78 Coachella

78 Coachella
At the height of the grape harvest, many workers eat and sleep next to their cars in the Coachella Valley. After work, Martin Zavala and Agapito Hernandez, two grape pickers from Mexicali, look for shade under a tree to cool off, eat and talk. Zavala talks about the mistreatment they suffer at work, including very low wages, lack of housing, difficulty cashing pay checks, weather so hot workers faint, and reprisals from the foremen and contractors for complaining.

photographs and stories by David Bacon © 1990-1999

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