What started as a public health research and advocacy project on the San Joaquin Valley’s aging farmworker population evolved into an emotional new photography exhibit titled De Mis Manos a Tu Mesa — From My Hands to Your Table, currently on display at UC Merced’s Leo and Dottie Kolligian Library.
Perhaps more importantly, the project also provided direct medical and social support to the very people whose stories it sought to elevate.
“My bones can’t…the bones no longer can withstand the blows of using a tool. Sometimes they give us a shovel and we have to dig in hard terrain.”
Those are the words that accompany a portrait of a farmworker, their face wrapped in a vivid red bandana.
Slung over their shoulder is a pair of blue pruning shears, stamped with the letters “USA,” the bold hues breaking through the otherwise black-and-white frame.
That farmworker is the subject of one of 12 striking portraits taken by Claudia Gabriela Corchado, executive director of Cultiva Central Valley.
The exhibit emerged from a multiyear partnership between UC Merced’s Health Equity Research (HER) Center and Cultiva. The collaboration first began in 2020 as a pandemic response effort aimed at addressing vaccine hesitancy among farmworkers, but it quickly evolved.
“We had to activate,” Corchado said about the project. Her organization is now collaborating with the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) to ensure that the 25 participants in the research project, whose words provided captions for the photographs, receive access to food, healthcare, and social services.
Research rooted in urgency
Cultiva and the HER Center became strong partners at the brink of the COVID-19 pandemic in Merced, Corchado explained. Dr. Nancy Burke sent an email about a partnership opportunity, as her work targets the farmworker and immigrant community.
Their work expanded to include mental health, vaccine hesitancy, housing, and, more recently, the lived experiences of retired and aging farmworkers.
“The purpose of the study was to understand access to healthcare and what our medical world needs to know about the farmworker community,” Corchado told the Merced FOCUS.
Burke, a UC Merced professor and head of research at HER, said the exhibit emerged from the last of several research studies conducted in partnership with Cultiva, including studies on COVID-19 vaccine access, mental health among promotoras, and the need to recognize farmworkers as a population with specific needs.
“Our interviews with retired farmworkers highlighted their limited access to healthcare, either because of work constraints or bureaucratic constraints while working,” she said.
Other studies focused on chronic health conditions that develop over time and become prevalent after leaving the workforce, she added.
“Environmental exposures in the form of occupational injuries, extreme heat, and pesticides have lingering effects,” said Burke. “We are still analyzing data from that most recent study.”
Twenty-five in-depth, 18-question interviews were conducted with Merced County residents.
“Some people talked a lot, some people didn’t,” Corchado said.
Recruitment was entirely word-of-mouth through Cultiva’s promotoras.
“We did not step foot out of this office to recruit,” Corchado said.
The anonymous interviews provided the words that accompany photographs of equally unidentified workers.
The research team, Corchado said, was struck by the visible toll on the participants’ bodies, which bore the signs of years of labor.
“We noticed that their joints were swollen, their knuckles were abnormal, their hands were extremely swollen, and they walked with a limp because of the physical damage of having to do that kind of work,” she said. “But it’s these damaged hands that feed us the healthiest food in the world.”
Stories etched in skin
The portraits, seen through Corchado’s lens, depict only the workers’ hands. Their anonymity, she said, protects their identities while emphasizing the wear and dignity carried in their limbs.
“I think when you match the photos and the quotes, it becomes even more impactful,” Corchado said. “You can’t help but to be in their shoes and to empathize and to be mad also.”
The choice of Corchado to focus only on the workers’ worn and weathered extremities, Burke said, served two purposes.
“She protects them from identification and uses light and shadow to illustrate the beauty of skin wrinkled under the sun and hands knotted from field work,” Burke said. “On the other hand, the obfuscation of the subject serves as a cultural critique and a social critique.”
Corchado has been taking photos as a hobby for the past 10 years, using them to help friends and family capture special moments.
“This is my very first (exhibit), and my proudest,” she said. “I think this sets the bar. Anything else that I do will probably not come close to it.”
The photos were taken over two Saturdays in Cultiva’s office. Participants arrived with the instruments of their labor: shovels, clippers, gloves, and hats.
“We asked them to bring the tools that they use while they were harvesting or cultivating,” she said. “We asked them to bring their hats, their bandanas, anything that they wanted to bring. We set up a little backdrop in one of our offices and created a little photo studio. We bought some lights, and that’s all it took.”
Health impacts for farmworkers
A 2023 statewide study by UC Merced’s Community and Labor Center found that more than 40% of California farmworkers are over the age of 45, with a median age of 41. Nearly half lacked health insurance in the previous year, and among those who did, more than one in five still delayed care.
Agricultural work is considered one of the most hazardous occupations in the U.S., Burke said.
“Farmworkers are at high risk for fatalities and injuries, work-related lung diseases, noise-induced hearing loss, skin diseases, and certain cancers associated with chemical use and prolonged sun exposure,” she said. “Moreover, injuries tend to be more severe with age.”
Long-term pesticide exposure, extreme heat, and repetitive injuries contribute to lasting harm, Burke said.
Though the interviews weren’t designed to focus on pesticides, Corchado said nearly all participants brought them up on their own.
“Of the 25 that we interviewed, I think 23 of them mentioned pesticides,” she said. “My father struggles with Parkinson’s. He worked in Ag, and there were pesticides being sprayed that are linked to it.”
Kesia Garibay, who assisted the research team while completing her doctorate under Burke, helped craft and translate the interview questions. She met weekly with Corchado to review the transcripts and extract data.
“My dissertation was really a tribute to the amazing work that Cultiva has done,” said Garibay, now an associate professor at the University of the Pacific in Stockton.
“Throughout this whole summer, we were analyzing the interviews that were conducted, and it’s been an amazing journey where we were able to really learn about the experience of what was going on,” she said.
Once the exhibit concludes its run at UC Merced at the end of the semester, Corchado hopes to take it to the Merced Multicultural Arts Center and beyond.
“When you see the photos and you read the quotes, I hope you feel what we felt,” she said. “Let’s give our farmworker community the honor, the dignity, the resources that they too need for feeding us the healthiest food in the world. It would be great if every university in California would display it.”
