美国国家公共电台 NPR Many California Farmworkers Forced To Stay Behind During The Wildfires

Many California Farmworkers Forced To Stay Behind During The Wildfires

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

The Woolsey Fire in Southern California has been contained, but it destroyed almost 1,500 structures across Los Angeles and Ventura counties. And while some residents are beginning to return home, thousands of people had to stay and face the risks of fire and smoke. That includes about 36,000 farmworkers in Ventura County who stayed and worked outside picking strawberries and other produce in the dangerous air from wildfires. Many of them have limited access to proper protection or medical care. Someone who knows the perils¹ of working in the fields is Juvenal Solano. He is a former strawberry picker and now a community organizer with the Mixteco Indigenous² Community Organizing Project. He joins us from Oxnard, Calif. Thanks so much for being with us.

JUVENAL SOLANO: Thank you very much for inviting³ me.

SIMON: What do people who work in the fields picking food for all of us tell you about what it's like to work there now?

SOLANO: When was a lot of smoke, they start to not breathe very well. They start tearing their eyes because of the smoke.

SIMON: Tearing their eyes, yeah.

SOLANO: Yeah. What they said is, what can we do now? We need to stay there because we need money to provide to their families.

SIMON: Yeah. And what happens if they approach a supervisor⁴ or a field manager because they say they need help or they shouldn't be working or they're worried?

SOLANO: Well, some of the workers, they don't even ask to their supervisor to go home because they are afraid to lose their jobs or even they don't speak the language because here in Ventura County 20,000 or almost 70,000 farmworkers are indigenous community who speaks the Mixteco language from the state of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Puebla of the country of Mexico.

SIMON: What kind of help do the people working for all of us in these fields need most now?

SOLANO: I think they need financials. They need more information about their rights. Those agencies that are here to protect farmworkers, they need to go to the working area to see and to talk to those workers what they need because when something like wildfires happen or other thing happen, those agencies, they are not there to see what the worker needs.

SIMON: Juvenal Solano is a community organizer. He's with the Mixteco Indigenous Community Organizing Project in Ventura County, Calif. Thanks so much for being with us, sir.

SOLANO: Thank you very much for having me.

1 perils   

极大危险( peril的名词复数 )； 危险的事（或环境）

参考例句：

• The commander bade his men be undaunted in the face of perils. 指挥员命令他的战士要临危不惧。
• With how many more perils and disasters would he load himself? 他还要再冒多少风险和遭受多少灾难？

2 indigenous   

adj.土产的，土生土长的，本地的

参考例句：

• Each country has its own indigenous cultural tradition.每个国家都有自己本土的文化传统。
• Indians were the indigenous inhabitants of America.印第安人是美洲的土著居民。

3 inviting   

adj.诱人的，引人注目的

参考例句：

• An inviting smell of coffee wafted into the room.一股诱人的咖啡香味飘进了房间。
• The kitchen smelled warm and inviting and blessedly familiar.这间厨房的味道温暖诱人，使人感到亲切温馨。

4 supervisor   

n.监督人，管理人，检查员，督学，主管，导师

参考例句：

• Between you and me I think that new supervisor is a twit.我们私下说，我认为新来的主管人是一个傻瓜。
• He said I was too flighty to be a good supervisor.他说我太轻浮不能成为一名好的管理员。