Decolonizing the Union: Reflections on Indigenous Migrant Farmworker Organizing in the Mexican Borderlands

Abstract (English)

Through ten years of ethnographic and activist engagement with the farmworkers (jornaleros) of San Quintín, Baja California, Mexico, this presentation seeks to theorize the challenges to farm labor organizing by Indigenous migrant farmworkers in global agro-export enclaves. Through a decolonial approach to labor drawing on key insights of Aníbal Quijano, this presentation seeks to reassess what it means to be working class, the role and composition of labor unions, and the importance of international solidarity in worker struggles in global capitalism. In order to birth decolonial futures, it is pertinent to re-evaluate Quijano’s concept of the coloniality of labor and apply these insights to decolonize the labor union.