Farmworkers abuse by "patriotic" Americans

Sarah Villicana is a reporter for the Porterville Recorder. After a virulently rascist letter to the editor was published in the paper she wrote a courageous response wondering if perhaps there should be limits to free speech.

I can assure you from first hand observation that the treatment of field workers in California's San Joaquin valley is akin to the treatment of serfs during the Middle Ages. It makes me ashamed that such acts of meanness are done by people who call themselves Americans.

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Reporter's Notebook: Is there such a thing as too much free speech?
By Sarah Villicana, The Porterville Recorder
svillicana@portervillerecorder.com.


In regards to your column entry, “Is there such a thing as too much free speech?” I say, Bravo! Good Job, Sarah! I am amazed by your temperate response. Had I seen the letter mine response would have been much more heated. Obviously the Porterville Recorder needs much better regulation of its standards for letters to the editor. No ethnic group should be singled out for slurs in any letter published by the Porterville Recorder. It degrades the reputation of the Recorder.

While I lived in Porterville I saw great abuses of farmworkers and great prejudice. I remember a very cold day in January when I was driving on the freeway. A huge shiny white new pickup passed me. In the cab was a white man dressed in a very warm leather coat with what looks like a lamb’s fur collar. The rest of the cab was empty. The windows were closed. Obviously the heat was cranked up high. In the back, uncovered pick up bed was a farmworker huddled in a tiny ball wearing only a thin blue denim jacket. The wind was roaring over him. The temperature was mid forties if that. The farmworker looked so incredibly cold.

I would not have put a dog in an open pickup bed at those temperatures. Yet the farmer driving at perhaps eighty miles an hour did not give one thought to inviting the worker inside the heated cab. That mental picture sums up what the kind of treatment of farmworkers I saw when I worked in the farming communities of Woodville and Saucelito--too many really heartless land owners. Farmworkers are people too.

Now that immigration reform will likely be passed and even fewer workers will make it to the Valley, I wonder how the rich landowners will treat farmworkers now. I can only imagine their desperation when there will not be enough farmworkers to get in all the crops. Maybe then they will value farmworkers as essential to the Valley economy.

The Porterville Recorder’s policies are too lenient.