2019

The Story

The project provides a rarely-seen perspective on Canada’s migrant worker program, told from the vantage point of spouses and children left behind in Mexico. It will ask whether a program that supposedly empowers families is in fact sometimes destroying them.

The Journalists

Sara Mojtehedzadeh is a labour reporter for the Toronto Star, and Melissa Renwick is an independent documentary photographer.

The Reporting

The 2019 Fellowship winners wanted to look at the lives of the vulnerable immigrant workers in Canada. But they reversed the lens – by telling the story from the point of view of the worker’s spouses and families that have been left behind in Mexico. They wanted to look at the human cost – invisible to many Canadians – of families living apart for a considerable part of their lives in order to put food on the table.

Note: Those with a subscription to the Toronto Star will be able to see the three reports – Bitter Harvest – via the Star’s website.

Those without a subscription to the Toronto Star can view the reports via the links below

Bitter Harvest – Part 1

Bitter Harvest – Part 2

Bitter Harvest – Part 3

Please note that these files are for personal viewing only. Any reproduction requires permission from The Toronto Star

The Reporter’s Notebook

 Reynaldo Garcia’s rectangular kitchen is jumbled with pots and pans that serve three generations of family members. And for three generations, the men here have left their placid farmland, their wives, and their children to be migrant labourers in someone elses’ fields.

 As journalists, we were welcomed into Reynaldo’s home. We were fed to the brim, plied with sweets, introduced to every family pet, and even (in Melissa’s case) put to work harvesting corn. We couldn’t have found a warmer, gentler, more open group of people.  

 But as we sat around the table explaining what we were doing there, we were met by blank stares. Reynaldo, who has travelled north as a migrant worker for almost two decades, seemed genuinely perplexed. 

“Why are Canadians interested in us?” he asked. “They just think we’re animals.”

 I felt my stomach drop. 

 I’ve spent several years reporting on the lives of migrant workers in Ontario. I thought I was well-equipped to understand the challenges they face in speaking out. Fear of reprisal. Fear of losing much-needed income. Distrust of journalists.

All the while, I had missed something more fundamental: a belief that no one cared. 

It made perfect sense. In his 18 years in Canada, Reynaldo and his brothers had been publicly mocked, harassed, and called names. And in a big picture coloured by racism, there were smaller indignities that stung. 

Once, Reynaldo recalled, his Canadian employer had a large party on the farm. A bunkhouse full of migrant workers, separated from their loved ones and with almost no outlet for leisure, were within eyeshot of the festivities. They were not invited.

 If the roles had been reversed, Reynaldo said, his family would have been mortified to exclude guests in their country. 

Another time, Reynaldo and his brother decided to go fishing in the stream behind their bunkhouse. The catch would be a treat, since their grocery store hauls tended toward cheap bulk buys. A Canadian neighbour saw them, and called the police. They were written up for fishing without a permit. 

All we wanted, Reynaldo said, was something fresh to eat. 

We could not have told stories like these without our fixer Aaraon Diaz Mendiburo, a journalist and academic who has spent years working with migrant communities in Mexico. His dedication, empathy, and warmth has earned him a huge amount of respect in these communities; doors literally fly open to meet him. Many of our interviewees had experienced enormous trauma -- sometimes in their personal lives in the form of sexual violence, and sometimes in their workplaces in Canada. We wanted to put respect for those sensitivities at the heart of our approach, and Aaraon guided us through often heart-breaking interviews with integrity. 

The soul of our story was Blanca, a widow whose husband had died mid-way through a season in Canada under mysterious circumstances. Sitting with Blanca and sharing our findings was one of the most challenging experiences of my journalistic career. As reporters, we are rightly taught to always put professionalism and fairness first. We are often less prepared for how to navigate tragedy -- in terms of taking care of ourselves, but most importantly, our interviewees. We are hugely indebted both to Aaraon and to Sonia Aviles, who worked with us in Ontario, for providing additional support to Blanca. 

But most of all, we are indebted to Blanca herself for her enormous strength, courage, and resilience. Even as our reporting re-opened old and incredibly painful wounds, Blanca showed grace and humour. She delighted in telling acquaintances about Melissa dashing into a cloud of smoke with her camera snapping pictures as the family burned brush to make room for crops, and in teasing Aaraon about his notorious love of pastries. (She also insisted on purchasing vast quantities of them for us).

Living with migrant families allowed us to wrestle with the complex forces driving migration. Blanca’s home was no exception. Drug violence is woven into the backdrop of our story -- just one factor in the many that pushes families apart. Blanca’s town was the third we had visited, and we had started to grow used to seeing tanks rumble through the streets on patrol. Local residents told us they saw their presence as reassuring, and we had never felt unsafe reporting. But as we drove down a steep hill into Blanca’s village, both Melissa and I were struck with the same gut feeling: something was off. We later learned that there had been a recent uptick in local violence, culminating with gun fights in the streets. Somehow, the unease hung in the air like a fine mist.  

Although the migrant worker program is presented as a choice for workers to earn a better living, choices are not made in a vacuum. They are shaped by geopolitics, and built on sacrifices that many of us can’t imagine.  One worker we interviewed, for example, was a former soldier in Sinaloa state, home to one of the most powerful drug cartels in the world. He left the army with PTSD symptoms, and became a migrant worker instead. These were the choices we heard families confronted time and time again. Many workers we met took the leap with little information or preparation, in the hopes that it would pay off.

We met one such worker at the Mexican Ministry of Labour. Ambrosio was indigenous man whose first language was Nahuatl. It was his first year coming to Canada. As a young man, Ambrosio had fled a difficult home life in rural Mexico to find work in the capital city. He had struggled with substance abuse, but had righted himself, married the love of his life, and had a family. He hoped to provide a better future for his children.  We watched him pour over the paperwork government officials had given him to sign at the ministry; he later told us he had no clue what they said. He boarded his first ever plane with a small gym bag having no idea where the farm he’d be working on was, or how he would get there once he landed. The only thing he was told about Canada was that it snowed.  

While many of the proposed solutions to abuses that some workers experience are large and structural in nature, our experiences showed us that there is also a lot of room for smaller acts of decency too -- like providing workers with basic information about the country they will spend much of their lives living and working in. 

The Travers Fellowship gave us unprecedented opportunity to spend time with migrant families in their own homes, in the spaces that felt safe and comfortable for them. This lent our reporting a depth, complexity, and richness that we could never have accomplished by simply reporting in Canada. We were able to touch, see, smell, and experience what workers leave behind when they travel north for the season. From dinners with Blanca’s family to small-town celebrations with Reynaldo’s, our visits made for a stark comparison to the isolation workers often described in Canada. In wrestling with loneliness, workers are often locked in a battle there is no way to win. 

Foreign reporting can be a window into a faraway place. But perhaps more importantly, it can be a chance for Canadians to look at ourselves in the mirror. Sometimes, the image staring back is ugly. The temptation is to race by, gaze averted. 

The legacy of James Travers’ reporting is to resist that temptation. It is to show our interest in the lives of others, and a willingness to reflect on ourselves -- even when it forces uncomfortable reckonings.  We are grateful for the incredible opportunity to do so.