Adam Perez and his sister Mari Perez-Ruiz grew up helping their parents work in the fields, something they never forgot as they went to college and began careers.
Perez became a photojournalist, documenting stories about Hurricane Sandy, undocumented aging farmworkers, and the water crisis in East Porterville for such news outlets as Time Magazine and the New York Times.
Perez-Ruiz worked as a program organizer and manager in the Bay Area but decided to return to Tulare County “because if transformative change is going to happen for rural communities, then it needs to come from us.”
She co-founded the Central Valley Empowerment Alliance (CVEA) with long-time community activist Arturo Rodriguez in 2019.
Based in Poplar, west of Porterville, CVEA works with rural communities to access affordable housing, quality education, food and health care.
To honor the diverse farmworker art and culture, the two siblings and many community volunteers are putting together “Tierra Mia (My Land) Festival” on July 27 in Poplar.
“It’s an art show, concert, crafts market and outreach all mixed into one,” Perez said.
There will be a Yokut blessing, Catrina Divinia from Bakersfield will show her catrinas, artists will create a mural, and there will even be a horse trained to dance. Also included are health screenings, food distribution, immigration services and pesticide clinics, plus activities for children and a loteria (a classic Mexican game).
The park will be covered with large canopies that have air conditioning.
The festival is designed for farm working families, but Perez hopes others will attend to learn more about the communities that strive to exist so near larger towns.
Diverse cultures
The festival will be a soft opening for the new Nagi Daifallah Unity Park, which CVEA is creating in Poplar.
Daifallah, a Yemini immigrant, was a leader with the United Farm Workers who was killed during the 1973 grape strike.
The festival aims to spotlight the diversity of cultures in the farmworker community. Participating with be Filipinos, Yemeni, indigenous Mexican and Central Americans and Native Americans
Perez says it’s important that the cultures and talents of the Central Valley become known. He will show some of his photography exhibits at the festival.
“These stories get published on a website and sit there. The people in the stories are not seeing it,” he said.
“Stories about farm workers show their faces covered to protect them at work. I also want to show moments of joy.”
After his photos in “The Town without Water” about East Porterville’s water crisis ran in Time Magazine, improvements began there.
“That was the first time I realized these stories could implement change,” Perez said. “It was a big turning point for me. I felt I had a responsibility to keep telling these stories.”
A celebration
Much of Perez’s photography has been about the Central Valley.
“During the pandemic, our farmworker communities, despite being deemed ‘essential,’ were living in crisis. They were living without water, living in cars. I wanted to bring this work back to farm working communities who were at the center of my stories,” he said.
He applied for a California Arts Grant with CVEA to create the Tierra Mia Festival that celebrates these communities that are hidden away, despite producing much of the produce for the world.
“There is much resilience, wisdom and joy that is sowed in our rural farm communities that I believe is important to celebrate.”
Perez has collaborated with CVEA before. Last year he developed a free photography fellowship program to empower youth through storytelling. They created 15 billboards that were displayed along local highways.
Why in Poplar?
Poplar was defined as one of the rural and unincorporated communities “with no future” in the 1970-2023 Tulare County Housing report, meaning that there has been little investment to improve drinking water, sewer, transportation and housing.
Also, Poplar had a major influence on the UFW. Labor leader Dolores Huerta came and spoke about organizing farm workers for better conditions. Although his name is largely unknown, it was Filipino American farmworker Larry Itliong from Poplar who started the Delano grape strike and invited Cesar Chavez to participate.
When Mari Perez-Ruiz decided to come home and help rural communities, she was advised to work with Arturo Rodriguez, who had been advocating in Poplar for years.
“We wanted our organization to be different,” said Perez-Ruiz. “We wanted to go to the root of the problem.”
The CVEA was organized on a community development model which said those directly impacted are the experts in finding solutions and to never do for others what they can do for themselves.
The alliance has opened the Larry Itliong Resource Center, provided health screenings, created youth programs, found people jobs and is building an 80 single-family complex of homes in Poplar.
Perez hopes to make Tierra Mia an annual event and to create a collective to work on issues facing rural communities.
How to attend
- What: Tierra Mia Festival
- When: Saturday, July 27
- Where: Nagi Daifallah Unity Park, 14656 Road 192 in Poplar
This article originally appeared on Visalia Times-Delta: Tierra Mia Festival celebrates multicultural farm workers in Tulare County
Most Popular
Comments / 0