For the thousands of fans driving to Indio this weekend for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, billboards stationed along the main highways aim to send a message about who and what “The Real Coachella” is.
Ten billboards strategically placed near the concert site and around western Riverside and San Bernardino counties are part of a campaign to highlight the farmworkers who make up the Coachella Valley and its vast workforce.
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Luz Gallegos, executive director of the Perris-based TODEC Legal Center, which put up the billboards, said the goal is to raise awareness of farmworkers in the area who are often “invisible” to global audiences going to the area solely for music festivals.
Farmworkers must be “protected and valued,” Gallegos said.
“We are not against the concert … Our goal is to showcase the real Coachella; our year-round superstars,” she wrote in an email.
The center supports immigrant communities, offers legal services, advocacy and education to workers in Riverside, San Bernardino, Inyo and Imperial counties.
The billboards, paid for by donations, are meant to bring public awareness to the health disparities between farmworkers and others and also the poverty that they face, said Gallegos, who did not share the cost of the effort.
The billboards were installed during the second week of March and will be up until the end of the month.
Weekend two of Coachella starts Friday, April 21, and ends Sunday, April 23. The Stagecoach Country Music Festival follows next weekend, Friday, April 28 to Sunday, April 30, at the same site, the Empire Polo Club.
Riverside County has more than 13,000 frontline agriculture workers, employment data from Strategic Health Alliance Pursuing Equity Riverside County, a public health database, shows. A majority of U.S. agricultural workers, 78%, self identify as Latino, according to the National Center for Farmworker Health, a private, nonprofit organization that focuses on farmworker families and their health.
Many farmworkers struggle to afford food — some even pick it themselves — because they are paid so little, Gallegos said. The majority of field workers also don’t have benefits such as health insurance, sick time or vacation days.
Gallegos wants people driving into the Coachella Valley from other states and counties to see the big, bright billboards featuring a cuadrilla, or a group of migrant workers, with an agricultural field behind them. The group holds letters spelling out ”GRACIAS” above their head.
“It is important to recognize the important contributions of these individuals to our food system and to work towards creating a more just and equitable agricultural sector,” Gallegos said.
Because COVID-19 continues to affect communities such as farmworkers who have little access to affordable health services, the billboards also ask the public to get vaccinated against the virus.
The billboards are a reminder to music festival fans that there are some who work and live in the area all year and don’t just visit for a few days, she said.
“They might not be on stage at Coachella, but they are on a billboard,” Gallegos said.
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