Seth Holmes, M.D./PhD ,UCSF Medical Anthropology Program
Family Medicine Rotation at Natividad Medical Center
Speaks On: Border Violence, Injuries & Sickness During His Two Years Living with Oaxacan Farm Workers

As an undergraduate student at the University of Washington, Seattle, Seth Holmes volunteered at facilities in North Carolina and Washington State that served migrant workers adding a doctorate in medical anthropology to his medical degree, enabling him to treat disease and highlight the politics and economics that created disease. By spending time in the Mexican community of indigenous Oaxacans known as the Triqui, and traveling with them to the California and Washington fields where they work, he observed the impact of political and economic policies, as well as verbal abuse and prejudice, on their individual lives and that of their community.

In 1994, NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) was signed & almost overnight, price supports on Mexican corn evaporated and the US hiked corn subsidies by 300 percent. Corporate production of mostly genetically modified corn flooded the Mexican market and suddenly there was little market for the organically grown blue-black corn of San Martin. Indigenous farmers could no longer raise money to buy salt or school uniforms, pay for electricity so the kids could do homework, or buy concrete to build a toilet. If they wanted to hold onto their homes, they had to leave risking death or kidnapping to come to the United States, work in miserable conditions to save a few thousand dollars and go home. “A recent New York Times article reported that undocumented workers pump much more money into the economy than they take out. Migrant laborers are largely hidden from society, written off by most Americans as unimportant or even dangerous”, he says.

As evaporating sources of income force more of them to journey north, where more than 1,000 people a year die in the increasingly hazardous border crossing, Dr. Holmes watched them settle for the worst and most dangerous jobs, suffering abuse and denigration not only from the general population, but from co-workers and supervisors. He joined the workers in the fields to pick seven days a week starting at 5 a.m for two years and was able to document the damage to their physical and mental health. A Washington State native, exposed to the plight of the disadvantaged early in life when his family went to the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, next to Oaxaca, to work in an orphanage, he played with the children, learned the language and was never again able to look at poor Mexicans as "the other."

“We Come Here to Give Away Our Strength” a free presentation by Dr. Holmes
Thursday, June 15th from 6-8 p.m. at Chapalas Restaurant in Salinas, 438 Salinas Street
$20.00 charge for dinner.
For more information, please call the Natividad Residency office at 755-4383.
Dr. Homes can be reached at seth.holmes@ucsf.edu.