Oxnard, California, United States – When Arcenio Lopez made the journey to the United States from his hometown of San Francisco Higos in the Mexican state of Oaxaca in 2003, he was just 21 years old. Spanish was commonly heard in his hometown, along with Mixteco, a language spoken by Indigenous Mixtec, or Nuu Savi, communities in southern Mexico.
In California, Lopez found work in the strawberry fields surrounding a small city called Oxnard in Ventura County, around 100 kilometres (62 miles) northwest of Los Angeles.
Many workers who spent hours hunched over picking berries also had origins in Indigenous communities in Mexico, and spoke native languages such as Mixteco, Zapoteco, Purepecha and Triqui. Some spoke little Spanish, inciting scorn from Mexican foremen and some colleagues in the fields who looked down on Indigenous workers.
Lopez, now the executive director of the Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project (MICOP), which serves the Mexican Indigenous population of Oxnard and several neighbouring counties in southern California, says anti-Indigenous racism continues to follow workers across the border. “This goes all the way back to the history of colonisation,” he told Al Jazeera. “We carry this trauma in our DNA.”
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