Migrant Workers’ Lives Are Uprooted by Storm

Usually Robert Torres would be in the fields now, preparing the flat, marly ground for young tomato plants set in rows that run straight into the horizon. But not this year. Not after Hurricane Andrew. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe all this,” Torres, 35, said Monday. A big man, Torres was sitting in a folding chair under a beach umbrella stuck in the lawn of his brother’s wind-racked house in the Everglades Labor Camp, about five miles south of here.

Read the article Migrant Workers’ Lives Uprooted

Share

Similar Posts

  • Donor Aids Victims of Storm

    After Hurricane Wilma hit last fall, Marlene Brody repaired her storm-damaged seawall and returned to life as a snowbird, shuttling between her upstate New York horse farm and winter home in North Bay Village. But then Brody heard a radio news report that made her realize recovery had not been as easy for everyone. Read…

  • Migrant, Not Homeless

    “Everglades Village is a much larger planned community than you would find in a typical tax-credit project or USDA-funded project,” says Steve Kirk, ECA’s executive Director, “Our Planning process was to build more of a self-contained community. Read the article Planning Magazine:  Migrant Not Homeless

  • Nonprofit Group to Take Control of Labor Camp

    Metro commissioners have agreed to turn the reins of the financially troubled Everglades Migrant Labor Camp over to a 15- member nonprofit corporation controlled by farmworkers. The management plan accepted last week was a blend of proposals forwarded by rival camp factions who recently have smoothed out their differences. Read the article Nonprofit Group to…

  • Hurricane Andrew: 10 Years Later

    Ten years ago, hundreds of migrants who harvested Homestead’s winter vegetables lived in dilapidated trailers at the Everglades Labor Camp near Naranja. The camp was set up in 1974 with 400 mobile homes provided by the U.S. Labor Department.[Steven Kirk]’s nonprofit association has spent the past 10 years using more than $40-million in local, state…

  • The Migrants: Everglades Labor Camp in Turmoil

    Just before Thanksgiving 1982, Donato Garcia burst into Trailer 3-6 at Everglades Migrant Labor Camp, joyous with news of “the elections” that would at last bring power to the farmworker. His wife Matilda remained silent — gazing at the unpaid rent bill and the barren refrigerator. “Please, Donato,” she remembers saying. “Don’t get into it….