able to observe the suffering caused by structural violence.
​ Chapter 3 details the hierarchical nature of agricultural work in the United States and how placement of individuals in this hierarchy establishes “ethnicity” as a social definition related to economic and social power. Holmes presents a conceptual diagram of this hierarchy, depicting the relationship between ethnicity and social power and incorporating language, citizenship, and type of labor performed into this structure (p. 85). Their placement at the bottom of this hierarchy has health consequences for the Triqui, which Holmes expounds upon in chapter 4. He documents the experiences of migrant farmworkers, showcasing sickness and pain as an embodiment of symbolic violence rooted in institutionalized racism. This social structure extends beyond the boundaries of the agricultural workplace, however, as medical professionals frequently blame the Triqui for their own suffering—the topic of chapter 5. Chapter 6 builds on the previous sections, describing the ways in which hierarchical power relations, symbolic violence, and health consequences become normalized social conditions by all members in a social hierarchy—including those most disenfranchised.
In his conclusion Holmes offers a critique of the American healthcare system, arguing that medical professionals treating sickness should address “not only its current manifestations but also its social, economic, and political causes” (p. 193). He further remarks on the complexity of America’s agricultural industry, noting that a legislated increase in the wages paid to migrant laborers would likely drive more farms toward complete mechanization. While many of the Triqui advocate for legal temporary residency in order to perform seasonal agricultural labor, Holmes recommends a reform in immigration legislation that would allow a path to citizenship. In sum, Holmes presents a relevant and effective piece that seeks to make American citizens critically aware of the structural and symbolic violence inflicted on the bodies of those whose labor provides us with access to affordable goods—a premise often ignored by legislators and politicians. When reading of these migrant farmworkers’ lived experiences, it becomes readily apparent that building a wall will not “make America great again”; the problem is not migrant laborers, but the social structures that oppress, dehumanize, and perpetuate symbolic violence.

[Iris · Rating 5 out of 5]

it’s no secret that i’m a huge lover of fruits and veggies—nature’s candy that is healthy and colorful—and though i promote it as good for the body and the environment, i admit i hadn’t thought about the labor ecosystems that underpins it. this book is informative about the struggles and desires of migrant farm workers, especially related to their physical health. the author worked in the farm fields with them to better understand the nature of their labor, and to dispel the dichotomy of skilled vs unskilled labor

[Katie Buerk Olivas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This should be required reading. Incredibly informative anthropological study of the migrant experience - especially as it relates to indigenous Mexican populations coming to the U.S. seeking employment. I’ll never stop talking about this book.

[Christie Bane · Rating 3 out of 5]

The fault with this book is not so much that there’s anything wrong with the book, it’s that I was expecting something different, something more fun to read, something a little more pop sociological. This was more like someone’s PhD thesis in sociology, lightened up just enough to pass as a general interest book. The author spent a lot of time with migrant workers from Oaxaca who were working as pickers in the strawberry fields in Washington State. What did I find in there? Everything I expected. The work is incredibly physically difficult and prematurely ruins their bodies; the pickers are treated as sub-human by the other farm workers and society in general; it’s difficult for them to get medical care; any professionals helping them generally don’t look closely at their circumstances; there aren’t always translators available (especially because these people don’t speak Spanish, but a different native language). I mean, all that stuff is terrible and all, but the thing is, we all know it already and no one seems to feel the responsibility of doing something about it. So this book just documents something that may or may not ever change. I mean, I would totally pay more for fruits and vegetables— even a lot more, even twice as much — if it meant that the people picking them could have a decent life, but what can one person do to make that happen? Nothing. So this book really just made me feel sort of guilty for eating the amount of produce I eat without giving me a path for discharging that guilt.

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am very glad I read this, and highly recommend it. It is an anthropological ethnography with many voices in it that we don't often hear (from Oaxacan Triqui pickers to other people in the agricultural and farm work industry), but whom we are intimately connected to every time we eat. It both confirmed and challenged many of my assumptions. I appreciated the public health focus, the context of migration and supposed individual choice, commentary on linguistic choices we make when discussing immigration, and, the stories of the folks the author worked and traveled beside.

A really important and readable work.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good "thick ethnography" of Trique migrant workers' connected stays in CA, WA and Oaxaca, most work in WA in strawberry fields. Not a direct emphasis on the field I'm more familiar with, engagement with, current food policy issues, but lots, in terms of immigration and the workers he got to know. Ch 2 and 3 on embodied knowledge & segregated workplace would be awesome for teaching, on both structural racism/s and white privilege. Also, the methodology section on why there is no "methodology section" is quite interesting. (I might have enjoyed a bit more case studies on women, esp. pesticides & pregnancy; all the case studies were of men.)

[Judith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad I read this book. I feel like a am a better-informed citizen and consumer because of it. If you eat fresh fruit - especially from Washington's Skagit Valley or the Central Valley of California, this is part of the story of how it gets to your plate. If you care about social justice for workers and/or immigrants, this is also worth reading. It is an ethnographic study (i.e. written in an academic format with lots of references) but it is also a very personal story.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is a pretty good book to get some perspective on the experiences of indigenous Mexican migrant farmworkers. i thought the author's focus on his own experience rather than that of his "Triqui companions" in the first part of the book and the frequent sociological discussions about symbolic violence etc. were a bit excessive though

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. Really important subject matter, but I was distracted from what I felt was the heart of the book's message by the author's particular ethnographic approach and writing style, which really did not click with me.

[Ems · Rating 5 out of 5]

An in-depth, compassionate look at what drives migrants to cross our ever more militaristic border and the injustices they face while simultaneously being the lifeblood of our agriculture system.

It is an ethnography so it's written for academia, but still fairly straightforward and well written.

[Elsie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truly eye opening! Thank you Seth for delving in to better understand the issues!

[Castor · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author feels so self-congratulatory that any worthwhile content gets lost. Additionally, outside of the voice, it has a poor structure. Unfortunate, as this could have been an important book.

[Claire Eikenberry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review posted for anthro:
Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies, by Seth Holmes, follows the author’s journey of living with the Triqui who travel across the Mexico-U.S. border illegally for work. Holmes crosses the border and witnesses the harsh conditions they must endure to make it to the United States. The migrants endure starvation, dehydration, border patrol, heat, and violence, to attempt to cross the border. In Holmes’ journey the border patrol stops them and detains them. This sends those traveling across the border on yet another journey necessary to survive. Holmes notes how he realizes the people do not have a choice in traveling illegally to the U.S. The Triqui are forced to go to the U.S. for work because of the lack of jobs in Mexico from policies like NAFTA. Though people choose to believe they are choosing to take jobs in the U.S. in reality their other choice is to stay home and starve.
Holmes continues his research by living with the Triqui. The Triqui are forced into substandard and terrible working and living conditions on the Tanaka farm. Holmes notices a hierarchy in the jobs based on race and citizenship that place the undocumented Triqui lowest. He attempts to try to understand their suffering by picking the strawberries with the Triqui and speaking with them. He realizes as a result of the hierarchy and ideas in place the three main violence types take place. Holmes views everyday violence, structural violence, and symbolic violence all harming the Triqui. The Triqui are unable to speak up in the hierarchy under threat of being deported, it’s evident how those at the bottom of the hierarchy are harmed the most. Holmes also studies medicine, so he incorporates his knowledge into the writing. He discusses the mistreatment of the Triqui in the medical field. The doctors lack an understanding of cultural differences and put emphasis on racist stereotypes further harming the Triqui and creating a drift between the Triqui and healthcare system. Holmes describes how symbolic violence as a result of racism leads to internalization and naturalization of the mistreatment of the Triqui. Holmes concludes with ideas for change. Though he knows there is a clear resistance to change. Holmes hopes for people to work on ending biases by first changing their language. Further he hopes people will work on a larger scale for change in a fight for legal migrant worker status, universal healthcare, and new economic policies.
In my opinion I would rate this book as 4 out of 5 stars. The book as a whole is highly informative and important. I would recommend anyone in the healthcare field to read this book to analyze biases and improve on how they treat patients. I think it is also important because people need to understand where their food and products come from. The understanding of how capitalism has harmed large groups of people and how our externalized costs allow us to ignore it is vital to becoming a smart buyer and conscience of our effects. The book also allows everyone to see how they can help in the suffering of migrant workers. Despite all of the positives I found this book to be slightly repetitive in its ideas and it tended to use lots of jargon. The repetition and jargon made it harder to understand and it became easy to get distracted. I also would like to note how the book is written by a White highly educated man. He addresses these biases, but I would like to further read a book written solely by Triqui people. Looking at the book in a post-colonial viewpoint does bring to light some flaws in the idea of a White man writing about the sufferings of a group of indigenous people. Still, this book should hold importance in being able to inform people and help the Triqui.
Before I conclude the review I would like to touch on the topic I found most interesting to motivate people to read Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies. Holmes weaving the key concept of identity throughout the book helped me to connect almost all topics back to one. Holmes throughout the book conveys how the label and identity placed on the Triqui because of racism has harmed them in a multitude of ways. As Holmes describes the suffering in the hierarchy because of the identity of being Triqui and the identity of being undocumented harming their healthcare services I found it engaging when connecting it back to the concept of human labels. Though the Triqui did not choose their labels it continues to harm them. Holmes even masterfully ties the concept together in the end. He describes how we must change our language in giving people identities and fight to make a legal migrant worker status. By tying this in throughout the book it gave me a new perspective on identities and how they affect those around us. Overall, I recommend Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies to everyone as I believe the spread could be impactful in not only the Triqui’s lives but those mistreated worldwide.

[Roxy Moran · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible ethnography. One of my favorite books I've read this year. The author is an absolute powerhouse that completed his PhD and MD while simultaneously doing two years of field work in the literal fields of California and Washington with indigenous Oaxacan migrant workers, INCLUDING completing the dangerous border crossing with them from Mexico to Arizona. He also lived within the Triqui indigenous community in Oaxaca for five months to build relationships with families and community leaders and understand the systems that force them to undergo this extremely dangerous migration in the first place, and lived in the labor camps with those migrant families during the rest of the year. His perspective as a physician-anthropologist is incredibly unique and helpful in showing the full picture of these indigenous migrant workers lives and the violent systems they are forced to navigate.

He examines the structure of labor on the farm from the farm managers and executives at the top, to the mid-level admin staff and farm overseers, to the hourly and contract workers at the the very bottom of the pyramid, and explores the responsibilities, anxieties, privileges, and experiences of each group. Obviously the migrant workers are getting absolutely shafted and he documents that very thoroughly, but he also explores the barrage of pressures that executives and people higher up in the chain are under that influence them to enact harmful farm policies and engage in bad behavior in the first place. This part was very eye-opening to me and I think all too often we do not get to understand the full system in notoriously shitty industries/social systems which hamstrings us from making accurate judgments about how to sustainably improve conditions for those at the bottom through policy. Understanding why these executives/managers/overseers are doing what they do is obviously necessary to putting in place guardrails and regulations that will not be abandoned/ignored come next season.

Lastly, the chapters exploring the vicious experience that is the migrant healthcare system are absolutely gut-wrenching, in a literal sense if you have a weak or queasy stomach. I experienced phantom pains in my hip last night after finishing this. US citizens think their healthcare is crap? They need to read this book. Author does an amazing job documenting the massive hurdles to migrants accessing healthcare, the pressures/forces that healthcare workers are under that lead them to make uninformed/misguided/blatantly racist healthcare decisions, the worker's comp system, and some of the forces working for good in the system.

The epilogue is about the organizing successes of indigenous migrant worker communities and how they've managed to bring about some small but promising changes and how the average person can support those efforts. Thank god he ended on a high note. I'm absolutely floored by the strength of these people and incensed/inspired to fight the racist xenophobia flouted by our incoming administration.

[Lore BonMD · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely encourage everyone to read it to see the perspective of a physician/ anthropologist who works in the farms with an indigenous community. He also crosses the Mexican U.S. border with them. We get to see through this book the harships of migrants and the hierarchy of the labor force. We see how the pickers of fruits are treated at work and in their interactions at the medical community clinics.

We get to learn about different roles in farm work, including the pickers, checkers, administrative staff, executive managers. The pickers are the indigenous migrant workers who are the most vulnerable and paid less and live in labor camp shacks. Power and vulnerability is not shared equally. Females were never promoted. The pickers work seven days a week for atleast seven hours a day bent back picking fruits. It’s extremely hard labor that more often gets unnoticed for all of us and by legislators.

Seth shared the lived experience of migrant laborers with vignettes of Abilino knee pain from patellar tendinitis due to traumatic labor position. Presencio headaches and Bernardo’s epigastric pain. Adolfo Ruiz Alvarez could not communicate in Spanish and healthcare workers thought he was mentally unwell. He was held and medicated in a psychiatrist hospital for two years. Santiago Ventura Morales was held in prison for four years before being released. He expands on the gaze of migrant health care workers. We see the limited history taken by healthcare workers with regard to the socioeconomic structure impacting the health of the migrants. We learn about the political and economic forces that allow for systemic racism. There are a lot of pearls to be learned on this moving story about a people that are voiceless and yet carrying such burden to allow for us to eat our fruits and vegetables.

[Teo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very important and accessible book about migrant farm workers (specifically berry pickers). I always expect going into books with these subjects for me to feel frustrated and saddened at how terrible the current world system is, and this definitely does do that. Migrant workers are some of the most hated, misunderstood groups of people, so having a book like this that isn't overly academic is super vital. The blending of narrative story telling and facts was good for the most part. I think it was really interesting for Seth to explore the suffering of everyone on the farm hierarchy, and that it wasn't done in a way to take away the attention or excuse the mistreatment the pickers suffer from.

I can't necessarily pinpoint what the layout issue is for me, but I wanted the sections especially when Seth was working on the farms, to be more structured instead of what felt like hopping around to different points frequently.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic ethnography by an anthropologist/medical student who migrated with indigenous Triqui farm laborers from Oaxaca, across the border, to Washington state and central California, working and living alongside the pickers in the fields. The insights are wholly on point, from the push/pull factors and the legal dichotomies we create for migrants - forcible displacement that merits some protection from our government, vs “voluntary” economic migration that must be dissuaded, the structural violence and racism and unfair trade practices…there’s so much good stuff here. And the writing is excellent.

[Arlo Hatcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating ethnographic work, Seth's depth is really quite incredible and having this depth of understanding of migrant farmworkers is really unique and special. It definitely shows its age, being that it was written in 2013, as the dynamics of traversal have changed with the reforms of the Trump administration, but it is still an excellent text that everybody should read.

[Saeed · Rating 5 out of 5]

This simply must become required reading for any anthropology degree, particularly in any class about migration, food, or U.S. communities. Sublime fieldwork that's resulted in a gut-wrenching read about the Mexican farmworkers who keep the U.S. fed.