Farm Workers Mourned at Eastside Service

With a basketful of vegetables and a short hoe placed at the altar, memorial services were held Monday on the Eastside for 13 farm workers killed when an overloaded van crashed in the Central Valley.

Addressing more than 150 people at Dolores Mission, United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta said laborers like those who died Aug. 9 are forced to pay for rides in overloaded vans. She urged congregants to support a petition asking the state to develop a safer transportation system for the workers.

Returning after a graveyard shift in the tomato fields, the long van carrying the 13 workers smashed into a tractor-trailer that was making a U-turn on a country road near Five Points in Fresno County. Two other van occupants were badly injured in the 5:30 a.m. collision.

The van did not have seat belts in a hollowed-out section in the back. The passengers sat on carpeted wood benches without safety restraints. The van’s permit to carry passengers expired last year.

Huerta said she was asked what the tragedy had “to do with Los Angeles. I said that we all eat tomatoes, we all depend on the farm workers to feed us.”

“That could have been any one of us,” said Rodolfo Cabrera, a 45-year-old Boyle Heights day laborer.

Assemblyman Dean Florez, (D-Shafter) and Assemblywoman Sarah Reyes (D-Fresno) said they would introduce a bill to require vehicles that transport farm workers to have seat belts.