Audio/Video

In this interview a worker explains that a routine trip to the grocery store lands him in a detention center. Once detained workers are transported between Vermont, New York and Massachussets. Workers are often detained for 2-3 months before they are deported. This is a story repeated over and over in Vermont by migrant farmworkers and creates an environment of fear that further isolates and marginalizes migrant farmworkers. Due to this climate of fear many workers, particularly those closest to the border, can pass months and even a year without ever stepping foot off a dairy farm.

In this interview a VT migrant farmworker shares an often told story of the struggle to survive in agriculture in Mexico and explains that this forces farmers, many who are indigenous, to migrate to the United States to help their farms, families and communities. This is cause to reflect on the roots of migration. Since the 1994 passage of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Mexico lost over 2 million farming jobs and the number of Mexicans migrating to the U.S. each year has more than doubled. Subsidies, price supports, and various programs supporting small farmers were eliminated due to NAFTA. If family farmers in Mexico and family dairy farmers in Vermont are unable to make a living farming--who is really benefiting from the globalization of agriculture and so-called free trade agreements such as NAFTA?

In this interview one of Vermont's silenced voices shares what many workers feel, "We don't have freedom". Although he lives close to a town he fears going out for a piece of pizza or a soda. Additionally, he reflects on the differences between living and working in Vermont and New York as a migrant worker.

As one of Vermont’s silenced migrant farmworker voices shares in this interview, “Something I would change, well the truth…simply, simply, the freedom, to allow, well, I don’t know, to be able to go out trusting that . . . they’re not going to detain us, deport us…And, like, with the security that, well, nobody is going to say anything to us, or well, unless we were doing something we shouldn’t. That’s normal that they would detain you for doing something bad, but if not well, yes in this case yes, we would like to be able to have this freedom, yes.”