It’s easy to identify the residences of the farm workers who tend crops in the San Joaquin Valley, one of California’s agricultural hubs. They tend to be small homes. Sometimes, location is a giveaway – a trailer set between a dust-choked highway and groves of pistachio trees. Sometimes, the tell is water.
“I see the difference between the green yards in east Fresno [a city in California] and the yellow yards in west Fresno,” said Leticia Compañ. The farm equipment operator is referring to the divide between the tonier, whiter part of the city on one side of Route 41 and the largely Latino, lower-income population on the other, where she lives with her family.
