International impact: Immokalee farmworker champion Benitez honored for human rights activism

Born in a dirt-floored home in Guerrero, Mexico, Lucas Benitez arrived in Florida to pick crops as a teenager.

Those farm fields, where he witnessed abuse, theft and inequity, made him an activist. Three decades later, Benitez is an internationally acclaimed human rights leader, about to receive the Wallenberg Medal, an honor he shares with the Dalai Lama, the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Elie Wiesel,

As one of the founders of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Benitez and his colleagues have changed farm labor practices in Florida, the U.S. and the wider world. The coalition’s Fair Food Program is now protecting workers in 10 states and three countries, including Chile and South Africa.

“I am immeasurably honored and humbled to receive the Wallenberg Medal in recognition of our efforts to forge a new paradigm for the protection of fundamental human rights from the fields to factories around the globe,” he said in an emailed statement.

The journey from tomato picker to human rights laureate was spurred by Benitez’s outrage at deeply embedded wrongs: sexual harassment, wage theft, threats, violence and slavery. Deep in wealthy Collier County’s rural interior, Immokalee was a world unknown to many wealthy Naples residents, a seasonal boomtown that produces most of the nation’s winter tomatoes as well as myriad other crops.

Immokalee once 'ground zero for modern slavery.'

Within the past two decades, Immokalee had been what former Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney for Southwest Florida Douglas Molloy calls "the epicenter of human trafficking prosecutions. We had more cases than most states."

Benitez and his colleagues threw themselves into changing that.

In a spare room at Immokalee’s Catholic church, they began discussing what they could do. From those discussions grew a movement. Formed in 1993, the coalition created the Fair Food Program, now recognized as the gold standard of agricultural worker protection. “One of the most important social-impact stories of the past century”, is how the Harvard Business Review characterizes it.

With tactics ranging from hunger strikes, marches and street theater to high profile media campaigns and sophisticated corporate diplomacy, the nonprofit turned traditional strategies on their heads by pressuring retailers – not farmers – to pay a small premium for produce. So far, major fast-food restaurants McDonalds and Burger King have signed on, as have Walmart, Whole Foods and Fresh Market. Notable holdouts include Wendy’s and Publix, but the group’s not giving up.

Earlier victory: Fresh Market joins farmworker program

Beyond raising wages for farmworkers, Benitez helped investigate several slavery cases, leading to the liberation of 700 workers in one case alone.

Their efforts have been internationally lauded, earning Benitez the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award and the “Ohtli” Award, the highest honor conferred by the Mexican government to its citizens living outside of the country. Co-founder Greg Asbed is a MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient and co-founder Laura Germino has a Presidential Medal for Extraordinary Efforts in Combating Modern-Day Slavery.

Benitez credits his fellow farmworkers as well. “I also want to recognize the efforts of my entire community, the decades of labor of countless women and men in Immokalee in the fields that have brought us to where we are today,” he said. “Our work is still far from over. We recognize the urgent need to continue expanding the protections we won first for farmworkers in the U.S. to new fields and new industries across the country and the world.”

Molloy, who characterizes Benitez as a "selfless, dedicated and passionate person," says there's "an irony in his receiving a medal, because he's the kind of person who does this without seeking acknowledgement," Molloy said. "But his work is vital and important and I'm glad he's getting the recognition he never sought."

The Wallenberg Medal honors the achievements of Raoul Wallenberg, who saved the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II. Wallenberg issued thousands of protective passports and placed tens of thousands of Jews in safehouses while confronting Hungarian and German forces to secure the release of Jews, whom he claimed were under Swedish protection. He ultimately saved more than 80,000 lives.

Benitez will receive the 2023 Wallenberg Medal Tuesday at the University of Michigan’s Rackham Auditorium, where he also will give a lecture about the first three decades and the future of human rights for farmworkers.

Of his honor, selection committee member Sioban Harlow, professor emerita of epidemiology and global public health said: “Lucas Benitez’s work with the CIW reflects the ongoing need for frontline advocates for vulnerable people in our society. This movement harnesses the economic influence of consumers to improve working conditions, labor practices, and pay for farmworkers through its worker-led, market-enforced approach to the protection of human rights underlying corporate supply chains.”

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Coalition of Immokalee Workers' Lucas Benitez awarded Wallenberg Medal