How is Colorado’s new farmworkers’ rights bill being received by migrant farmworkers? With a shrug – By Nancy Lofholm (Colorado Sun) / July 25 2021
In fields hours away from the political pressure cooker of the Colorado legislature, Senate Bill 87 is stoking a different kind of debate.
OLATHE — Erasmo Cano downs a bottled drink and dumps the dregs of packaged cookies into his mouth before he climbs out of the van where he and his coworkers have been taking a 15-minute shade break. It was a brief escape from pulling weeds in a 14-acre field where his crew has been toiling since 5:30 this morning. They have more than an hour to go in a 10-hour shift of chopping and pulling a thick scrum of weeds growing around spiky onion tops.
Hoes glint in the sun as they pick up where they left off and make their way down the furrowed lines moving silently to the thump of mariachi music from a portable stereo. The workers are draped in hoodies, bandanas, hats, gloves and long pants — their cover from the relentless sun.
Cano has no complaints.
“Me gusta trabajar,” he says. “I like to work.”
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