A community organizer and former farmworker talks about the unique pressures on Indigenous migrant farmworkers from Mexico, particularly in California, where they represent a quarter of the agricultural workforce.
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A community organizer and former farmworker talks about the unique pressures on Indigenous migrant farmworkers from Mexico, particularly in California, where they represent a quarter of the agricultural workforce.
March 4, 2025
Arcenio López leads a nonprofit in California’s Central Coast, advocating for the area’s Indigenous farm workers. (Photo credit: Maye Primera)
For three generations, Arcenio López’s family has lived at the mercy of crops, the changing seasons, and the constant shifts of U.S. immigration policy. Born in 1982 in a small village in Oaxaca, Mexico, López comes from an Indigenous family of farmers who have been part of a long-standing migration pattern between Mexico and the United States.
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His grandfathers began traveling to the U.S. under the Bracero Program, which operated from 1942 to 1964, bringing millions of Mexican citizens to work legally in American agriculture and railroads. López himself followed in their footsteps, coming to California in 2003 to work in the strawberry industry.
Today, López serves as the executive director of the Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project (MICOP), a nonprofit based in Oxnard and founded in 2001 that assists Indigenous agricultural workers on California’s central coast. The state is home to an estimated 165,000 Indigenous Mexican farmworkers. These workers form an integral part of the agricultural labor force, which totals around 407,300.
California is home to an estimated 165,000 Indigenous Mexican farmworkers.
Over 80 percent of Indigenous farmworkers in California come from Oaxaca, López’s home state, where Mixtecs are a predominant group. In Ventura County alone, where MICOP operates, there are an estimated 20,000 Indigenous Mixteco migrants from Mexico. These communities are among the poorest workers in the region, often earning meager seasonal wages with few, if any, employee benefits.
Most are undocumented immigrants who face unique challenges in the U.S., including language barriers, as many speak pre-Hispanic Indigenous languages rather than Spanish. In the wake of new federal deportation threats, their already precarious status has become even more destabilizing, forcing many to avoid critical services or legal protections out of fear.
We spoke to López about the impact of recent immigration raids in Ventura county, misconceptions about undocumented farmworkers, and prejudice against Indigenous farmworkers in the fields.
At first, I didn’t know what a community organizer was. But while I was working in the fields, the first thing I noticed was the division among Mexicans, particularly against Oaxaqueños (people from the state of Oaxaca in Mexico), and how they were treated by other Mexicans. I felt there was a profound lack of knowledge and awareness about the diversity of our own Mexican country, especially regarding Indigenous peoples and our history. I started asking myself, “Why are people treating us as if we were less human for speaking an Indigenous language or because of the way we look? Where is that coming from?”
I connected what I was experiencing in the fields and the agricultural industry here to what I used to hear from my grandmother about her experiences as a farmworker in Mexico. I grew up listening to her stories about her pain, challenges, mistreatment, and the abuses she endured as a farmworker and as an Indigenous woman who never learned how to speak Spanish. I connected her world to what I was living through in 2003. It was a wake-up call for me to see that so much injustice still existed—and nobody was talking about it, at least not in the fields.
When I was recruited as a volunteer by El Concilio (a nonprofit that serves rural, low-income Latino communities), and two years later offered a position as a community organizer, it became an opportunity for me to learn more about social justice, economic justice, environmental justice, and to dive deeply into my own history and learn about colonization.
At that time, I didn’t feel comfortable speaking Mixteco. My parents and grandparents didn’t want their children or grandchildren to speak it because of what they went through—feeling disadvantaged simply for speaking their own languages instead of Spanish. They worked hard to ensure we learned Spanish because they believed it would give us better opportunities than their Indigenous languages ever could. Soon, I found myself in a painful moment because I had to challenge my parents’ and grandparents’ beliefs of assimilating to Mexican culture.
We grew up Catholic, so I had to break down all the ways religion played a role in colonization—how it was used as a weapon to dominate, invade, and kill. I also learned about internalized racism—the self-hatred many of us carry after being discriminated against for so many years. All of this pushed me further into organizing work.
If I had stayed in Mexico, I don’t think I would be embracing my culture and language for many reasons. One of the main reasons is that the Mexican education system doesn’t encourage you to be critical about yourself or your Indigenous identity. They don’t want you to know your own history.
In Mexico, there is a lot of racism toward Indigenous people—those with brown skin, shorter stature, or those who speak an Indigenous language. If you look more brown or speak an Indigenous language, you are treated as less. That’s how it is. But according to the law and the education curriculum, everyone is supposedly equal—no one is less or more. The system tries to make us homogeneous by erasing Indigenous identities. For example, I never heard of a curriculum in Mixteco, which is my culture, or Zapotec. You just keep going, keep working, learning Spanish, and chasing big goals with the hope that someday you’ll succeed and no longer face discrimination—but that’s not true.
When you cross a border and you feel far from your own land, you find yourself missing your roots. It becomes an invitation to deeply question yourself, “Who am I?” It pushes you to be more critical. I am the grandson of an abuela [grandmother] who worked in agriculture in Mexico. Some people focus more on learning the culture here or mastering English.
But I realized early on that if I don’t claim my roots—my culture and my identity—there’s a high risk I’ll lose myself because I will never fully fit into white culture, no matter what I do. That need for belonging is something I think many of us go through. Not feeling a sense of belonging to certain groups forces you to ask yourself: What community do I belong to?
Primarily, immigration status. Thousands of Indigenous migrants still have no opportunities for a legal pathway to adjust their status in this country.
Language barriers remain a major issue as well. Many of our people come from rural areas of Mexico and different states where they don’t have access to a formal education. Many don’t know how to read or write. The education system in Mexico is in Spanish and excludes many of our communities. We feel more comfortable in our Indigenous languages—Mixteco, Zapoteco, Purépecha, Triqui—but transitioning into the Spanish-language education system is a barrier that prevents many from attending school at all. As a result, literacy continues to be a significant problem.
“We’ve started seeing agricultural companies and growers becoming concerned about many farmworkers not showing up to work.”
Here in the United States, we face new layers of challenges, such as immigration issues, violations of labor laws and rights, workplace retaliation, and wage theft. Language barriers also make it difficult for workers to access accurate information about their rights or available resources. Misinformation is another issue—there aren’t enough news outlets providing fact-based information tailored to our communities.
Our population is substantial. Yet many companies still lack systems to provide training or support in Indigenous languages for their workers. California has strong labor laws that protect employees, but enforcement is lacking. This makes workers from Indigenous communities especially vulnerable. Even when they know their labor rights, many of our people don’t feel confident or empowered enough to advocate for themselves.
People were hopeful that, even though he said there would be massive deportations, there wouldn’t be a significant difference between his administration and the previous Obama or Biden administrations. But now it feels like his actions have been more aggressive, and it’s all over social media—ICE agents in our neighborhoods. A few weeks ago, people were detained in our neighborhood. Folks got scared and stopped going to work in the fields.
We’ve started seeing agricultural companies and growers becoming concerned about many farmworkers not showing up to work. We’ve also heard that many parents are not taking their children to school. Even at our organization, people who use our services have been canceling their appointments and participation in our programs. We offer different training sessions and groups, but participants have been calling us to say they prefer staying home and asking if we can hold virtual trainings or meetings instead.
Being undocumented means always living in fear. We’ve normalized fear, but it escalates when someone like Donald Trump gets into this position of power.
When I get the opportunity to talk to people, I tell them: Let’s take a moment, breathe, stay calm, and approach this with a cold head. All I need to focus on is making a plan for the worst-case scenario.
That said, if you are unfortunately detained, the first thing to remember is: Do not provide any information. You have the right to remain silent. I know it’s hard because agents can be very intimidating—they may yell, scream, and try to get as much information from you as possible. If you carry the red card—the Know Your Rights card—show it to them and say, “I need to talk to my attorney. I’m being detained.”
If they take you to a detention center, do not sign anything, no matter what the paper says. If possible, ask if you can call a family member. Planning and preparation are key here because your family member should already know what to do. They should have the contact information for our offices and should call our hotline to get legal advice. The goal is to find a lawyer who can take your case for removal defense and fight for a bond.
“Imagine the worst-case scenario: All undocumented workers are deported. The agricultural industry would collapse.”
In preparation for this possibility, you need to make a family plan. Decide who will have legal custody of your children and who will pick them up from school if you are detained. There are already many resources available that we’re sharing with our communities. We’re organizing fairs where we’ll bring public notaries to help notarize these plans. That’s what we’re telling our people: Even though they are undocumented, they still have rights
There’s a perception that undocumented people are abusing the system or taking advantage of public benefits. But the reality is different—they are not taking advantage of all the benefits.
They are paying taxes. All individuals who work here are contributing to this economy as farmworkers. However, the deductions taken from their paychecks on a weekly basis—such as Social Security and Medicare—are benefits they will never be able to access.
Undocumented workers won’t have access to retirement benefits or Medicare when they reach 60 years old because of their immigration status. And many people have no idea that undocumented workers are paying all these taxes without receiving the same benefits in return.
I wish we could ask this question to a grower. They likely know that a large percentage of their workforce is undocumented. Imagine if they lost them.
Growers have already been struggling with a worker shortage for the last five to seven years. They started using the H-2A program, which is very similar to the Bracero Program, but it’s not enough to meet their labor needs.
We are also concerned about the H-2A program because it makes workers very vulnerable. Once they are on this side of the border, who knows what happens to those workers? For years, efforts have been made to streamline the process of bringing workers over the border, but growers are still facing significant challenges due to a lack of labor.
Now imagine the worst-case scenario: All undocumented workers are deported. The agricultural industry would collapse. This is the last thing growers need to face. They have a lot of political power, and I hope they are pressuring their leaders to take action.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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