Meet our Mid-Valley: Francisca Aparicio's silent fight for farmworker women

Francisca Aparicio likes to help people. She knows no other way. Helping people is her passion, her job, and her life’s purpose.

“My passion is volunteering,” Aparicio said with a chuckle when asked if she had any passions outside of work. “To help the community.”

Volunteering is how Aparicio got her start as an advocate and organizer for female farmworkers in Oregon. She is the sole Oregon representative for Alianza Nacional de Campesinas (National Alliance of Farmworker Women), an organization that advocates specifically for women in agricultural work. Alianza provides resources to farmworker women in 15 states and campaigns for policy change on a federal level.

Aparicio’s role within the organization looks different every day. Some days, she is out in the fields providing resources to farmworker women. Other days, she is organizing meetings and informational sessions, in tandem with the network of partner organizations she works with in Oregon including PCUN and Mujeres Luchadoras Progresistas.

But the soft-spoken volunteer summarizes her role more succinctly:

“My job is to listen,” she said.

Fighting for farmworkers, and herself

Alianza Nacional de Campesinas is an organization “by farmworkers, for farmworkers.” Aparicio, however, is not one, nor has she ever been. Still, she said, this work is her calling.

Aparico was born in Michoacan, Mexico, and spent the first 13-14 years of her life there. The daughter of Indigenous parents, she immigrated to Oregon as a teenager.

She didn’t know at the time why her parents uprooted her life, took her from her friends and studies, to bring her here. As a 47-year-old, and a mother herself, she now has the wisdom of hindsight. It was probably to give her a better life, she said.

By the time she understood her purpose was to help people, Aparicio also understood the barriers that stood in the way. She immigrated without papers, she said, and many of the organizations for which she wanted to work required them.

So Aparicio worked in a factory until she could become a legal permanent resident of the United States. Along the way, she found Causa, Oregon’s now-dissolved immigrant rights group. She started volunteering. She joined Causa in its fight to pass a bill allowing people to obtain driver’s licenses without having to prove legal residency.

And as she learned to fight for other people, she also learned how to fight for herself, she said.

She met other women advocating for immigrant and farmworker justice, including Rebeca Velasquez at Mujeres Luchadoras Progresistas (MLP). Aparicio volunteered with PCUN and MLP and eventually with Alianza Nacional de Campesinas.

“And here I am,” she said, smiling at the idea of full-time employment. “I like this work more than anything.”

She may not be a farmworker, she said, but she sees herself in the farmworker women she works with. Their problems are her problems.

National problems, national priorities

Alianza's mission is twofold, Aparicio said: it is, in part, to give resources to farmworker women.

COVID-19 made that half of the organization's mission more important. COVID-19 had an outsized impact on immigrants and people of color. Aparicio said she heard, over and over again, that most vaccine clinics didn't work with farmworkers' schedules. Some were leaving work to get vaccinated, but losing pay. Others weren't getting the vaccine but wanted it.

Alianza got an $8.1 million grant from the Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) in June 2021 to reach farmworkers in rural communities with vaccine clinics and direct outreach. In Oregon, Aparicio partnered with Velasquez at Mujeres Luchadoras Progresistas to help farmworkers access vaccines.

"Hundreds of people were vaccinated because of Francisca," said Marlene Rojas, Alianza's national program coordinator.

Alianza was able to secure that grant, thanks, in part, to testimony Aparicio collected. That's the other half of Alianza's mission, and Aparicio's job: to give local farmworkers a federal platform.

Alianza prioritizes four issues: violence against women, pesticide exposure, labor rights and immigration reform. For each issue, and others that arise, Aparicio is both gathering testimony and distributing resources. Collecting in one hand, giving with the other.

"'Nationally, we're a strong alliance with a strong voice," she said. "We have strength because we have testimony from the community. It's not for us. It's not for the organization. It's for them."

By women, for women

Alianza is the first national organization to be led by farmworker women, and to focus on farmworker women.

That's important, Aparicio said, because farmworker women face unique challenges. And Aparicio has found they are less likely to speak up about them.

"They stay silent," she said.

Aparicio remembered meeting a woman in her 60s who worked in the fields. The woman told Aparicio that because she was older, she thought her supervisors were giving her harder work.

"That's part of the abuse," Aparicio said. "They didn't touch her, but they gave her the heaviest work knowing [her age], knowing she couldn't do 100% of the work."

Some women Francisca meets are farmworkers because they don't see another option for work. They feel limited by documentation status, or language barriers, or access to education.

But others do it because they like it, Aparicio said. They want to keep doing it.

"How do you support them? You give them what they need," Aparicio said.

The thing about supporting women, she added, is ultimately it's not just women who benefit.

"It's everyone who works in the fields," she said. All boats rise with the tide.

Room to grow

In a sunlit bedroom that once belonged to her now-grown son, Aparicio has set up a home office. Her son's art still hangs one wall, a graffiti-style painting of Los Angeles in neon and black.

But around her desk, sticky notes and books and whiteboard calendars remind Aparicio what she's doing, and why. Between two smiley faces on her whiteboard, "bee [sic] happy" is written in dry-erase marker. There's a poster of a woman holding a child that says, in all caps, "YA BASTA" [ENOUGH].

Aparicio doesn't need these reminders to stay motivated, she said. The work is motivating enough.

But it is constant. Aparicio will modestly say she works a normal office schedule, 9-5. Rojas disagrees.

"We're at the service of the community," Rojas said. "It's not an office schedule. We don't work that way."

Aparicio said she hopes to one day lead an Oregon team of Alianza organizers to help collect testimony and distribute resources to more farmworkers across the state.

"That's my dream," she said.

Meantime, she said she will continue to help the organization grow. She will give her free time to her family — and to the many organizations for which she still volunteers.

Shannon Sollitt covers agricultural workers through Report for America, a program that aims to support local journalism and democracy by reporting on under-covered issues and communities. Send tips, questions and comments to ssollitt@statesmanjournal.com

This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: How Oregon rep for National Alliance of Farmworker Women helps locally