We Eat All the Way Down to the Green: Agricultural Labor and Latinx Family Histories

Presented as a performative reading, “We Eat All the Way Down to the Green” takes its title from a statement made by my father Joseph/José Ledezma, who emigrated from Coahuila, Mexico to the southwest United States in the 1960s with his parents and siblings. In the Texas Hill Country, the Ledezmas secured steady employment at a pecan orchard, grew and sold fruits and vegetables, and later lived and worked at a guest ranch. My father’s experience witnessing a white family throw away “red beautiful watermelon” after eating just a few bites marked a turning point in his class consciousness: his family ate the fruit until they reached its green rind. While the type of agricultural work my family undertook differed from the notorious stoop labor and seasonal itinerancy of migrant farm workers, retelling their accounts is key to expanding representations of Latinx agricultural labor that tend to focus on work done for larger farms and companies. I situate my family’s stories within broader twentieth-century political and social histories of the U.S.-Mexico border and labor performed by people of Mexican-origin, including the Bracero Program, the government campaign known as Operation Wetback, and the 1954 film Salt of the Earth. Bringing together historical documents, photographs, popular magazines, sound recordings, poetry, and an interview between a father and daughter, “We Eat All the Way Down to the Green” interweaves artistic and cultural forms in order to build connections between personal and collective memories and experiences.