Photo story: Migrant workers in a Maine blueberry labor camp
Story by David Bacon
DEBLOIS, MAINE – Agustin Martinez, Juan Rayas and Martin Martinez are all migrant blueberry pickers who come to Maine every year from Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato. Ike Hubbard makes the rakes used by migrant blueberry pickers.
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- DEBLOIS, MAINE - Agustin Martinez is a migrant blueberry picker who comes to Maine every year from Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato. Agustin workerd for three years during the bracero contract labor program, which ended in 1964. He came across the border each year at Calexico, where he remembers being given X-rays, and dusted with DDT, supposedly because workers from Mexico were "flea-ridden." He worked picking tomatoes in Sacramento and Oxnard, in California. A thousand people slept in a huge barracks, he remembers. On loudspeakers they'd be called by numbers to the bathroom to wash, to the dining hall to eat, and to go to work. Copyright David Bacon
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- DEBLOIS, MAINE - Juan Rayas is a migrant blueberry picker who comes to Maine every year from Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato. He remembers coming to the United States during the bracero program in the early 1960s, when he went to Georgia and Arkansas to pick cotton. He lives most of the year in a huge labor camp operated by Jasper Wyman. Copyright David Bacon
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- DEBLOIS, MAINE - The hands of Juan Rayas, a migrant blueberry picker who comes to Maine every year to work in a huge labor camp operated by Jasper Wyman. His hand is injured, and he fears he won't be able to continue working. Copyright David Bacon
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- DEBLOIS, MAINE - A box for picking blueberries on the blueberry barrens, belonging to Jasper Wyman, the world's largest blueberry producer, in Deblois. The crop is harvested in August by migrants from Mexico. Copyright David Bacon
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- DEBLOIS, MAINE - Martin Martinez is a migrant blueberry picker who comes to Maine every year from Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato. He lives most of the year in the same labor camp as Agustin and Juan. Copyright David Bacon
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- DEBLOIS, MAINE - Agustin Martinez is a migrant blueberry picker who comes to Maine every year from Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato. Copyright David Bacon
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- DEBLOIS, MAINE - A huge labor camp operated by Jasper Wyman, the world's largest blueberry producer, in Deblois. Workers get paid $2.25 per 23 point box, the same rate growers were paying in 1975, when it had the purchasing power of $8.50 today. Copyright David Bacon
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- JONESBORO, MAINE - Ike Hubbard makes the rakes used by migrant blueberry pickers, who to come to Maine every year for the harvest. The work is very hard, because workers must bend over to push the rake under the plants all day. Hubbard has worked with community health advocates to develop rakes that are less painful and cause fewer injuries. He makes the rakes in an old-fashioned New England machine shop. Copyright David Bacon
