MADERA -- Working as a field laborer is tough. Often the weather conditions are adverse, and it is a seasonal job that requires great physical effort. In addition to that, if you are a woman, there are circumstances that can make that task a bit like a nightmare.
The stories about sexual harassment, discrimination and even sexual abuse or assault are everyday topics among women who work in the fields of California. According to a recent study of female farmworkers in California, cited by the Southern Poverty Law Center in a press release, 90 percent of those interviewed identified sexual harassment as a major problem at work.
There are countless stories from women who are harassed on a daily bases with "compliments" or who suffer from inappropriate touching by their foremen. They don't do anything about it because they don't know they have the right to complain, or because sometimes they fear being identified as problematic, explained Marta Moreno during a recent Líderes Campesinas (Female Farm worker Leaders) meeting.
Moreno, originally from El Salvador, has been working in the fields for more than 20 years and has been witness to sexual harassment in the fields.
"They (foremen) don't care whether they are married women; they invite them to dances or make insinuations. The ones that are young are separated to a different furrow, and, then after the insinuations, they get scared and don't come back," said Moreno.
"Often, in these poor situations, the farmworkers feel ashamed and are afraid to lose their job," said Mónica Ramírez, director of Proyecto Esperanza (Project Hope).
April is Sexual Harassment Awareness month and, with that in mind, Líderes Campesinas, in association with the Law Center, traveled to different parts of California with the Bandana Project, showing bandanas that have been embroidered and colored by women who work in the fields and in which they ask for respect and dignity in their job.
"We use the bandanas to protect ourselves from pesticides and other substances, but also to go unnoticed. We sometimes want to be invisible to the eyes of the foremen," adds Moreno.
It is estimated that one out of six women and one out of 33 men in the United States are victims of sexual assault. And this is one of the crimes that is least reported. Sexual assault can occur in different forms: harassment, touching, forcing a person to pose for sexual images, other unwanted sexual touching and rape.
Margarita Contreras, of San Bartolo Salinas, Oaxaca, has been a farmworker for eight years. She says when she first arrived with a group of acquaintances, the foreman would rush them because they were not entirely familiar with picking the fruit and would laugh at them.
"They would tell us to go to the swap meet to buy a comb and liquid for lice."
Contreras doesn't know how to read but one of her co-workers helped her write in her bandana "Female farmworkers (female) deserve to work in a healthy and safe environment." With colored thread, she embroidered some trees with fruit, symbolizing their labor.
Herminia Arenas belongs to the board of directors of Líderes Campesinas and believes that because of her age, she is no longer subject to harassments. She organizes meetings in her department to share information with other women.
"Although it no longer happens to me, what happens to others hurts," said Arenas.
With the objective of spreading the word and avoiding abuses, the women's group has been organizing meetings for more than 10 years.
In them, they remember with sadness and horror stories like the one of a foreman in the Salinas Valley who was about to put a sofa underneath a tree in the fields to commit his sexual crimes against the workers.
Many of the stories are raw and the knots in the throat multiply so much for the person telling them as for the ones who listen to them.
"One of them, knowing that she was married, that she had her husband, he still took advantage of her," said Leticia Durán, former field worker and now assistant of the programs of Líderes Campesinas.
"She would ask men subtly to bring them things when they went to México, such as a bottle of tequila, some boots or a leather belt and then they knew they had a sure job. Or they would pay, they gave $100 to keep their job when they went to México and came back."
All this came to Durán's ears when she worked with the United Farm Workers in the mid '90s.
"Two of them (victims) wanted to take the case further but the one who had been hurt the most didn't want to talk about them (abuses) at all, and then the others didn't have the courage to go on."
William R. Tamayo, regional lawyer for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in San Francisco, wrote in an article in 2000 that "sexual harassment of women who work in the fields is a scattered problem."
In a complaint that did advance, Olivia Tamayo (no relation) sued Harris Farms of Coalinga.
In her complaint, Tamayo recounted the abuse she suffered from her supervisor during a three-year period. In 2005, a federal jury in Fresno ruled in her favor, giving her more than $1 million.
Harris Farms appealed the decision, arguing that the evidence admitted during the trial shouldn't have been presented to the jury.
Tamayo took six years to break her silence and never made a police report against her supervisor. When she complained to the company, they ignored her and soon after she had no other choice but to quit her job, since she was the object of hostility by her employers and gossip from her co-workers.
In her testimony, Tamayo said she was raped for the first time by her supervisor in 1993 in an almond grove of Harris Farms and didn't know what to do or where to go, and she couldn't tell her husband.
She also said that after the incident, her supervisor would threaten her with a gun and a knife at work.
"Women don't say anything because they are going to be blamed, because the family doesn't want that something is going on to be known, or for many other reasons," says Mily Treviño, director of Líderes Campesinas.
To that, the fear of losing their job or being reported to the immigration authorities when they are undocumented is added.
"The mere fact that we have information and don't judge the woman, that it is known that we support her, that will give her the confidence to talk about what is happening to her," adds Treviño.
Either way, touching those subjects is difficult, the activist recognizes.
"We are sometimes the worse enemies for women, we need to learn how not to judge women." It is difficult to talk about the subject, but Líderes Campesinas wants for them to at least try.
"When something happens, people should seek help, try to find the right people to listen to their complaint," concludes Treviño.
Last Friday, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed the verdict in favor of the EEOC and Tamayo in her sexual harassment lawsuit.
"In the past years, I have talked to many farmworkers who didn't know they were protected against abuse in the fields. This decision is for everyone who thinks that it is useless to step forward," said Tamayo upong being informed of the decision in her favor.
For more information about Líderes Campesinas, call (909) 865-7776. To contact the EEOC, call (800) 669-4000.