Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States

Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States is a 2013 academic book by Seth M. Holmes, an American physician with a PhD in Medical Anthropology. The book is the product of 18 months of fieldwork in Mexico and the US. It combines ethnographic field notes, transcripts from interviews, and anthropological theory to analyze the impact of US border policies on Triqui migrants, Indigenous Mexicans from the State of Oaxaca. The author explores themes of Embodied Ethnography, Structural Inequalities, and Social Action; Health, Violence, and the Clinical Gaze; and Immigration Policy, Farming, and Migration. The book received awards from the Society for the Anthropology of Work and the Society for Medical Anthropology in 2013. It also received the 2014 Association for Humanist Sociology Book Award and the 2015 James M. Blaut Award from the Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers.

This guide refers to the paperback edition published in 2013 by the University of California Press.

Summary

Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States consists of seven chapters, each of which contains short, subtitled sections. Chapter 1 (“Introduction: ‘Worth Risking Your Life?’”) starts with field notes describing Holmes’s harrowing experience crossing the US-Mexico border with Triqui migrants. Interwoven with the field notes are discussions of key aspects of the book, including the various sites of Holmes’s fieldwork, notions of voluntary and involuntary migration, and an outline of the structural inequities fueling migration.

Chapter 2 (“‘We Are Field Workers’: Embodied Anthropology of Migration”) describes Holmes’s approach and argument. Combining fieldwork and secondary research, including social theory, Holmes argues that structural and symbolic violence related to race, ethnicity, class, and citizenship perpetuate the suffering of migrants. He practices embodied anthropology—a form of anthropology that foregrounds the bodily experiences of the researcher and recognizes the researcher’s deep entanglement in the process of study. Holmes presents his approach as a corrective of traditional anthropological practice—namely, the “objective” recording of facts.

Chapter 3 (“Segregation on the Farm: Ethnic Hierarchies at Work”) focuses on ethnicity and citizenship hierarchies on US farms. Farm owners and executives occupy the top of the hierarchy, while undocumented Indigenous pickers are at the bottom. In addition to earning low wages, these pickers have the hardest jobs, live in the worst shacks on the farm, and endure emotional abuse from their superiors. Holmes stresses the role of structures, rather than individuals, in the treatment of migrants. Market forces compel even ethical farmers to participate in a system that perpetuates poor treatment of pickers.

In Chapter 4 (“‘How the Poor Suffer’: Embodying the Violence Continuum”), Holmes profiles three Triqui pickers to show how structural violence impacts the health of migrant workers. Abelino, Crescencio, and Bernardo suffer from knee pain, headaches, and stomach aches, respectively. Holmes argues that social hierarchies became embodied in these migrants in the form of suffering and sickness.

Chapter 5 (“‘Doctors Don’t Know Anything’: The Clinical Gaze in Migrant Health”) examines migrant healthcare in Mexico and the US. Holmes argues that medical professionals provide subpar care to their Indigenous patients. In an approach Holmes calls the “clinical gaze,” doctors often prioritize objective aspects of healthcare, such as blood tests and X-rays, over subjective ones, such as patients’ descriptions of pain. Economic pressures and negative perceptions of Indigenous people impact quality of care by dissuading clinicians from listening to their patients and can even lead them to blame patients for their ailments.

In Chapter 6 (“‘Because They’re Lower to the Ground’: Naturalizing Social Suffering”), Holmes relies on the concept of symbolic violence to demonstrate how suffering is normalized, naturalized, and internalized—both by the dominators and by the dominated. Those in power, such as farm executives, see themselves as deserving success—and blame the powerless for their own problems. The powerless—in this case, undocumented Triqui migrants—largely accept these beliefs.

Chapter 7 (“Conclusion: Change, Pragmatic Solidarity, and Beyond”) is a call to action. He urges action on behalf of vulnerable groups such as lobbying for immigration reform and participating in events that foster tolerance and empathy. Improving the living and working conditions of migrants, however, runs contrary to the country’s economic interests. Without structural changes to address global economic inequality, the most marginalized members of societies will remain poor and continue to suffer.