Grass-roots organization assisting farmworkers in Contra Costa

Marivel Mendoza found her vision, when most of the rest of us could barely see our hands in front of our faces.

It was the summer of 2020, when wildfires sent choking smoke throughout the Bay Area. The haze turned the sky a vivid orange and health officials warned against going out in the gloom.

Mendoza had errands to run one day during the worst of the smoke-out, and her journey from her home in Oakley took her past the abundant farms in Brentwood, where she saw farm workers, some with scarves wrapped around their mouths and noses, toiling in the fields.

They reminded her of her own family history and made her want to do something to help. In the two years since, Mendoza has partnered with three other woman — daughters of migrants and farm workers — to form Hijas del Campo, a Contra Costa-based non-profit to help seasonal workers find housing, food, medical attention and education.

Q. What are the roots of your group?

A. We wanted to be advocates and to shine a light on the people who are working the land, bringing the life and work of a campesino and campesina and their families to the forefront. Even in Contra Costa County, there are a lot of people who don’t know there are very vibrant farms here in East County.

Hijas del Campo was born out of our response that summer to the tons of fires. The air quality was horrible. It was minimal exposure for us, but those people were out there working in it.

I made a post on a local Facebook group, trying to research what organization works with the campesino community. I had a lot of responses from people who didn’t know, but said they would love to help. They couldn’t do the work, but they were willing to donate.

Dorina (Moraida, co-founder and now vice-president of the group) reached out and we connected. We quickly found others.

Q. What was your next step?

A. We took in donations, got permission to set up a table at a farm, and we took food, PPE, school supplies, anything we could think of and could get. We wanted to give them these things, but we didn’t want it to end there. We wanted to continued to support them.

Q. What are some of the challenges or problems facing farm workers in this area?

A. It’s the same things that all of us face — housing, paying for food, health care — but more so. If they are undocumented, they’re not getting stimulus money. If they get sick, they don’t have health care. If their children get sick, they don’t have any support.

During the pandemic, they started asking us questions about COVID, so we got involved with vaccine equity through the Contra Costa Health Services. Our Brown and Black communities were the most affected by sickness and death.

We were the first to roll out a vaccine clinic at a farm, getting the farmworkers and their families vaccinated. We always want to make sure we meet them where they are. They don’t have a lot of time to do extra things, and gas is expensive, so we always want to go to them. At this point, we’ve done basically a clinic a month.

That’s kind of how we grew.

Q. Are you finding a lot of support in the community for the programs?

A. We have been lucky to partner with some pretty amazing farms — Frog Hollow is one — that allows us to bring resources out to the farm workers.

Without the farms, we don’t have work. Without the work, we don’t have food on our tables. If we build relationships everything else falls into place — better working conditions, better pay, better lives.

We’ve partnered with a lot of different organizations to help with schooling, food, health care. We’ve tried to build trust with the workers — many of them are full-time residents here — so when we see a need, we try to find ways to solve it.

Q. You mentioned that you have a family connection to agriculture.

A. Yes, my parents moved here from Mexico and were farmworkers in Hollister. They were both from Michoacan, Mexico, a small little town. My mom was 17 and my dad was 19. They came to find their dream, and they found it. They eventually moved to Oakland, where I was born. My father got into roofing, and my mom stayed at home taking care of the six of us children.

The story is the same for the majority of people who come here looking for a better life. That’s why it’s important to help the campesinos and their families. Working the land is important work, and they are very much needed, but it doesn’t have to end there.

Being a farm worker is amazing. That’s how we’re able to feed our community, our state, our country. But it is dying down. We have fewer farms because of development. Farmers can get a lot of money by selling their land, but we need people who know the land, how to work it. How do we take care of the land so it is viable and something we can plan on for years to come?

Q. What’s the future of Hijas del Campo?