Heated Dispute in the Land of Chili Peppers

Juan Arreola crouched over a makeshift grill beneath an interstate bridge, heating his supper of corn tortilla and chili peppers.

“We are the poorest of all the workers, and that’s why we are here,” Arreola says of the chili pickers who sleep under the bridge they call “Hotel Mira Estrellas,” or “The Hotel Star Gazer.”

He and the others can’t afford the $2 a night for the alternative, Arreola says, a soiled pad atop a metal frame in a dingy laborer’s barracks, where one toilet and sink must suffice for 20 workers.

Farm workers in the chili fields of New Mexico have demanded an end to what they call exploitation. Growers say the pickers’ allegations unfairly tarnish all of them for the transgressions of a few.

But recent federal investigations support the complaints of the pickers, who disrupted this year’s multimillion-dollar harvest with protests, strikes and demonstrations over substandard living conditions and poverty-level wages.

A back yard garden vegetable 15 years ago, chili peppers now are New Mexico’s largest cash food crop, and the state is the nation’s largest chili producer and exporter. Last year’s crop was valued at nearly $42 million.

But some workers, who won legal status through a 1986 immigration amnesty program, say they haven’t shared in the prosperity.

“They think it’s a lot of money they’re paying us,” said Jesus Vasquez of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, who has been living beneath the bridge since May. “But it’s not enough.”

Carlos Marentes, director of the Union de Trabajadores Agricolas Fronterrizas, the border agricultural workers’ union, said farm workers earn an average of $6,000 for a family of seven, $12,000 less than the federal poverty line.

Although federal law requires farmers to pay laborers the minimum wage of $3.80 an hour, pickers are being paid the same rates for a bucket of peppers as they were a decade ago, he said. Meanwhile, the size of the bucket has gone from 6 gallons to 10 gallons.

Farmers pay an average 60 cents to 70 cents for every bucket of chilis picked. Even if a worker does not pick enough buckets to earn $30.40, the minimum wage for an eight-hour day, farmers or labor contractors are required by law to pay the hourly wage anyway.

Union organizers and some pickers say farmers aren’t complying.

“I have a wage receipt from a lady who worked . . . eight hours, and they have four hours on her work receipt. She made $21,” said Sandy New-Lopez, a union staff member.

Farmers believe that the union has exaggerated the problems of a minority of workers.

“I think they bring up isolated incidents,” said Don Hackey, chairman of the New Mexico Chili Commission, which represents many of the state’s estimated 400 chili growers. “They find something that’s happened to an individual and then portray it as widespread and say that’s how we all work. That’s absolutely not true.”

Hackey said he pays 100 to 150 workers picking his 300 acres as much as 80 cents a bucket. His own survey of workers on his field found the average wage was $54 for about eight hours’ work.

“The only complaint I hear from my people is, ‘Gosh, I wish we had this all year,’ ” Hackey said.

Labor Department investigators sent out in August found 63 cases of violations of various federal laws, said Andy Chavez, district director of the Albuquerque Wage and Hour Division of the Labor Department.

A second investigation of 51 growers and farm labor contractors that ended in October found 142 violations. Only six of the 51 were in compliance with laws protecting farm workers, many of whom say they were better off before they were granted amnesty.