Mestizo Term Analysis

The physical dirt from the labor of the indigenous pickers had become symbolically linked with their character, and at the same time the limited possibility of relationships between Shelly and the indigenous workers because of the language barriers had become symbolically projected as assumed character flaws onto the indigenous pickers themselves. In addition to bringing into relief the "de facto apartheid" on the farm, the profiles of the supervisors exemplify the range of responses to ethnic and class difference within an exploitative system.

The ethnic-labor hierarchy seen here—white and Asian American U.S. citizen, Latino U.S. citizen or resident, undocumented mestizo Mexican, undocumented indigenous Mexican—is common in much of North American farming. […] Yet this is only a small piece of the global hierarchy. The continuum of structural vulnerability can be understood as a zoom lens, moving through many such hierarchies. When the continuum is seen from farthest away, it becomes clear that the local family farm owners are relatively low on the global corporate agribusiness hierarchy. When looked at more closely, we see the hierarchy on this particular farm. addition, perceptions of ethnicity change as the zoom lens is moved in and out. As mentioned above, many of the farm executives (as well as area residents) considered all migrant farmworkers "Mexican," whereas those in closer contact with the farmworkers came to distinguish between "regular Mexicans" and "Oaxacans," and those working in the fields themselves often differentiated among mestizo, Triqui, and Mixtec people.