“That Mexican”, an excerpt from Poppy State by Myriam Gurba
If you open a standard Spanish-to-English dictionary and look up the word “fresa,” it will likely offer strawberry as the fruit’s English equivalent.
If you open a Mexican Spanish-to-English dictionary and look up the word “fresa,” it will give you a different equivalent.
“Stuck up bitch.”
“Rich girl.”
“Middle-class brat.”
If you ask me to define “fresa,” I’ll answer that strawberries were the ushers who led us to the hill.
My father and mother taught the children of farmworkers who harvested strawberries and other crops in the Santa Maria Valley.
Like Ida Mae Blochman, my father left the classroom to become an administrator.
First, he was chosen to be the director of bilingual education for the school district.
Then, he was chosen to be the director of the Migrant Education Program.
The program’s slogan alluded to our valley’s crop yields.
“A harvest of hope…”
We moved to the house on the hill after Dad began directing the Migrant Education Program.
The job came with a raise.
When I explained my dad’s new job to my girls-only club members, I told them what he had told my brother, sister, and me.
My father had his enemies. Teachers who didn’t refer to him by name.
Dad said that it was the responsibility of every single teacher in this country to give kids a good education. He said that some teachers were assholes, that they didn’t want to give a good education to all kids. He said that these bigots discriminated against the children of migrant farm workers and that it was basically his job to force these racists to do their jobs.
My father had his enemies. Teachers who didn’t refer to him by name.
They called him “that Mexican.”
I thought of my dad as a local celebrity.
Everywhere we went former students chirped, “Hello, Mr. Gurba!”
Sometimes he had to ask their name. Once he got that, he always remembered them.
Some of Dad’s students became strawberry sharecroppers.
One of these students would climb our steep driveway lugging crates of strawberries.
Dad sheepishly accepted these gifts.
My brother and I baked pies.
During the 1980s, most of Santa Barbara County’s strawberry production took place in Santa Maria.
In 1987, Santa Maria’s strawberry production was valued at $60.8 million.
A report prepared by the California Institute for Rural Studies in 1988 found that a significant number of farmworkers in and around Santa Maria lived in “substandard housing.”
I didn’t need to read a report to know these things. I lived in Santa Maria. I saw it.
When it fully dawned on me that strawberries and racism had brought us to the house on the hill, I felt weird.
As I got older, I felt even weirder about it.
As my father climbed the administrative ranks, I became fresa, a very privileged girl.
My dad’s workaholism partially led to his success.
Though he worked hard, farmworkers work harder.
Harvesting strawberries is a labor-intensive task.
It breaks backs.
It seemed unfair to me that I should live in a big house paid for by my father’s advocacy.
Why was he receiving this money?
Couldn’t that money go directly to farmworkers?
To better understand what was happening with strawberries and wages and sharecropping and funding and school segregation in Santa Maria, I paid close attention when Dad held meetings with farmworkers and labor organizers and rural legal-defense attorneys.
I became fresa, a very privileged girl.
Books helped me too.
In our garage, I found a copy of The Communist Manifesto.
I read it.
In our garage, I found a copy of The Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
I read it.
In our garage, I found a copy of Savage Inequalities.
I read it.
These three books brought into focus what my dad was doing.
I still felt weird about our big house though.
Was I supposed to thank the strawberries for bringing me to the hill?
Naomi, the member of our girls-only club who introduced me to her dad’s pornography collection, was descended from Japanese strawberry-farmers.
Amber, the member of our girls-only club who sang “In the Pines” acapella at the school talent show, was descended from an English settler who died of a spider bite.
While the US waged war against Japan, white farmers usurped evacuated farms.
Japanese farmers brought strawberries to the Santa Maria Valley.
By the eve of the Second World War, Japanese farmers had become the primary strawberry-growers in the United States.
White farmers envied this success.
In 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, forcing people of Japanese heritage to leave their homes, caging them in internment camps.
While the US waged war against Japan, white farmers usurped evacuated farms.
Due to Executive Order 9066, white farmers are now the primary growers of American strawberries.
According to the United Farm Workers, the piece-rate earning for strawberry harvesters is $2.50 per box.
According to the Santa Barbara County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office, strawberry sales generated $775 million last year.
That’s more than enough to buy everyone who harvests this fruit a house on a hill surrounded by beguiling oaks and sleepy bees.
Excerpt taken from Poppy State: A Labyrinth of Plants and a Story of Beginnings by Myriam Gurba. Copyright © 2025
Published by Timber Press, Portland, OR. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.