Kerman woman turns 4,000 tamales into $10,000 donation to families of dead farmworkers
Martha Alvarado worked in the fields when she arrived in Kerman in 2022.
She traveled the rural roads to get to the fields to pick melons or whatever crop needed picking. She would get home with dust from the fields on her shoes, her fingernails, her face.
It is difficult work, said Alvarado, who also worked making cheese for Márquez Brothers.
“That is the life of a farmworker,” said Alvarado.
The 52-year-old entrepreneur – she once owned Cocina La Jarocha restaurant in Biola for several years and is gathering up money to launch a food cart business – said her heart remains with the farmworkers.
That is why she rounded up 20 volunteers to make 4,000 tamales made of banana leaves to raise funds for the victims of the Feb. 23 crash in Madera County that claimed the lives of seven farmworkers and left another one injured.
They were heading west on two-lane Avenue 7 near Road 22 to their work at Lyon’s Farm near Firebaugh when a pickup truck veered into their lane at about 6:30 a.m.
The tamales generated $10,410 that was split equally for the eight families (that included the survivor) involved in the accident. All ingredients, from the banana leaves to the masa to the meat filling, were donated, said Alvarado.
Alvarado said some of the victims were regular customers who would show up at her home as early as 5 a.m. to purchase the banana leaf tamales and champurrado (a corn-based hot drink with chocolate).
Alvarado wasn’t alone in initiating fundraisers to help the families with burial costs and other expenses that were no longer supported by a paycheck. All seven of the farmworkers who died were flown to their Mexican homeland.
There was a concert in Kerman that Los Ángeles radio DJ Renán ‘El Cucuy de la Mañana’ Armendáriz helped organize; a Mexican rodeo in Madera; a basketball tournament; food sales in Fresno, Kerman, Madera, and Winton; Reade & Sons Funeral Home set up donation boxes at area businesses; and, an engagement ring was raffled.
Alvarado would have preferred that such fundraisers never happen whenever a farmworker dies on the way to or from the fields, or at the workplace. She and others believe a system should be in place where the multi-billion dollar agriculture industry or a government body step up to help.
Fresno City Councilmember Luis Chávez, who helped facilitate a March 17 fundraiser at Mosqueda Community Center, agrees. The event, which was organized by the Fresno Food Vendor Association and included performances by five bands, raised more than $4,000.
He said fundraising efforts were spearheaded by the poor.
“They’ve always been really humble, and they don’t have a lot but they wanted to help,” he said of the vendors association.
Chávez said a safety net should be set up, either by agriculture, the state or the county, to help farmworkers who are laid off and don’t qualify for unemployment or other support services.
Among those helping out at the Mosqueda Center fundraiser was Carmen Flores, a food vendor association member who works at Valley Children’s Hospital but sells snacks and drinks from a food cart to help her son who is attending college on the East Coast.
“We are showing that we are not alone,” said Flores. “If you need help, we’ll be there.”
Farmworkers give to the economy, not take from it, she said. “We have to erase the assumption that we don’t contribute.”
Fresno Food Vendor Association co-president Miguel López, who is from the Mixteca region in the southwestern Mexican state of Oaxaca, said it is important to support farmworkers.
“They went out to work and did not return home. I think that we are all exposed to something like that, to danger,” said López. “We leave our house but we don’t know if we are going to return and well one feels sad because we just come to work and it is an accident because anyone can have an accident.
“And, we feel sad because they are countrymen, they are human beings. They came like us to work, to fight for their families and it is a way to support their families.”
