Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Social Hierarchy and Violence
Global Pressures and Individual Choices
Labor and Immigration Policy
Bias in Healthcare
Anthropology and Activism
Summary
Analysis
The Road from San Miguel. Seth Holmes recounts traveling from the small town of San Miguel to the U.S.-Mexico border with a group of Indigenous Triqui laborers. He brings a change of clothes, a little food, and money for transport and coyotes. The journey is 49 hours by bus. At military checkpoints on the way, the migrants lie about their destination and Holmes pretends to be a tourist. Three soldiers on the bus tell Holmes how the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency funds these checkpoints. They assume that Holmes is a coyote.
Holmes opens with a story that his readers are likely to already strongly associate with undocumented migrant labor: the harrowing illegal journey across the U.S.-Mexico border. The military checkpoints and the passengers’ deceptiveness about their plans show how the border is both militarized and regulated—while crossing is illegal and dangerous, it's also exceedingly common and there are set procedures for doing it. Even government officials understand its unwritten rules. Holmes also emphasizes how he stands out in relation to the other migrants—this shows how his research involves breaking social norms and hierarchies. It also suggests that his personal experience living with migrant workers for a year is very different from migrant workers’ own experience.
Themes
Fieldwork on the Move. Holmes explains that this book is based on the 18 months he spent living and working with Triqui Indigenous migrant workers from rural Oaxaca, Mexico. When Holmes first goes to visit San Miguel, the Triqui workers’ hometown, locals warn him that it would be dangerous and town leaders give him the silent treatment. He points out that, because of their colonial history, Indigenous Latin American communities tend to distrust outsiders.
Holmes’s difficult visit to San Miguel is a sign of Triqui people’s unique and difficult history. Specifically, because powerful outsiders have oppressed and exploited them repeatedly over the centuries, they have learned to distrust outsiders, including seemingly well-intentioned ones like Holmes. However, mixed-race, Spanish speaking Mexicans also distrust and look down on the Triquis because of this history. This shows how social structures and political forces strongly shape people’s lives, relationships, and beliefs.
Themes
Holmes began his fieldwork by working alongside Triqui migrants on a farm in Washington for a summer. Next, he spent a winter in California’s Central Valley, living with an extended Triqui family of 18 people in a three-bedroom apartment. He passed the spring with his friend Samuel’s extended family in San Miguel, where he received plenty of threats and suspicion, and then crossed the border alongside nine Triqui men in the spring. After the Border Patrol arrested them, Holmes spent a month doing research in the borderlands. Finally, he returned to Washington for another summer on the farm.
Holmes deliberately lived, work, and migrated alongside the Triquis in order to understand their lives, their suffering, and the causes of that suffering. His trajectory is typical of how a migrant worker might spend their year, although not necessarily representative of how all migrant workers do. Mexican migrant workers’ lifestyle challenges common-sense ideas about home, community, and immigration—rather than moving once from a place of origin to a single destination, they live in many places and belong to a transnational community located throughout Mexico and the U.S.
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Traveling to the Border. Holmes remembers eating at dingy roadside restaurants during the bus ride to the border. His friends discuss the dangers of crossing and worry about dying or getting caught. During other breaks, the passengers scramble to use ramshackle bathrooms. They barely manage to rest on the long bus ride.
The migrants clearly understand that crossing the border will be dangerous and stressful—after all, many of them have possibly done it before. But this doesn’t affect their decision to migrate, which suggests that they aren’t making this decision based on the benefits versus risks of migration—rather, they’re doing it out of a sense of obligation.
Themes
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Suffering the Border. Holmes explains that hundreds of people die crossing the border every year. The dangers are numerous: criminals, excessive heat, snakes, heavily armed militias, and the Border Patrol. The Triqui migrants tell Holmes horror stories about getting kidnapped, raped, and worse. To truly understand their suffering, Holmes feels he needs to cross the border, which was aggressively militarized and became much more dangerous in the early 2000s. Migrants, lawyers, and relatives all emphasized the dangers of crossing, but Holmes decided that it was worth the risk.
The border’s dangers leave an enduring mark on migrants. But Holmes suggests that these dangers are totally preventable: they’re a result of the U.S.’s closed-off immigration policy. Accordingly, migrant suffering on the border demonstrates how public policy creates inequity and inflicts real, measurable pain on people. While Holmes is privileged and can choose not to cross the border, he believes that accompanying the migrants will allow him to understand and ultimately better heal suffering. This shows how anthropology is uniquely suited to fixing social problems: it starts with researchers putting themselves in other people’s shoes.
Themes
Spring in San Miguel. Holmes profiles the nine Triqui men whom he accompanies on his trip to the border. They include 29-year-old Macario, who worked with Holmes in Washington the previous year. The border splits up Macario’s family: two of his children live in California and two others live in San Miguel. Holmes struggles to find a group, because the other migrants are suspicious of him. However, it’s easy to find a bus to the border: they run weekly, all spring. Ultimately, Holmes attempts to cross under ideal circumstances: his companions are young and fit, and they know their coyotes personally. Older and non-Mexican migrants are usually less fortunate.
Holmes shows that U.S. immigration policies again force unnecessary suffering on migrants—here, they separate Macario’s family across the border. Holmes highlights the way he stands out as a privileged white man in order to emphasize how race, ethnicity, class, and citizenship determine the roles different people take at the border. He appears suspicious because he’s out of place—the implication is that white people don’t need to cross the border illegally, so it doesn’t make sense to others that he’s there unless he’s doing something illegal.
Themes
The Mexican Side of the Border. Holmes remembers disembarking the bus near the border in Altar, a scorching-hot desert town full of thieves, coyotes, and prospective migrants. In the local church, posters depict the deadly animals, extreme heat, and vicious criminals that migrants face when they cross the border and ask, “Is it worth risking your life?” Holmes is surprised that American authorities haven’t raided the town.
In addition to informing migrants about the specific dangers they face, the posters in the church reminds them that they can always turn back. However, this does not accurately reflect the attitude of the people Holmes meets: they have long ago decided to cross the border because they feel they have no other choice. Holmes’s surprise that the Americans haven’t raided Altar, which is obviously a waypoint for migrants, further suggests that U.S. immigration policy is either ineffective at or uninterested in stopping illegal immigration.
Themes
Externalization and Extraction. Holmes explains that migrant labor systems rely on migrants contributing to rich countries’ economies during their prime working years, while depending on their home countries’ social services—namely, education in their youth and healthcare in old age. This is only possible because economic policies welcome migrants into wealthy countries as a source of cheap labor, while immigration policies prevent migrants from permanently settling in those countries. These complementary policies constantly evolve, usually becoming more brutal over time.
In the context of Holmes’s research, the Mexican government educates and supports migrant workers while the U.S. benefits from their labor (including their tax dollars). To Holmes, this is yet another way that global inequity leads to exploitation: even though Mexico’s government has far fewer resources than the U.S.’s, it pays while the U.S. profits. Therefore, this inequality perpetuates itself—or even worsens—over time. According to this perspective, immigration policy is not really trying to prevent people from entering illegally; rather, it’s trying to manage that flow of entries to maximize the benefits to the U.S. Therefore, economic and immigration policies work together to exploit undocumented migrants in ways that it wouldn’t be legal to exploit legal U.S. residents.
Themes
From Border Town to Border. Holmes remembers waiting in an empty, filthy apartment in Altar. His group’s coyote lets Holmes cross for free because of his noble purposes. The apartment’s owner comes to demand money, and three recently-deported men show up in the middle of the night and wake everyone up. In the morning, the group hides their money in mayonnaise jars. Then, they crowd into a tiny, scorching hot van and take off. After three hours, they stop in the middle of the desert. The driver and coyote negotiate with some heavily armed men and then send the migrants deeper into the desert in a pickup truck. A group of Mexican soldiers aggressively questions Holmes but lets him go free.
Uncertainty, confusion, and a pervasive sense of danger define this portion of the migrants’ journey. Holmes and his companions are vulnerable and have absolutely no control over their circumstances. Of course, this is all because crossing the border is illegal, and therefore migrants have essentially no legal protections. This shows how their marginalization leads them to be put in danger and even more marginalized. In contrast, Holmes’s privilege wins him privileges: although he's likely the wealthiest among the whole group of migrants, he’s the only one who doesn’t have to pay the coyote’s fee.
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Individualism in Migration Studies. Holmes explains that most researchers view migration as an individual decision. They assume that people rationally examine the costs and benefits of migration, and they divide migrants into two groups: immigrants (who voluntarily migrate for economic reasons) and refugees (who are forced to migrate for political reasons). But this model is inaccurate. Triqui migrants cross the border for economic reasons, but they are forced to migrate to support their families—they have no other choice.
Holmes later points out that this simplistic view of migration isn’t just incorrect—it’s also dangerous, as it leads to ineffective policy responses. Namely, if policymakers assume that economic migrants are weighing costs and benefits, then they assume that it’s possible to dissuade people from migrating by reducing the benefits (or increasing the costs) of migration. However, for the Triquis, this simply isn’t true. Accordingly, the U.S. policies intended to dissuade migration—like militarizing the border—just create unnecessary suffering.
Themes
Crossing. Holmes recounts getting off the pickup truck and waiting for the coyote’s signal. His group has to pass through a dozen barbed-wire fences and run to avoid the Border Patrol. After sunset, they spend several hours marching through the pitch-black, cactus-filled desert. They briefly stop for food in a dry riverbed, and they hear a helicopter circling above, hunting for migrants like prey. After a few more hours, they reach another creek bed, where they try to sleep but soon learn that their planned ride is cancelled. When the coyote goes to look for other transport options, Border Patrol agents track him down. They approach the group with their guns drawn.
Physically crossing the border is exhausting, perilous, and full of uncertainty. The circling helicopter terrifies Holmes and his companions because it reminds them that heavily armed law enforcement officers view them as expendable and less than fully human. When the Border Patrol actually catches them at the end of this scene, it again becomes clear that public policy is responsible for the pain that Holmes and his companions have to endure.
Themes
Framing Risk on the Border. Holmes remembers the church posters that asked migrants, “Is it worth risking your life?” This question suggests that individuals freely choose to cross the border and accept the risks in exchange for the rewards. Based on this assumption, many Americans blame migrants for their deaths at the border. But in reality, Holmes’s companions knew that crossing the border was actually a way “to make life less risky” than staying at home.
Holmes shows that the church posters and U.S. migration policy are ineffective because of the faulty assumptions they’re based on: namely, the idea that individuals choose to cross the border having calculated the risks and rewards. These assumptions don’t just come from the U.S.’s cultural bias towards individualism; such assumptions are also an effective way for U.S. Americans to deny responsibility for the violence their government inflicts on migrants. In other words, the U.S. public blames the victims of violence in order to avoid stopping that violence.
Themes
Apprehended. Holmes recounts going to jail along with his Triqui companions. Confused about Holmes’s research, the Border Patrol charges him with “alien smuggling” and “Entry Without Inspection.” He’s frightened, and he’s confused that the agents spend so much time and energy harassing him instead of catching criminals. They deny him his legal right to a phone call for many hours. When he finally gets ahold of his lawyer, she reveals that he might be stuck in detention for up to a month. Distraught and exhausted, he breaks down in tears. He also sees the Border Patrol take his Triqui friends away to deport them back to Mexico.
Just like the soldiers whom Holmes met in Mexico, the Border Patrol agents don’t execute the law faithfully. Instead, they seem more interested in exerting power over others than in regulating immigration. In fact, the entire system appears needlessly cruel. As a result, the agents don’t understand or care about Holmes’s research, even though it’s addressing the same problem as their jobs.
Themes
Holmes eventually learns that he will be able to go free and pay a $5,000 fine. He files a formal complaint against the officers who denied him his phone call, but the officer who takes his complaint repeatedly reminds him that he’s the criminal. Holmes laments that officers of the law don’t see his or his companions’ humanity, and he wonders how the Triqui migrants are feeling right now.
While the police judge who’s worthy of respect and dignity based on who follows and breaks the law, Holmes and the police officer end up in a debate over who is the true criminal: Holmes, for illegally crossing the border into his own country, or the officers who denied Holmes his constitutional civil rights. This shows that rigid categories of good and evil do not stand in complex situations like illegal immigration. Because the law victimizes, marginalizes, and inflicts violence on people like the Triquis, police officers’ assumption that they’re automatically enforcing good against the forces of evil ends up being a cover for them to inflict further violence and dodge responsibility for their actions.
Themes
“Is it Worth Risking Your Life?” Holmes reiterates that crossing the border isn’t an individual economic decision—the binary of (free) economic versus (forced) political migration does not apply to people like the Triquis, who have started migrating ever since their corn crop became unprofitable. This was a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which flooded Mexican markets with cheap, subsidized, industrially produced corn from the U.S. The Triquis’ livelihood disappeared, and now they can’t afford to eat or buy school uniforms for their children in San Miguel.
Conventional thinking assumes migrants are choosing better economic opportunities over worse ones—not any economic opportunity over none at all. Accordingly, without accounting for the structural factors that force poor and marginalized people to make desperate decisions, U.S. immigration policy will never achieve its aims of regulating immigration. So just as the U.S. economy relies on the undocumented migrants whom U.S. immigration policies prevent from legally staying in the country, U.S. economic policies force people to become undocumented migrants in the first place.
Themes
Holmes argues that social scientists and health professionals must show how “social, political, and economic structures” create the conditions for migration, rather than letting the public continue to wrongly think of it as an individual decision. In fact, this mistaken mindset leads to ineffective solutions that try to change individuals’ behavior, without accounting for the conditions to which those individuals are responding.
In this section of his introduction, Holmes summarizes one of his research’s main goals. By shedding a light on structural violence, or the suffering created by “social, political, and economic structures,” he hopes to make policy conversations about immigration more effective.
Themes
After Being Released. Holmes visits a friend in Phoenix, Arizona, and then returns home to California. His Triqui friends meet him a week later and report that their second crossing was grueling. Holmes’s friend Macario explains that the Border Patrol made him sign a declaration in English about Holmes, but he couldn’t understand it.
Whereas Holmes gets to go home to the United States on a plane, the migrants have to repeat their grueling trip across the border all over again. This is striking evidence of Holmes’s privilege and reminds his readers that migrant workers endure far more grueling conditions than he does.
Themes
Book Organization. Holmes gives a brief map of his book’s structure. Chapter Two explains the importance of U.S.-Mexico migration and Holmes’s focus on the body. Chapter Three looks at the U.S. agriculture industry’s racial-ethnic hierarchy. Chapter Four looks at that hierarchy’s health effects on workers, and Chapter Five examines how health practitioners (mis)treat those workers. Chapter Six discusses the way people normalize and naturalize hierarchies and inequalities, and the concluding chapter focuses on how people can fight the exploitation of migrant workers.
Holmes structures his book in order to move gradually and systematically through his central argument about social hierarchies and violence in the U.S. agriculture, immigration, and medical systems. He starts by describing social hierarchies (in Chapter Two and Chapter Three), and then he shows how those hierarchies create structural violence (in Chapter Four and Chapter Five). Next, he explains how symbolic violence holds up those hierarchies and prevents people from dismantling them (in Chapter Six), and then he looks at how people can dismantle those hierarchies once they’re educated about structural and symbolic violence (in his conclusion).
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