THE AG WORKERS’ DAUGHTER By Cece Meadows (Xicana, Yoeme)

Fresh strawberries, crispy lettuce, humongous artichokes, tasty broccolini, picked and boxed by the hands of our mothers, fathers, grandparents, tías and tíos. Working in the hot scorching sun, picking your food for pennies on the dollar, trying to hit that daily quota or they won’t get paid. Eating and rehydrating, resting for just a moment will cost them the day.

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Xicanos, Indigenous people, called cheap laborers and ilegales, working the lands of our ancestors on farms that once belonged to us. Don’t they get tired of making up names for us? We are the never-respected peoples who work hard to provide for their familias, only innocents whom they rob and mistreat. Disposable bodies who endure the deadly heat and violent rays. Stolen braceros who return to our homelands in Mexica, empty-handed, robbed, and owed millions.

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Raising and protecting my youngest siblings, trying to shield them from the bullets flying through our windows. Mis papás missing special occasions, school events, championships, and awards assemblies, la corrida keeps them enslaved for dreams of our better opportunities. It never made me mad, just sad they never got to see me accept awards and achieve accolades I dedicated to them each and every time.

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The “golden child,” they call me, the one who makes it out. The interpreter, the educated one, the loudmouth screaming for justicia, fairness, and land back! I’ve worn the fancy black business suits, sat in their corporate boardrooms, learning their lingo and the truth to how they built generational wealth—and this country—on the backs of my ancestors.

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So, I walk in my destiny, on the prayers and orgullo de mi familia, soaking up knowledge, creating connections with allies, and bonding with like-minded friends who become relatives. Hustlers, hard workers, never waiting for things to be handed to us. Rooted in cultura, música, danza, y ceremonia. Somos semillas, the ample harvest, a blessing of a new sunrise, the most beautiful flowers that bloom.

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I am proudly the ag workers’ daughter.