In his 35 years living and working in the fields of Pescadero, Jose Guadalupe Rogel Mendez has thought little of himself. Most of every day — from the moment he wakes before dawn in his bunk bed and heads to work on the ranch — is lived quietly thinking of his absent family, the wife and children who benefit from his labor.

Mendez is 72. And every day, he follows men half his age into the fields — planting peas, picking onions, bending stooping, pulling, lifting.

“I’m in search of an an ideal life. And thanks to God I have found what I’m looking for,” says Mendez, a tall, stoic man with a strong voice.

That ideal life involves spending half of each year in Villa Guerrero, Mexico, with his wife and nine children, before returning to Pescadero to work for Marchi Farms. (He has a green card.) By U.S. standards, his farm worker’s salary places him very close to the bottom of the totem pole. But in Mexico, Mendez has been able to build houses for seven out of his nine children. He also built a home for his wife, which includes some land to plant on. He continues to support his children when they need it, even though the youngest one is 24.

Thirty-five years ago, Mendez came to the U.S. looking for work, and Pescadero was the first place he stopped. “They treat me well here. I still don’t find the job difficult even though I have a lot of years on me,” he says.

When he’s in Pescadero, Mendez leads a life of quiet routine and asceticism. He doesn’t have a cell phone, a car, or a post office box (he shares with a friend). He never learned English. He sleeps on a lower bunk in a barracks owned by his employer, and shares a kitchen and bathroom with four other men (sometimes the number of roommates increases when the harvest season peaks). He works from sunup to sundown six days a week, and sometimes on Sundays too when there’s work for him.

He doesn’t cook the foods he likes, because food is expensive and he wants to send home as much money as possible.

“I just keep what’s needed for my lunch, dinner and clothes. Rent is not much. They only charge me $40 per month,” says Mendez. “I only get to eat meat once a week, but I try not to eat it at all. Meat is more expensive than vegetables and beans, and it’s also a diet that has helped me stay healthy.”

Mendez is not particularly sociable. He doesn’t join the other men at La Sala, Puente’s weekly program for migrant workers who eat, talk and play music together. He prefers to head to the beach and go fishing alone. He does not enjoy traveling, and in 35 years, he has never been farther afield than Watsonville.

“I’ve kept to myself mostly. I have some friends, but I don’t like sharing a lot about my life with everyone,” he says with a smile.

Considering his lifestyle, it wasn’t a huge surprise when Mendez walked into Puente looking for help in March, and was mistaken for someone who had recently moved to the area. In fact, when he mentioned health care, staff members mistakenly put him on the schedule as needing ACE, low-income residents, including undocumented individuals, who do not qualify for Medi-Cal and Medicare programs.

Puente’s safety net team consists of Corina and Laura Rodriguez. Mendez sat down with Corina Rodriguez, a community resource navigator who connects participants with Puente’s safety net services.

“I told him about ACE and he corrected me,” she recalls. “He said he was a permanent resident, and had been for 10 years. I said, ‘Oh, so you want Medi-Cal.’”

Mendez shrugged. He’d never even heard of Medi-Cal, which made no sense to Rodriguez.

“I told him, ‘If you’ve been here for such a long time, you must have had insurance all this time. How could you not have had insurance?’ We checked it in the county system, and sure enough, they had no record of him.”

He was like a ghost. Except for one important fact: Mendez did have Social Security, which meant he was also entitled to Medicare. Rodriguez helped Mendez apply for both Medi-Cal and Medicare right on the spot, even going so far as to make personal calls to the relevant agencies.

She was astonished that this affable 72-year-old man had managed to survive without taking advantage of so many services he was entitled to.

“He was so happy at the end that he pulled out his wallet and said, ‘Can I give you some money?’ I said, ‘no! It’s free.’ He said, ‘Well, can I get you something? Do you need anything?’” She laughs.

“He said that, in the past when he has gone out to look for help, he has never received anything near like what he had here.”

It’s not that Mendez is too proud to ask for help. In fact, he had been to Puente a handful of times — once to ask for help filling out a work document, another time to file his taxes with Puente’s free community tax program. It was during that tax session, in 2014, that Mendez learned he would be penalized if he could not prove he had medical insurance by April 2015.

“I asked a coworker of mine what I had to do to get insurance, and he told me I could come to Puente,” says Mendez. “I didn’t know what I was coming here to ask for.”

Remarkably, Mendez has been healthy all his life. The one time he saw a doctor, he learned first-hand just how expensive it is to be uninsured. “I had a checkup in the hospital in San Mateo. I felt dizzy. They ran some tests and charged me $2,200 for one day. They never did tell me what was wrong with me, but it went away,” he recalls.

Puente has enrolled 51 participants in health insurance since January 2015.

“I feel happy and joyous about it, because now I have what I need if I ever were to get sick,” says Mendez. Which is a relief, considering he’s 72.

Mendez is thinking about retiring soon. Next year could be his final planting season, after which he would return to Mexico for good. It’s time he enjoyed the fruits of his labor.

“I think that the most important thing is to feel as though you are able to help someone. Puente helped me and I would like to be able to help people more. I haven’t been able to help many people here, but I have been able to help a lot of people in Mexico.”

Please help Puente reach more community members like Mr. Mendez. 

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On March 23, sixty-five people congregated in the Pescadero Elementary School Multipurpose room to watch the film “Food Chains.” The group consisted of farmworkers and consumers, teachers and students—all gathered to learn more about food systems and food justice.

The film, according to its makers, “focuses on an intrepid group of Florida farmworkers battle to defeat the $4 trillion global supermarket industry through their ingenious Fair Food program, which partners with growers and retailers to improve working conditions for farm laborers in the United States.” To date, twelve major retailers have signed on to the campaign including Walmart, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, McDonalds, the YUM Brands, Chipotle, Burger King, Aramark, Compass Group, Bon Appetit, Sodexo, and Subway. Those companies, according to the CIW, now “pay a small Fair Food premium which tomato growers pass on to workers as a line-item bonus on their regular paychecks. (Between January 2011 and October 2015, $20 million in Fair Food premiums were paid into the Program.) Through the Program, these buyers support a wage increase through paying an additional penny per pound and require a human-rights-based Code of Conduct to be implemented on the farms that grow their tomatoes.”

“Food Chains” begins by addressing the specific challenges the Florida tomato workers face and then zooms out for a broader look across the country and even focuses briefly on California. The story follows the early morning routines of farmworkers before they go to work in the pre-dawn, the struggle to earn even a minimum wage in some parts of the country, and the reality that even a one-cent increase in the cost of produce would significantly improve the lives of workers. The principal targets of criticism are the large supermarket conglomerates, which hold a disproportionate amount of the power in the food system.

The six-day hunger strike that is chronicled in the film was launched by the CIW in Florida and targeted Publix, one of the largest supermarket chains in the United States, based in Lakeland, Florida. The company, along with Safeway, Kroger, and Wendy’s, have also refused to sign the Fair Food premium.

In the end the film points out that while groups like the United Farm Workers (UFW) achieved historic successes for farmworker justice, “farm labor today remains one of the most difficult and most underpaid jobs in America.” The farmworker movement led by Cesar Chavez in California in the 1960s was prominently featured in the film—fitting for a screening to kick off Farmworker Awareness Week, which ends on Cesar Chavez Day.

And that’s what those sixty-five people were present for: an opportunity to be more aware of the issues of farmworkers.

The film was perfect for the South Coast community and the Puente staff that organized the viewing knew it.

Community Health Coordinator Molly Wolfes first saw “Food Chains” at the Western Forum for Migrant Health and was struck by how relevant the California history portrayed in the movie continues to be for the current issues of the South Coast. Family Education Manager Arlae Alston appreciated that the history of agriculture and workers is presented in the film in a way that is respectful of all parties, and Community Outreach Coordinator Ben Ranz felt that the film’s concentration on the need for change in huge food corporations—not individual farmers—was a particularly important point to recognize.

Ranz, Wolfes, and Alston

Alston, Ranz and Wolfes first assembled a bilingual group of community members who pre-screened the – preparing them to both assist in outreach as well as take on a more involved role the night of the event.  After the film, that small group of promotoras, parents from Abriendo Puertas, and participants in La Sala—key community leaders—were empowered to lead small groups (in English and Spanish) of 4-7 people to talk about their personal responses to the film. Those small groups then presented their discussion to the entire group, facilitated by Puente’s Education Director Noel Chavez.

The film elicited passionate feelings from the entire room as many of the viewers were moved by the issues raised.

Some viewers said the film was hard to watch and even harder to talk about. However, the discussion of the movie gave the farmworker community a voice and a platform to talk and be heard—one of the central goals of Farmworker Awareness Week in general and the film screening in particular. This unique opportunity for both English and Spanish speakers was another meaningful step in connecting people in our community across differences.

Wolfes was reminded that at the end of the discussion, the community was in a different place. “The goal of the evening was to start a dialogue, not fix this great big problem,” she said.

Alston later wrote that people showing up after a long day of work moved her. “This tells me that our community is ready to talk about these issues,” she said. “It reminded me of a quote from Brené Brown about the meaning of the word courage –

‘Not the courage that talks about the strength in the face of pain or grief, but the courage that is to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.’

During this night I got to witness people telling their story with their whole hearts. There was sadness and anger but there was also hope and heart. I am extremely privileged to have been there.”

Small group conversations after the movie

Ranz is inspired by the response to plan upcoming workshops on workers’ rights and other legal issues that directly affect this community.  Some participants even expressed interest in learning how to register to vote to start to participate in the system.  For the next film festival, Ranz, Alston, and Wolfes hope to spur viewers to action in response to the needs of the community. Ranz dreams of a bus trip to Sacramento where farmworkers can advocate for themselves.

Until then, the screening served as an opportunity for participants to see each other–and to hear the stories that make each of us part of the same community.

View the trailer for Food Chains here. The full film is available on Netflix.

Email us at info@mypuente.org to help plan the next film festival. To support our innovative programs, click here.

When Molly Wolfes met Angel Martinez for the first time, she had no idea what a crucial role he would end up playing in his community. He walked into Puente one day in January with his brother-in-law, who had a toothache. He’d heard Puente could help with with that.

The front desk directed both men to Wolfes, Puente’s Community Health Coordinator, who made arrangements for the brother-in-law to be put on a list for a dental program serving farmworkers. She gave them a tour of Puente’s county-funded health clinic and the rest of the Puente facilities while she asked about the men: she’d never seen them before. She found out that they were viticulture workers living and working for a winery high in the hills surrounding La Honda, some 45 minutes away from Pescadero.

Angel Martinez stayed quiet during the tour. He asked about how to get signed up for free county health care, and Wolfes told him all he needed to bring in was his ID, proof of residence in the county and a recent pay stub. But she wasn’t sure if she would see him again.

“Angel showed up two weeks later. He brought two guys with him and he said, ‘I need health insurance, and so do they,’” she recalls. They all had  the necessary documents needed to apply. Wolfes signed them up on the spot. Usually an appointment is required, but because they had taken time off work and traveled so far she did not want to send them away.

And that was just the beginning. After enrolling in health insurance that same day, Angel signed up for his new patient physical a couple weeks later. The date was January 17 — he can still remember it. Incredibly, the brawny 43-year-old had never had a real health problem or needed to see a doctor that he knew of. Following the normal procedure of the clinic for a new patient, he got all his blood tests, and quickly followed up with checkups at the dentist and the eye doctor.

Martinez quickly became a great resource for Wolfes and his fellow companions and colleagues. He volunteered to be the main cell phone contact between Puente and the men he works with, helping them stay in touch with the medical clinic and making sure his co-workers got their medications on time. Using his own car, he also drove the men to medical appointments and pharmacies to pick up their prescriptions when needed.

“I told the guys I work with, this is a really good opportunity. You don’t always know what’s going on with your body. I told them, and a couple others have come to sign up,” says Martinez.

But why would a healthy man like Martinez expend such an effort, Wolfes wondered?

“There’s some sort of motivational spark in him… He’s one those people that I know I can count on. He’s always very responsive, and that’s hard for a lot of people here with long working hours and limited cell phone service,” says Wolfes. “It surprised me that he was motivated for other people too, helping them get their health insurance.”

Martinez smiles, exposing even white teeth as strong as his grip. “In all the time I’ve been in the U.S., I’ve never had health insurance. Not in Mexico either.” He’d never understood how it worked. It was just something other people had. All those debates about Obamacare were just noise to him. And anyway, why worry about a checkup when there was nothing wrong?

His perspective changed when he lost three older brothers in quick succession at the ages of 46, 52 and 53. They died of terrible diseases: liver cancer, pancreatic cancer and advanced diabetes.

Martinez was from a family of 10. Now there’s only 7.

“They had never seen a doctor in their lives. They only visited a doctor once they got sick,” he says. “It might have helped if they had seen a doctor sooner. Maybe something could have been prevented.”

Martinez came to the U.S. at 17 and found work as a cook in a Texas restaurant. He took high school classes on the side. That job lasted 20 years, after which he moved to Oregon to work in viticulture. He has been on the South Coast for two years and he has a wife and child in Mexico, whom he supports with a monthly remittance.

Martinez says that in Mexico, a simple doctor’s visit typically costs $150 (in U.S. dollars). Medications can cost twice as much. For someone coming from a rural town like his, a doctor’s visit can break the bank in travel expenses alone. And although Mexico has a “Seguro Social” that provides every worker access to health services, Martinez says that the reality is that when a patient has a life-threatening illness, the whole family bears the burden of scraping together the money to pay for treatment.

There’s a lot of reasons for someone to avoid the doctor’s office unless it becomes imperative. So it gives Martinez a lot of pride to be able to pay for his wife and child to see a doctor whenever they need to.

When Martinez heard he was entitled to free medical treatment through the San Mateo County ACE Program, he didn’t hesitate. He takes a medication now to address his high blood pressure, which is also free. Martinez also has new glasses — black frames that he wears when he works.

But he hasn’t stopped there. He’s eating differently now than used to. And he’s making sure that when it’s his turn to cook dinner for the men he lives with, he includes a lot of vegetables. “Squash, carrots, potatoes, celery, onions, garlic,” he says. “Things that have vitamins. That will help us stay healthier.”

A lot of the guys didn’t like it at first, he admits with a smile. “They like to eat a lot of red meat. They like to drink soda.”

“I used to be a cook,” Martinez adds. “It’s not only sugar that’s bad for you, it’s the stuff they give animals to make them grow faster. There’s a lot of things in the world that are changing. Before, there weren’t so many illnesses. We have to pay more attention to what we eat and drink.”

Wolfes wonders about asking Martinez to join Puente’s team of promotoras, who help educate isolated local residents about their health and connect them with some form of insurance. Puente is in the process of hiring 3 promotoras to join its existing team and is still looking for two more. The promotoras have already reached out to 660 people in the community since August 2015.

“I think Angel has that natural leader in him. Other people tend to follow him and he’s taken on that responsibility to help others take care of their health. And now, knowing his story, the motivation to do so makes more sense,” Wolfes says.

Martinez says he’ll continue to advocate for his colleagues to visit the doctor. Some of the men he lives with now, he says, “are young. They think nothing will ever happen to them.”

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