Rethinking Who Is Essential: The Labor Myth of the Farmworker

Walking into Rethinking Essential, an exhibition by Narsiso Martinez, at the Museum of Latin American Art or MOLAA, you see a mesmerizing video of a farmworker projected onto the wall. 

Laboring in California’s Central Valley picking grapes, the worker is completely covered with long sleeves, a hat, goggles, covering around his ears and neck to protect him from the jutting vines. His hands dive deep, in and out of the plants at a pace on par with machinery. But he is human. Accompanying Latin music augments the astonishing machine-like speed at which he works. We are witnessing skilled human labor, surpassing any potential thought of automation. 

Rethinking Essential is organized in collaboration with The Long Beach Immigrants Rights Coalition and The Institute of Contemporary Art or ICA in San Diego. ICA will host Martinez,  and his exhibition in February 2023. 

In the tradition of social realism, his images reframe power in the hands of the workers. Martinez’s portraits of farmworkers build on the materiality of working in the fields with earth-like charcoal drawn across reclaimed boxes. As Labor Day approaches, Martinez spoke about labor in America to Random Lengths News.

“I feel like everyday we should celebrate labor day,” said Martinez. “Labor means many kinds of jobs but working in the fields is really risky and fiscally exhausting. It’s clear that not everyone is willing to work in the fields, given the history of farmworkers in the U.S. 

“From the beginning, the system abused immigrants. They [also] abused the Native Americans, the slaves and during the Bracero programs. The system keeps looking for that community that is unfortunately at a disadvantage — to put it in labels — that [is] fiscally, very difficult and very risky.” 

Martinez was born in Santa Cruz Papalutla, in Oaxaca, Mexico, a small town of just over 2,000 people. Oaxaca enjoys a rich creative environment both in artistry and food — in terms of the value placed on its purity. Sixteen of Mexico’s total 68 recognized indigenous groups are based in Oaxaca. Some of those groups were never conquered by Spain. Their foods remain untouched by European ingredients.

Coming from these environs to America and becoming a farmworker, one may wonder how he was struck by the difference in approach to food culture between these two surroundings. Martinez explained that he grew up in a small town, he didn’t know anything about art until he attended school in the United States. Arriving here at 20 years old, he spoke no English. The way he saw it, he had to go to school and eventually his love for learning grew. In fact, he lights up when talking about his art school experiences. Martinez, who lives in Long Beach, completed high school in 2006 at the age of 29. He earned an associate of arts in 2009 from Los Angeles City College. In 2012, he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from California State University, Long Beach and received a Master of Fine Arts at the same institution in 2018. 

Martinez portrays the largely invisible group of people responsible for putting food on America’s tables: immigrant farmworkers. His drawings and mixed media installations include portraits and multi-figure compositions of farm laborers set against the agricultural landscapes and brand designs of grocery store produce boxes.  

Martinez noted he was inspired by Vincent van Gogh. 

“What captivated me the most was the scenes, the subject matter,” said Martinez. “He painted agricultural landscapes, poor people. Those images really resonated with me probably because it made me feel nostalgia for my hometown, which I haven’t been [to] for many years.”

He considered learning to draw better; then he thought about learning to paint. That’s when he decided to attend art school. In order to pay for school, Martinez said he had to work in the fields to fund his education. It took him about nine agricultural seasons to finish his undergraduate and graduate programs.

Back to those contrasts in food culture, Martinez said what stands out to him is the conclusion of all his experiences, “that farm workers are always screwed up.” Martinez grew up in the fields in his hometown where his father would take him. 

“Everything that we planted there was for our consumption,” he said. “That difference between growing food for our own consumption versus working in the fields for big corporations, that’s where American agribusiness uses not only big machines but also different chemicals to grow produce. I guess they don’t really care about how much quality they produce but [rather] how much bigger and shinier [the produce] is. They just care about how it looks. We go to the grocery stores and we pick the best looking fruit. Even I do that,” he laughed.

He said it seems like a continuous pattern, including throughout other countries in Latin America and Europe, when people say farm work is unskilled work, which is a myth and that’s why farmworkers must be paid the least amount of money. Farmworkers have to work as fast as possible because many work by contract. 

“It’s hard, you feel like you’re going to stop breathing,” he explained. “You’re working really fast with a mask over your face. It’s a difficult situation. You have to risk your health, really, to make an extra buck.”

Inspiration and representation in the everyday 

When he got to CSULB, Martinez couldn’t pay for school on his own anymore. His siblings were working  in Washington state and they suggested that Martinez work in the fields. They would provide shelter and food. All he had to do was work and save his paychecks. In the beginning, it was just about the money and working. But when he went to art school for his graduate program, he realized he was part of a community, this group of people who were struggling to keep a balance — just as Martinez was in trying to pay for school. 

“We were facing the same issues,” he said, “like mistreatment, longer hours in the fields, back breaking work.” 

The lifestyle of the farmworkers and the lifestyle of the ranch owners was very different. He saw both sides and obviously, he said, there was a disadvantage. He decided to investigate further. He became friends with more farmworkers, his coworkers. 

“We hung out, I saw where they lived and listened to their stories, really,” Martinez said. “That’s when I said to myself, this is what I want to make. I want to [portray] these struggles, the differences of lifestyles.” 

He recalled seeing beautiful paintings on cardboard during his undergraduate program, where he was told the cardboard served as the skin of the subjects. One of Martinez’s professors from Cal State Long Beach made a cardboard painting he exhibited that served as inspiration for him. That started the artist on his journey with cardboard. Martinez began to paint on it and do sketches and studies. He did a drawing of the banana man on a banana box. (Martinez’s current Banana Man piece, exhibited widely, shows a life-sized, partially transparent man, standing before a backdrop of more than a dozen flattened Dole banana boxes, banana in hand). He showed that piece to his class and everybody agreed his work became more mature, more universal and it focused on the actual stories he wanted to talk about.

He elaborated, “Because we were seeing that we [farmworkers] were represented at the business and at the same time the wealthy [were also represented]. We had that conversation on not only, thematically, the difference of lifestyles, but the disadvantages of the farmworkers versus the business [owners]. We’re also talking about technicality at a different level, the juxtaposition of [produce] labels and charcoal drawings and mark makings and everything clicked. Then I started doing multiple portraits on multiple boxes. I started to assemble boxes and created more complicated conversations. Then I assembled sculptures [by] stacking [produce] boxes with stuff around them.” 

Martinez’s feelings about the work he was doing still weren’t totally settled. Immediately before this he wanted to explore different themes in advertising. He did a piece of a woman carrying bananas and she was smiling on the banana boxes. He said the image looked cool but that was it. The facial expression suggested that she was happy but she was carrying a big load of bananas. It didn’t match. He considered how advertising commonly uses those types of images. Ultimately, it was getting away from the subject matter. His peers suggested sticking to one thing at a time to keep it cohesive. At the same time he struggled to legitimize the images that he was using as a source, because they weren’t his images. 

“I loved my school for this, for touching on every aspect,” Martinez said. “So that’s when I focused on my own images. There’s nothing wrong with painting my own stories, with self representing my work. So I focused on the people that I met and talked to. To this day sometimes I go to the fields and I talk to the people.”

His portrait series of linocuts are ghost prints. In them Martinez played with the idea of ghost prints because many of the farm workers don’t have documents.

“Like we’re here, but we’re not here.” he said. “The system wants us here for the hard work we do but really it doesn’t want to give us all the benefits that any other worker can have. So we become ghosts. [This] obviously overlaps with the collage made from the brands of different labels from different produce companies.” 

Legal Tender

“I think it’s important to acknowledge our contributions to the economy, [what] farmworkers or immigrants bring to the United States,” Martinez said. 

Martinez’s mural Legal Tender (ink, charcoal, gouache, simple leaf and collage on produce boxes) at 23 feet, spans the length of the gallery wall. He said the pattern that he borrowed from the dollar bill is important. You see the four corners with the number one. And the center figure on the bill is changed from a male to a female, to stress the importance of the contribution of women, who he noted throughout history have been oppressed and stripped of their opportunities. He worked with most of the people represented in the mural, or met them after he stopped working in the fields. That includes images of people in Washington state and in the Central Valley. His grandfather is also depicted donning a cowboy hat. He came to the U.S. in the 1960s, to work in the Bracero program in cotton and tomato fields. Martinez also immortalized a more recent immigrant who used to come work in the fields, but died. 

“During one of the seasons when he came to work, he was lost at the border,” Martinez said. “His family looked for him for about a year. When they cross the border, through the mountains and the desert, a lot of people just don’t make it.”

Martinez pointed to his gold graduation tassel in the mural’s top center, from his graduation cap.

“I wanted to include it to point out education,” he said. “Education is important if you want to demand better pay and better working conditions and respect. It’s important for the people working in the fields to understand that if they can’t go to school and get an education, the future generations need to at least try.” 

He encountered many youth in the fields working in the summers but said it wasn’t known that many of those kids stay in the fields, because either they got married or there was nowhere else to go. But he’s satisfied to also know that many of them have gone to college, have careers and made a better living for themselves and their families.

“We have the courage when we are prepared,” Martinez said. “[Education] represents the past, the present and the future. I want education to be the future. I want people to better themselves.”

Details: molaa.org