Research Guides: U.S. Farmworker Awareness: Video Resources

Online

TODAY: 'Message of Opportunity': The Significance of Cesar Chavez and his Legacy
Cesar Chavez was a trailblazer in his ability to organize strikes and bring communities together. As Hispanic Heritage Month comes to a close, NBC’s Guad Venegas talks to Chavez’s son during an exclusive tour of Chavez’s office to learn how his legacy lives on today.
TEDx Talks: Finding Cesar Chavez: A Transformative Moment
Jose Calderon is Professor Emeritus in Sociology and Chicano Studies at Pitzer College. As the son of immigrant farm workers from Mexico, he has had a long history of connecting his academic work with community organizing, student-based service learning, participatory action research, critical pedagogy, and multi-ethnic coalition building. In his TEDx talk, he tells his story about how Cesar Chavez gave him a moment that changed his life.
NBC News 'American Identity' Labor Leader Dolores Huerta on Coining Iconic Phrase "Sí Se Puede"
Labor leader Dolores Huerta explores what "American Identity" means to her, including the internal struggle between her Mexican-American and indigenous roots. She also discusses her decades-long fight for farmworkers’ rights. NBC News NOW correspondent Simone Boyce joins Dolores as she traces her family history 300 years back. Sponsored by Ancestry.
ABC10: How Dolores Huerta continues to fight for social Justice
Labor leader Dolores Huerta devoted her life to fighting for farmworkers' rights. Now, she pursues social justice through the Dolores Huerta Foundation.

Documentaries

60 Minutes: Children in the Field
- Byron Pitts reports on the legal but controversial practice of employing children to work on America's fields.
A Skill for Molina
- This film, by Kent Mackenzie, is about a farmworker who through a government education program trains for a job as a welder.
Food Chains
- There is more interest in food these days than ever, yet there is very little interest in the hands that pick it. Farmworkers, the foundation of our fresh food industry, are routinely abused and robbed of wages. In extreme cases they can be beaten, sexually harassed or even enslaved - all within the borders of the United States. Food Chains reveals the human cost in our food supply and the complicity of large buyers of produce like fast food and supermarkets.
Rape in the Fields
- The Hidden Story of Rape on the Job in America For the women who pick and process the food we eat every day, getting sexually assaulted, and even raped, is sometimes part of the job. FRONTLINE and Univision partner to tell the story of the hidden price many migrant women working in America's fields and packing plants pay to stay employed and provide for their families. This investigation is the result of a yearlong reporting effort by veteran FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman, the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley, and the Center for Investigative Reporting. This program includes material that may not be appropriate for younger viewers. Viewer discretion is advised.
Immokalee U.S.A.
- Utilizing largely ethnographic and observational approaches to documentary filmmaking, IMMOKALEE U.S.A. chronicles the daily experiences of migrant farmworkers living and working in the U.S.A.
... And the Earth Did Not Swallow Him
- The film is an adaptation of the prize-winning novel, '...y no se lo tragó la tierra' by Tomas Rivera. Set in 1952, and seen through the eyes of Marcos, a twelve-year-old boy, the story follows a family's migrant journey through a year in their lives.
Autumn's Harvest
- HIV isn’t just infecting the poor and socially marginalized in faraway places. It’s happening right here in our own backyard. To the people who help put food on our tables. In fact, the rate of infection among migrant workers appears to be at least 10 and perhaps 20 times that of the national average. Autumn’s Harvest takes an unflinching look at how HIV has found fertile ground in the often-overlooked migrant community. The story is told through the experience of Douglas, an African American migrant worker who was diagnosed with AIDS in the mid ‘90s. Autumn’s Harvest compels us to reflect on and respect where our food comes from. And even more important, from whom.
Voices of the Fields
- This documentary follows farmworkers from California's Salinas Valley back to their roots in the fields of rural Mexico, where they recount their everyday struggle to cope in the midst of the globalization of agriculture and the impact of NAFTA. Despite health hazards, environmental degradation and the risks of migration, they have managed to provide for their families and to conserve their traditional practices and values. The video also examines rural development projects that work with farmers to develop an agriculture based on people, not profits, a sustainable model which offers solutions to the export-oriented mode of industrial agriculture that threatens the existence of small farmers and human-scale agriculture.