By Raúl Zibechi | Desinformémonos [In Watsonville, California]

The laid-back and calm rhythm of the city is palpable in every corner, in the identical houses built of wood, generating the appearance of a life without surprises or problems. Everything changes when they tell us that there are three or four families in each house, because we are in one of the most expensive corners of California. Watsonville barely has more than 50,000 inhabitants, 83 percent are Latino and 73 percent live in poverty.

They welcome us to Hugo and Carmen’s home, where Paula has prepared a succulent Mexican breakfast with homemade tortillas, which Rocío serves with her contagious smile. While we eat, they begin to explain what the Tierras Milperas collective is all about. There are several generations of migrants, the vast majority of them Mexican, with long experience in agricultural work. Many of them have a deep understanding of extractive agribusiness, as they work picking blackberries and strawberries in one of the most productive valleys on the Central Coast of California.

Paula brings tamales to the table, while several voices tell us that she teaches a Nixtamal Workshop, in which several women from the collective participate. For a decade they have been planting five community spaces that they name: Starlight, Jardín del Río, Valle Verde, Pájaro and Piece of Heaven. They are also beginning to work on a larger space, which they call Corralito, names always decided in assembly.

There are 120 families working the land, producing what they consume with enormous joy and pride. In addition to the monthly assembly in which decisions are made, they have a Community Governance Commission made up of six people who have more experience in cultivation and in the movement. The Milpero Autonomous Council is made up of older people and a young person, who propose projects to the assembly and guide the group.

Flowers or food

The time has come to get to know the community “gardens.” In the Jardín del Río we are welcomed by a man seasoned in the land with long experience as a farmer, named José. He explains that the main problem in the region is housing, with abusive prices because Watsonville is located in Silicon Valley, one of the richest areas populated by computer scientists, so “in this area housing is the most expensive in the United States.”

Behind the fence that sets off the community space, several people can be seen dragging shopping carts with clothes. Someone explains that there are more than 200 unhoused people crowded on the banks of the river, far from the indifference of the city. Walking between the eight-by-six-foot boxes, Hugo Nava, coordinator of the collective, explains that they had a conflict with the All Saints/Christ the King Episcopal Church, which terminated the lease contract and expelled them from the land. “They want us to grow flowers, not food, not to talk between families and not to hold assemblies.” Impossible to understand each other. An obvious clash of cultures.

They finally left the land after harvesting the fruits, but they found new spaces.

José tries to explain the reasons why the vast majority of the Tierras Milperas collective are women. He does it with his very Mexican style: “Women are lighter….” Silence in the round. “Because we men are more eggheads. We come home and sit down with the television control in hand, and that’s it.” Smiles of approval.

We tour the space, orderly and clean, with crops in each drawer and a meeting space presided over by a stove with its respective comal on which they prepare community meals. Rocío explains that the planter boxes are cultivated by families, but in other spaces the plants is grown directly in the soil. “As each family comes from different states with their own crops, they have formed a bank of diverse seeds that they exchange.”

On Wednesdays they hold a workshop for children who learn herbalism and Mexican foods. Carmen explains that the garden was built by the entire community that lives in the neighboring apartments. “Some of the planter boxes are cultivated in common with young people and the other part are from families. With the harvest we make community meals and celebrate the day of the dead.”

They grow milpa and other varieties such as quelite, medicinal plants, fruit trees, and they are also working with native seeds from the native peoples of California. The spaces belong to the municipality or to private individuals who give them up because they are abandoned, but the families are improving the land with the compost they work collectively.

Walking in autonomy

Before going to the assembly, we passed by one of the most consolidated spaces, called Starlight, where 45 families with agricultural experience work. “98% of the agricultural land in the United States belongs to white men,” explains Hugo, noting the persistence of structural racism that prevents migrants’ access to land.

Hugo outlines a brief history of the movement that became independent from two large NGOs in 2018, because they told them how they should do things, although they never worked the land. “There was a person in charge who didn’t even speak Spanish and he wanted to give us orders and pressured us to grow flowers. From that moment on, we started the assemblies, the movement changed direction and began to focus on food production.”

The Tierras Milperas collective is almost an exception in the world of migration, where the individualism of social advancement is hegemonic. It is differentiated by its community vocation, by using native seeds and traditional agricultural practices, but also by the exchange of knowledge between families and ecological methods. They have also created spaces for the exchange of intergenerational knowledge with young people, through the Cultivando Justicia group.

One of the characteristics of the movement is solidarity with “global farmer and indigenous struggles for territorial and food sovereignty,” as its website states. In particular, with the Coca community of Mezcala (Jalisco), in agroecology for the indigenous and peasant university that they are building. The presence of Rocío, who had to leave Mexico two years ago due to threats from the “businessman” who had illegally occupied her land, contributes to strengthening ties.

After a brief tour outside the city, we arrived at the assembly, in which almost a hundred people participated. Everyone introduces themselves in the enormous circle they have formed. Some have been farming for decades, while others recognize that they are learning. Tomato, chile, beans, garlic and maize are the crops most mentioned in the assembly.

Some older people explain that the issue is not just the consumption of healthy foods. Don Lalo assures that “cultivating is a medicine, it helps our mind.” Beside him, Cristino emphasizes identity: “The garden makes me remember where I come from and makes me return home relaxed.”

At the end of the extensive assembly, as the afternoon falls, the families share the foods they brought to this distant corner, since the authorities and land owners do not view these massive gatherings favorably, which they find suspicious. Coincidences of life, the assembly in which we participated takes place on the property of a Syrian-Palestinian family.

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Raúl Zibechi is an Uruguayan writer, popular educator, and journalist. He writes for La Jornada, Desinformémonos, and NACLA Report on the Americas, among other outlets. Zibechi has published numerous books, including Dispersing Power, Territories in Resistance, and The New Brazil. His new book was recently translated into English by George Ygarza Quispe, Penn-Mellon Just Futures Disposessions in the Americas postdoctoral fellow.

Editor’s Note: Tierras Milperas means Land of the Milpas. In Mexico a milpa is a small plot of land or field where farmers plant and cultivate maize and other seeds. Milpa is a Nahuatl word and concept.

Translated by the Chiapas Support Committee from Desinformémonos in the original here: https://desinformemonos.org/tierras-milperas-migrantes-mexicanos-en-california/