By: Bryan Rodriguez

Juanita Alvarez, 29, wakes up early to pick strawberries, blackberries and tomatoes in the back yard of her Springfield home.She spends the rest of her morning tending to her garden, feeding her 8-month-old son, and packaging organic fruits and vegetables from her garden to sell to low-income Latinos in the Springfield area. It’s not that different from how she spent her time as a 7-year-old, when she first immigrated to the United States from Mexico.

During the blistering summer of 1995, Alvarez arrived in Ventura, California, with her family. Upon arrival, they were put into the strawberry and grape fields ; where they worked like slaves under harsh conditions. “We were out there in the heat with little water, no shade, and little pay. We had to work because there was nowhere else for us to go,” she exclaimed. She remembers how farm owners would abuse and exploit the immigrants, then threaten to expose them to the Department of Homeland Security if they dared to disrespect their authority. What made matters worse was when Alvarez’s father, Raul, was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2008. The family believes it was due to all the pesticides that the farmers sprayed on the crops. They lived near the fields where they worked, and she recalls that wind often blew a cloud of carcinogenic chemicals over the housing complex they shared with many other immigrant families. Lack of nutritionally dense foods led to her mother’s diagnosis of type II diabetes when Juanita was a teen. At 26 years of age, Alvarez realized she was on the same path as her mom—overweight and pre-diabetic. The shift in her thinking that resulted from her recognizing the unhealthy lifestyle compelled her to travel down a different path. She is now dedicated to growing clean, organic foods in her garden to improve the her own life, the lives of her family, and the lives of other Latinos in the area. “I needed to change my lifestyle, for me and my family,” Alvarez said. “Latinos struggle in getting nutritionally dense foods because they are expensive and harder to obtain. Market of Choice and Whole Foods are miles away, in Eugene”.

Alvarez believes it is her mission to provide Latino families with affordable organic fruits and vegetables in her Springfield neighborhood. To educate the local Latin-American population about healthy food choices, she hosts seminars on how to grow and manage organic and pesticide-free gardens. She hopes that one day people become aware of the injustices and exploitation immigrant farm workers face at the hands of large agricultural corporations. But for now, she is doing her part to make their lives better.