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College Program Gives Seasonal Farmworkers A Boost

Mallory Falk
/
KRWG
Paulina Samaniego studies Counseling and Community Psychology at NMSU. During the summer, she works on a salmon farm in Alaska.

Southern New Mexico is known for its agriculture, like its sweeping chile fields. Many children help their parents harvest those fields, at least until they graduate high school. A federal program helps those children make the transition to college.

Paulina Samaniego grew up between two dramatically different landscapes: the Chihuahuan Desert and the Alaskan coastline. During the school year - in Santa Teresa, New Mexico - she was a typical student. She played softball and volleyball and even got voted prom queen. Then, over the summer, she and her family traveled to Excursion Inlet, near Juneau, Alaska. They worked on a salmon farm, helping to process caviar.

"Whenever there's a good season there's about 400 people working there," Samaniego says. "Most of the time it's the same people over and over. So we grew up being a family."

Samaniego sits outside the campus bookstore at New Mexico State University. She's a college student now, the first in her family. She's studying Counseling and Community Psychology.

"Many of my friends come up to my like 'Paulina, what do you think?'" she says. "I feel like I'm a very good listener. So counseling and psychology, it just felt like I was in the right place."

But Samaniego hasn't given up seasonal farm work. She still goes back to Alaska every summer."

"I can work every day and just save that money for my expenses here at NMSU," she says. "That way I don't have to work the rest of the year and just focus on my studies."

Samaniego's experience isn't unique. Dozens of migrant or seasonal farmworkers are currently enrolled at NMSU. Most come from families who work in the fields, topping onions or harvesting chile.

"These are the students that put food on our tables," says Martha Estrada. "These are the students whose families sacrifice their health to get us our daily bread." Estrada directs the College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) at NMSU. It's a federally-funded program to support migrant farmworkers in their college studies.

"We provide them with academic support, financial support, as well as social support," Estrada says. CAMP creates a cohort of other students from similar backgrounds, with similar experiences.

There wasn't always this type of support. In 1960, CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow produced a documentary called Harvest of Shame, highlighting poor conditions for migrant farmworkers. The documentary spurred action, including federal funding for migrant education. CAMP was established in 1972. The program came to NMSU in 2001.

Martha Estrada says CAMP provides students with a range of supports - everything from academic advisors and peer mentors to special courses on student success.

"People may call it handholding," Estrada says. "Yeah, maybe we handhold them - at least in the first semester, at least to get started - so we make sure the students aren't being set up for failure, that they understand how higher education works."

Estrada says migrant farmworkers face several barriers to success. First, there's finances. Agricultural workers earn less annually than almost any other type of worker, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So CAMP helps students apply for financial aid and offers scholarships.

Then there's academics. "Our students come from very rural areas," Estrada says. "Where yeah, they may have been the valedictorian in their school but when you come to college it's a totally different ballgame."

Hence the academic support. Finally, Estrada says, some students are tempted to return to the fields, full time; they can help their families and make immediate money.

Erika Alvarez is a nursing student and CAMP participant. "A lot of us are first-generation students," she says. "So if we didn't have the CAMP program to be there for us financially or even emotionally and always encouraging us, then we might just go back to fieldwork because it's an easy way to make money. And you know it's there, rather than coming to college and getting loans, getting in debt. I think CAMP helps students be able to get out of that and realize there is more for them and they can do it."

Paulina Samaniego says her CAMP advisors taught her to advocate for herself. Freshman year, for example, she wanted to drop a math class after the add/drop deadline.

"I had to go to my academic advisor for my college," she says. "And he was very strict. Like, I was afraid of him."

So she asked her CAMP advisor, Jaime López, to come with her.

"I'm like Jaime, I don't know what to say. The other advisor's gonna say that I'm not good enough to be in this program. And Jaime was like it's okay, we got this. He was there with me, so that made me feel more comfortable and saved."

Samaniego says afterward, she felt much more confident approaching school officials on her own. It's the kind of minor but crucial support that can make the difference between a student successfully navigated college and floundering, or even dropping out.

Samaniego says this support, and the built-in family CAMP provides, have made college a great experience. "It's important to have a program like this because other farmworker families, they understand you and they know what you've been through."

Mallory Falk currently serves as a reporter for Texas public radio stations and her work continues to be heard on KRWG. She was based here from June, 2018 through June, 2019 as a Report for America corps member. She covers a wide range of issues in the region, including immigration, education, healthcare, economic development, and the environment. Mallory previously served as education reporter at WWNO, New Orleans Public Radio, where her coverage won multiple awards. Her stories have aired on regional and national programs like Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Here & Now, and Texas Standard.