About Us

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The origins of what is currently the FUERZA Farmworkers’ Fund date back to the year 2017, when professors Israel Reyes and Douglas Moody (of the Department of Latin American, Latino, & Caribbean Studies (LALACS) at Dartmouth College), designed the class “LATS 37: Migrant Lives & Labor in the Upper Valley.” The content of this class is intended to bring students closer to the culture, social relations, and political economies concerning the migrants on the dairy farms of the Upper Valley. The course had in-person classes, as well as fieldwork, with a study plan of assigning the students to teach English as a Second Language (ESL).

After noticing the multiple necessities of our migrant friends, the students, with the counsel of the professors, formed FUERZA Migrant Outreach. Their mission was to establish lasting relations of trust with the farm workers and in this manner, empower them with information about their rights and assist them on matters of health and learning English:

FUERZA was founded with the purpose of building durable and reciprocal relations with migrant workers and providing invaluable resources that will enable them to be their own self-defense. Our immediate objective is to provide classes in English with the aim of facilitating interactions between the community members and the migrant workers.

Given that the class was only taught for one term each year, the outlook of FUERZA Migrant Outreach was fragile, which left the organization’s responsibility to fall on the shoulders of some students committed to social justice. In addition, it lacked an “official” recognition in the eyes of the institution due to the fact that it was conceived during Donald Trump’s presidency, when the demons of racism, the persecution of migrants, and xenophobia, among many other evils, were rampant. FUERZA existed in that gray and fragile zone where the institution had to take care not to shelter a student organization that intervened in the already tense and polarized subject of migration. The atmosphere was suffocating, and FUERZA Migrant Outreach, if it ever breathed at all, was a wick that was extinguishing.

 “Awareness is everything that,come what may, brings us to opposeall that threatens thedignity of life”André Bretón  

With the fury of the pandemic charging at us, inhabited by stress and anguish over shattered certainties that come from the unknown, those of us who were in the area visited six dairy farms: four in Vermont (three in Orange County and one in Orleans County) and two in Grafton County, New Hampshire. We put the topic of the pandemic on the table, not to decide what the needs of our migrant friends were, but instead to listen to their fears, their uncertainties, and their worries with the advent of this new virus.

In the face of rampant misinformation, partly because COVID-19 was a new virus that we were learning about day by day, and also because of the outrageous nonsense that was circulating on social media, it was important to speak with the workers, aware of our mutual concerns and doubts regarding this threat. We were accompanied by the physician assistant, Michael Gaffney, who provided medical information that was available at that point in time. We also distributed multivitamins and nutritional supplements.

On these visits we confirmed that the majority of our friends didn’t feel a great difference with the arrival of the pandemic, since “as it is, we live isolated.” They were worried more for their relatives in Mexico and Central America. Additionally, they were greatly troubled due to their sudden hypervisibility: “They gave us dirty looks when we went to the store because we didn’t have masks.”

The scarcity of masks exposed the workers of the dairy farms to a hypervisibilitythat they hadn’t yet faced, at least not to this extent, making them more susceptible to the relentless gaze and scrutiny of the residents of Vermont and New Hampshire, where the population is mostly white.

Combining this scarcity of masks with the rural nature of the area, the friends from the farms were vulnerable to becoming too conspicuous. Thanks to the support of the parishioners of Thetford Hill Church, and to the generous donation of Gabe Onate’s aunt, we managed to collect over 200 home-made masks, which we took to disperse among the different farms, along with medical gloves. Our friends told us that on many of the farms, their bosses mandated that they wear masks without considering the difficulty in obtaining them. Pressure to use masks had the workers very distressed. This was because the protocol did not seem to apply to everyone. Milk tanker drivers from out of state didn’t wear masks, jeopardizing the already vulnerable health of the migrant workers.and with our migrant friends, with a

sense of equity, appreciation, and respect.

Breaking Invisibility

At the same time, FUERZA Farmworkers’ Fund kicked off a series of forums, roundtables and chats to enable the voices of the friends from the farms to be heard. In addition to bringing light to their existence, their presence, their working hands that speak, we sought to deconstruct the unfortunate concept of “they need to be given a voice,” which usually occurs in vertical and hierarchical relationships that are paternalistic in nature.The migrant farmworkers have a voice; they only need spaces for it to be heard. FUERZA Farmworkers’ Fund  began to put on a series of panels which we titled, “Hands that Speak, Voices From the Farms of the Upper Valley.” In these panels, the audience spoke with our friends from the farm and asked them questions about their immediate needs, about their lives, and about their personal stories. But most importantly, they were seen, and the audience became aware of their presence in our region. The farmworkers’ voices were heard. With the goal of fostering these spaces, FUERZA Farmworkers’ Fund, urged this act of awareness, which according to André Bretón, “… brings us to oppose all that threatens the dignity of life.”It was surprising to see the reactions of many who had no idea that, only a few miles from their homes, there was a population of migrants that worked up to 80 hours per week to produce the delicious cheese and milk of the profitable dairy industries of Vermont and New Hampshire. The aim of FUERZA Farmworkers’ Fund with these forums and roundtable discussions was to shake the conscience of the audience so that they would see beyond the products of these farms. Behind the deceitful and hypocritical slogan, “Buy Local”,  there is a history of inequality, exploitation and abuse of the tireless hands that work without many rights, while putting dairy delicacies on our tables and food on those of their families in Mexico. Our intention was to lay bare the underlying reality of the dairy products that we consume daily and the lucrative industry behind them. 

Today, FUERZA Farmworkers’ Fund is composed of more than 13 students, organized in four committees. The first, the Women’s Health Committee, consists of four students, minister Robin Junker-Boyce of Thetford Hill Congregational Church, two pediatricians and a female farmworker. This committee has the mission of:[providing] attention for the wellness of the female workers of the dairy farms, whose needs are often overlooked. The Women’s Health Committee is focused on all women’s needs, centering on preventative health check-ups, trips to the hospital, and assistance with mental health, family planning, and sexuality.The second committee, the Pedido Committee (Requests Committee), is in charge of working directly with the NGO, Hearts You Hold, uploading requests for winter clothes, shoes, and other needs of the farmworkers, in addition to designing and carrying out clothing donation campaigns.The third, the Fundraising/Social Media Committee, is composed of four students and two professional designers from Cancun, Mexico, Katya Villareal Valdez (who helped us with the design of our logo) and Jorge Carlos Álvarez. These two collaborate with us on the designs of the flyers and posters for our events.The fourth committee, the Immediate Response Committee, is managed by six students who are each assigned to one of the farms that we work with. These students are in charge of direct communication with a worker from their assigned farms, who together keep us updated on the situations and needs present in the workers’ daily lives. For this, they have created WhatsApp groups with the farmworkers so they can stay in contact.Each Sunday from 8:00-9:00 p.m., FUERZA Farmworkers’ Fund meets at La Casa to share the progress made by each committee. Generally, we have a guest from the farm, either by Zoom or in-person, who participates in the meeting and speaks about what has happened during that week on their farm.Recently, both Robin Junker-Boyce, as a representative of her church’s Peace & Equity Team, and Father Timothy Danaher, director and chaplain of Aquinas House, Catholic Student Center at Dartmouth College, have joined the ranks of FUERZA Farmworkers’ Fund. In our many visits to the farms, we have noticed two aspects of life that have been neglected: spiritual and mental health. Thanks to Father Timothy’s mastery of Spanish, we have been able to put on “traveling” masses for the farms in the company of Minister Robin.There’s still much yet to do, but we’re considering working with WISE, a marvelous organization that advocates for domestic violence prevention, in addition to providing therapy for victims.Hopefully, we will have little libraries, projectors for movies, ping-pong tables, puzzles, card games, and other recreational activities. Why not? It all starts with a dream.In an essay written by Juan Quinonez for his LATS 20 class during the fall term of 2021, titled “FUERZA Farmworkers’ Fund: A Focus on Underground Student Social Justice Work Happening at Dartmouth,” he asked the other cofounders of the Fund about how they measured the success of the budding organization, and this was the response:Keren answered saying she would like the organization to continue to aid as many farmworkers as possible stating, “Because we do so much individual work, success to me is [measured] by the number of people that we are connecting, by the trust that farmworkers give us—and the services we are able to provide them. To me, it is [measured] by looking at how many people are WhatsApp-ing us and asking for help, because they know we can pull through.” Both Juan and Maria Clara focused on longevity with Maria Clara stating, “Success is not to die out, it’s to survive.” However, Gabe noted that his measure of success is not measured on the survival of the Fund but rather on its end, noting, “In order for this to be successful, we would not further need to exist.” (Quinonez, J., 2021, p. 4)Every day, we receive an average of 15 messages from our friends, about one thing or another, or just a simple hello. The hands of the students are also hands that collaborate, hands that speak of solidarity and devotion, hands that reach out and are committed to the “others”; the “others” with whom they now share space and a dream of justice and equity. Hands that speak of social consciousness.A few days ago, a student member of FUERZA Farmworkers’ Fund, Edgar Morales, accompanied our friend, Victoria, to bring her American Dream to a close with a flourish, returning home after seven years in the Upper Valley. He guided her on her return journey that included multiple airport layovers, lasting all night, until he said goodbye to her and her two-year-old at the boarding gate of a direct flight to Mexico. In the words of Zeke Baker, a graduate of Dartmouth, “it is one of the most honorable acts done by a student that I’ve ever heard of.”FUERZA Farmworkers’ Fund has placed itself in the same orbit as our friends from the dairy farms; we are intertwined. For that reason, the hands of the Fund’s members also speak. They speak of empathy and organization. They are the hands of a group of good citizens, with a social consciousness devoted in body and soul to volunteer work. They are the hands that from our trenches trace the dream of social change, because there is no dream that willpower cannot