So, my Pinoy neighbors who are PhD students for Plant and Soil Science invited me to go to Texas Tech’s farms at the next city of New Deal, Texas. We were supposed to collect samples of Cotton shrubs to be documented at their laboratory.
it was Sunday morning at 830am when we left Lubbock. i hitched a ride with them. when we got there, i was given gloves and clippers to cut the cotton plants at the base and stuff them carefuflly into canvas bags. all in all, i walked just 2km. which is less than my usual walk. however, i did not have to bend down and cut plants and rip the weeds out as well. so i ended up pretty sweaty.
i agreed to do this because (1) once my Fulbright grant runs out (all of us have just two years), i would need to work on summers. the American system of utilizing hampas lupa graduate students is a problem pegged on labor exploitation. we graduate students who are traching assistants do not get salaries for three months of the year. ergo, we need to look for other jobs. since i am an international student, i cannot work outside the university. since i am both an international student and a school of art student, work availability for me is severely limited. so, why not try out working at a farm hoeing and collecting samples.
(2) my proposed dissertation is about Filipino migrant farm laborers in the West Coast during the early 20th century. i’d like to experience a tiny glimpse of the hardship of their labors. and given that the Philippines has a violent strings of narratives pertaining to land rights, this is my way of getting close to the issue. i can hear what some of my activist friends are thinking that this is a feeble attempt and not even close to the Philippine experience. i agree with them, but this is my decision to process information and i am in a position of severe disadvantage here. i am not one of those activists that went up the mountain and then come down for the occasional foot spa. If i did this in the Philippines, my privileges are still in full display. here? i am nobody. worse, less than nobody....an outsider who can be easily shot because i would be mistaken for an illegal.
(3) agriculture and farm workers made America and made the Philippines. my study on the Philippine figure in Editorial Cartoons is Juan dela Cruz. he is a farmer. and today was the longest time i spent in my adult life crouching over soil and pulling out weeds and collecting samples. this is STILL a fairly EASIER job compared to farm workers all over the world, but it gives me a different point of view that i do not want to assume anymore. i need to live it, even for just a bit.
(4) it is interesting that the plot assigned to us is cotton given the bloody history of this white object collected by blacks for white landowners. we were discussing after our work how come the black slaves did not rise against the white plantation owners. i am sure there have been uprisings but you have to remember that the slavery of the American south is fed by religion. the most conservative and religious parts of America are in the south. it was religion that programmed the black slaves since birth to make them feel inadequate and only labor can be their salvation. that labor, suffering, is part of their purification process under the auspices of the white slave owners who usually facilitate and administer the religious needs of their property. it must be said, too, that religion is a source of many a slave’s emancipation and assertion of their rights.
it was just a strange feeling to have the weight of history, racialized differences, and violence as i stood there in the middle of the cotton fields to be reminded of the struggles that are still present and manifested now in mass gun violence against people of color in America hounding the news now.
