Video: The Fruits of Mexico's Cheap Labor (new)

[ Speaking Spanish ]

[ Band Playing ]

>> We're in Culiacan, Sinaloa, a place you may
have heard of because of the Sinaloa Cartel.

And this is a shrine of Malverde.

He's the patron saint of drug traffickers.

But the state of Sinaloa is
not only known because of this,

it's also the breadbasket of Mexico.

And we've come here because we're hearing that
there's somehow a modern-day slavery going

on in the fields of this country.

And migrant workers who travel from field
to field are being treated very badly,

and they're living in very inhuman conditions.

So we want to go see and investigate.

This man believes in the cult of Malverde.

He moves around the chapel with a huge bag
of pot, and he even tried to sell it to us.

He says people grow pot and poppy
because agriculture pays so badly.

It's Mexico's dilemma in a nutshell.

Before drug trafficking kicked
off here, people grew tomatoes,

cucumbers, eggplants and other vegetables.

The state of Sinaloa still feeds most of Mexico
and then exports half of the produce to the US.

Once the fruit and vegetables
crossed the border into the US,

they're inspected carefully
and tested for pesticides.

But while the US Department of Agriculture
has jurisdiction to check the produce,

it can't inspect the working
conditions of those who picked it.

Jornaleros or day laborers are mostly
an uprooted community of migrants.

Too poor to have land or crops of their
own and constantly traveling from one state

to the other, following the harvest
and the promise of a daily wage.

They're made up of Indigenous communities
from poor states like Oaxaca or Guerrero

and migrate north to Sinaloa
and Baja, California.

Some cross the border into the United States.

The unlucky ones rotate endlessly within
the country and become internal migrants.

In the US, they make nearly
$7 an hour while, in Mexico,

it takes them a whole day to make that much.

[ Band Playing ]

We're at Islabosce [phonetic spelling],
a remote town forgotten by authorities,

which explains the huge number of
children getting ready to work.

Their entire families, the baby's too.

People here offer up their day's
labor to the highest bidder.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

The truck is full, and they're
telling us we can leave.

So hola.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

Today we're going from the town;
20 minutes away, there's a field.

Most people we've talked to, crazily
enough, don't even know where they're going

or what they're going to pick up, what product.

It's just sort of day by day.

It's really a dilemma because what some of
these women, the mothers were telling me is

that they don't see this as child labor at all.

They just -- they just say that they don't
have anywhere else to leave their kids.

So they come with and they help out.

And for them, this is something that
they've always done for generations,

and they see it as something quite normal.

[ Music ]

This is the starting line for a
day of work in 100 degrees heat.

And there'll be paid according to the
amount of chili peppers collected.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

We met the field manager or
camporal [phonetic spelling],

who's the person in charge
of the day-to-day operations.

She acts as the middle person between
the workers and the land owners.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

There are laws in Mexico that ban
children younger than 15 from working,

and companies that violate these laws get fined.

The government says it even
carries out inspections,

but it has to notify the owner ahead of time.

So the children are kept away when
authorities show up, and then they return.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

Sef Ortiz [phonetic spelling], a researcher
for the Autonomous University of Sinaloa,

sees many weaknesses in the
policies that the Mexican government

and the International Labor
Organization have taken.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

So we're at the packing plant
for the chili peppers.

It's literally 20 minutes away from
the field we were in this morning,

but we don't know for a fact
that they're using that product.

What tends to happen is that
they run out of product,

and they try to get it from smaller farmers.

Now, that's a very tricky point
because that means they can't guarantee

that the rights of day laborers are respected.

They just reach out and grab sort of chili
peppers from wherever they can find them.

The catchy Obama slogan, Yes, we can
actually comes from a Spanish slogan,

si supie [phonetic spelling]
used by Cesar Chavez.

Mexican American Cesar Chavez organized strikes
and boycotts in the US during the '70s to push

for better working conditions for farmers.

Two decades after Chavez, in 1994, the North
American Free Trade Agreement was signed,

raising hopes that it would improve
conditions for Mexican day laborers.

But it didn't.

South of the border, no one has taken up
the cause of day laborers until recently.

Over the California border, workers from a small
town called San Quintin decided they had enough.

They cut roads and staged protests against
their employer, US multinational Driscoll,

the largest supplier of berries in the world.

All they asked for was a better wage,
around $13 a day and benefits required

by Mexican law like Social Security.

The strikes started March 17, and there have
been many clashes with the police since then.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

The workers leader, Fidel Sanchez, met us
in one of the sit ins he has organized.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

Sanchez told us that in other Mexican towns
things were much worse than in Baja, California.

In their 2014 Global slavery index, the
Walk Free Foundation estimated that more

than a quarter of a million people in Mexico
could be classified as modern day slaves.

Workers sometimes live inside the fields,
and these living quarters are pretty bad

because people that are kept
there as virtual prisoners.

The owner basically sets the prices for food.

People are obliged to buy from him.

And they take their documents away,
and sometimes they don't receive pay

until a three-month period of
time when the harvest is over.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

The remote location of these
fields makes it almost impossible

for the workers to buy from any other retailer.

This is doubly profitable for the
field owners who pay low wages

and obtain a revenue from the store.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

[ Music ]

We ran into a large group that had finished
their stay and was about to head back home.

Most men spoke Indigenous
languages rather than Spanish,

which means that sometimes they don't
understand that the conditions they sign up for.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

We went to the canal where
the young man drowned.

Workers bathe here because there are only ten
showers for 200 people, and some don't work.

So this is exactly where
the 20-year-old drowned.

We don't know if he knew how to swim
or if he was drinking or something.

That's what we're hearing.

But the camp owners are certainly
being very hush hush about it.

They don't want the guys to tell us about it.

But we can certainly see the forensic
team left the surgery gloves here,

and they pulled the body in this exact location.

the guys have to wash their clothes
and sometimes bathe here in the canal,

and all that yellow stuff you see over there is
from the chemicals they used to grow tomatoes.

So it really tells you that the
canal's pretty polluted, obviously.

And also the working conditions,
I mean, are really unacceptable.

They're manipulating chemicals.

They have no protective gear at all.

And people here were even telling us that
the vegetables are treated better than them.

Okay. We're being kicked out.

They're not letting us film anymore.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

the camp we saw was male only,
no kids or families allowed.

But there are others for entire families.

Those who can't negotiate a work
accommodation package end up staying in town.

Entire towns in Mexico double
in size during harvest.

Activist Amalia Lopez [phonetic spelling]
helps Indigenous communities that are part

of Juarez [phonetic spelling]
floating population.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

So there's illegal hotels here which are
called cuarterias [phonetic spelling]

because cuartos is a room.

So it's just basically a rooms for rent.

I mean, there's nothing legal
about these places.

They meet absolutely no standards.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

It's really horrible.

I mean, if there was a fire
or anything happened,

these kids would die unless
they managed to break the lock,

someone managed to break the lock.

But apparently there's already
been accidents here.

The little girl wants to get
out, and it's extremely hot.

So they're just locked there
in this extreme heat.

A short time later, the mother of the
kids locked up in the room arrived.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

[ Music ]

[ Speaking Spanish ]

Fidel Sanchez was able to start a negotiation

with the government, something
unprecedented here.

He got healthcare and better conditions
for the strawberry pickers of his region,

but he's still trying to
reach an agreement on wages.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

There's a growing interest in America
to know where food comes from,

and supermarkets suggest they
can trace the origin of products.

Are consumers being told the whole story?

Can stores at least guarantee
that their tomatoes

or chili peppers weren't picked by children?

Thousands of jornaleros put
the food on our tables.

And, yet, their earnings are some of the
lowest in Mexico, sitting at the bottom

of the food production chain, while supermarkets

and intermediaries continue
to reap all the profits.

[ Music ]