73 Coachella

73 Coachella
At the height of the grape harvest, many workers eat and sleep in their cars in the Coachella Valley. The growers and government authorities do not provide housing for seasonal grape pickers. Justino Macias comes from Mexicali, on the US border 100 miles to the south, to pick grapes every year, and lives with a friend next to the highway and an irrigation ditch. A few weeks previously, he was beaten and robbed, and some of his teeth broken. Farmworkers, who can't easily use banks, are often robbed of the wages they carry with them.

photographs and stories by David Bacon © 1990-1999

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