There's a Sexual-Harassment Epidemic on America’s Farms
Marlyn Perez had no choice but to take the job at C&C Agricultural Farms in Clewiston, Florida. She was new to farming, new to America, undocumented, and desperately in need of money.
Perez had just come from Guatemala. She had worked briefly at another farm in North Carolina, harvesting sweet potatoes, but when she got to C&C, a farm located in a remote area called Devil’s Garden, she “saw pretty quickly this was a different situation.” When she didn’t receive her full pay the first week, she went to the crew leader, Reyes Tapia-Ortiz, who told her he couldn’t do anything about it. “This is what I’m paying you. There’s no way to negotiate it differently,” she told me over the phone through a translator from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a farmworker-rights organization. Tapia-Ortiz could not be reached for comment.
The work was grueling, Perez and six other workers alleged in a 2014 lawsuit against Tapia-Ortiz, C&C, and the farm’s owners, Ernesto Ruben Cordero Jr. and Carlos Rodriguez. Ten- to 12-hour days with the threat of no pay from Tapia-Ortiz if they didn’t work the shifts he assigned, including those at night in the packinghouse and overtime, according to the lawsuit. No breaks except for a short pause for lunch,
