‘Breaking the language barrier’:
How I plan to help California’s indigenous communities stay informed
Reliable, accurate news was not part of my childhood, so it feels improbable that I chose journalism as a career path. Local or national media wasn’t trying to serve people like me and my family.
I am a first generation immigrant from Mexico. My mother and I moved to California in the early 2000s when I was eight years old.
Our early days in the country were simply about survival. She worked in the fields and factories of Salinas. Any money she earned, paid for the rooms we rented, laundromat fees, food, and occasionally, toys for me.
My language barrier made school a nightmare. Sitting in class, I had little idea what was going on. My saving grace was the other students who also spoke Spanish.
What led me to journalism were the injustices I saw growing up in my community, many stemming from racial inequalities and disparities. I wanted to document them for my community and people going through similar experiences.
Now I’m an award-winning photojournalist, and reporter at The Californian in Salinas, who uses a solution-based journalism approach to build community.
I am also a 2022 John S. Knight Community Impact Fellow at Stanford University. Through my fellowship, I have the opportunity to explore ways to help people who face language barriers like I did. In particular, I want to help the indigenous Latino community living in central California.
Their language barrier is unique. Because they are from Mexico, people assume they speak Spanish. In fact, it’s more likely they speak one of 60 indigenous languages native to Mexico, each with many dialects. In central California, indigenous Mexicans primarily speak Triqui, Zapoteco or Mixteco.
While exploring ways to get information to these communities, audio has emerged as a potential format for information delivery. Because people who speak indigenous languages can’t always read them. I’ve also learned they tend to have good cell phone access and use their phones to share information.
As I pursue this work, I can’t help but think of the Salvadors, an indigenous Mixtec family I met in 2020 while working on my Catchlight project. Catchlight is a Bay Area photography nonprofit that supports photographers by creating visual ecosystems in different organizations. While reporting on the Salvadors, the flashbacks to my own childhood were nonstop.
The family of six was sharing a two-bedroom apartment in east Salinas. The father of the family, Meliton Salvador, was the primary earner who worked in a mushroom factory earning $14 an hour. The stepmother Costanza, who was pregnant, stayed home to care for their three sons: Aldo, 11, Hugo, 7, and Jesus, 3. Their oldest child, Resi, was 19 and enrolled in California State University, Monterey Bay.
One day in early March of 2020, Meliton was on his way home from work when he made his routine stop at a local food bank. He noticed how the lines were longer than usual. Around the same time, the family visited the grocery store only to see aisles of empty shelves.
This was how the Salvadors first learned about the global Coronavirus pandemic.
The family didn’t fully grasp the severity of COVID-19 until Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a stay-at-home order in mid March of 2020, two weeks after California proclaimed an emergency.
As the pandemic progressed, it became apparent that Latinos were suffering the most. According to the U.S. Census, they make up about 60% of the population in Monterey County, where Salinas is located.
It was well documented by the Monterey County Health Department that agricultural workers, who are 96% Latino, according to the National Council of La Raza, were at an elevated risk for contracting COVID-19.
As of early this year, the agriculture sector accounted for 6.45% of the total positive cases in Monterey County; the highest of all occupations. Before vaccines were made available, it was over 20% of total positive cases in the county.
In my time spent with the Salvadors and other Latino families, during the height of the pandemic, several obvious disparities surfaced that likely contributed to their vulnerability to the virus. Those include food insecurity, overcrowded housing, language and wifi barriers to education, and workplace hazards.
In 2010, the groundbreaking Indigenous Farmworker Study (IFS) described indigenous farmworkers as “the most recent of many groups to enter the bottom rung of the labor market.” On average, they are poorer, less educated, and have higher infant mortality rates than first language Spanish-speaking Mexicans who do not identify themselves as indigenous, according to the study.
Despite being generally the most disadvantaged, indigenous Mexicans have managed to migrate to the U.S. to find work in California’s agricultural sector. After extensive research, the IFS conservatively estimated that between 2004 and 2008 there were 87,346–153,997 indigenous Mexican farmworkers living in California.
More needs to be done for these indigenous people that play an integral role in putting food on the table of millions of Americans.
There are community groups trying to help. Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indígena Oaxaqueño (CBDIO) promotes health and education to the indigenous communities in central California.They provide information in their respective languages. Also the Alisal Family Resource Center which provides legal, education and health services in Mixtec.
These groups have developed trust within these communities where fear and mistrust rules. The indigenous Mexicans face discrimination by other members of the Latino community because of their language barrier. Also, the lack of resources and distrust of the government makes them vulnerable to misinformation regarding their health and education.
So I am working with these organizations and other members of the community as I develop an online information hub. It will have audio clips in Mixteco, Triqui, and Zapoteco. They’ll be of narrative, local news stories about the indigenous community and people helping this specific community in central California
Living in California for 20 years, and learning the power of education, I see the value of this community having a reliable, accessible information hub in their own languages. That way if another global pandemic occurs, they can be better prepared rather than getting information when it’s too late.
