The Farmworkers' Journey: a book talk by author Ann Aurelia López

López discusses her award-winning book, which exposes the human impact of NAFTA on migrant farmworkers from Mexico to California in a rare insider's view.

The Farmworker's Journey illuminates the dark side of economic globalization, revealing the harsh realities of life along the migrant farmworkers' binational circuit that stretches from the west central Mexico countryside to central California. Over the course of ten years, Ann Aurelia López conducted a series of intimate interviews with farmworkers and their families along the migrant circuit. She deftly weaves their voices together with up-to-date research to portray a world hidden from most Americans-a world of inescapable poverty that has worsened considerably since NAFTA was implemented in 1994. López contends that today it has become nearly impossible for rural communities in Mexico to continue to farm the land sustainably, leaving few survival options except the perilous border crossing to the United States.

Dr. López, a Research Associate with the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is in the process of establishing a non-profit organization designed to improve the lives of California farmworkers and their families in Mexico.