This story also ran on Radio Bilingue. It can be republished for free.
MECCA, Calif. — Dust swirled in the air as Luz Gallegos parked her SUV on the side of a dirt road. She had just learned that her aunt died of covid-19 — the third family member to succumb to the disease in only two weeks.
She stepped out of her car at about 11:30 a.m. onto a bell pepper farm in this agricultural community in the Coachella Valley, a little northwest of the Salton Sea.
Gallegos, a daughter of farmworkers who had worked in the fields herself, had only 15 minutes to make what she considered a life-or-death pitch to roughly 20 workers who had just finished a break.
The farm had already seen two workers fall ill to covid.
“We’re losing people in our community each day,” she said.
“I’m very grateful that this group came out here to give us information about the virus and vaccine,” says farm manager Juan Castillo (not shown). “As farmworkers we sometimes go from home to work and back and don’t have time to listen to the news.”
This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.
