This Labor Leader Is Still Organizing After ICE Detention, But From Mexico

Alfredo Juarez Zeferino, known as Lelo, is a Mexican farmworker and co-founder of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, an independent farmworker union in Burlington, Wash. Harsh living and working conditions led Lelo to begin organizing at age 13, and since then he has led several successful campaigns on labor, rent, and migration rights. After ICE arrested him in March, held him for more than three months in detention, and subjected him to a removal order, Lelo decided to self-deport to Mexico. Currently working at his family’s banana farms in Santa Cruz Yucucani, he continues to mobilize against migrant labor exploitation under the H-2A federal visa program while planning his return to the U.S. Hammer & Hope spoke to him on Aug. 11 and 22.

Hammer & Hope Tell me about your childhood in Mexico. What was life like before moving to the United States?

Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez Zeferino I was born in 1999 and grew up in a town called Santa Cruz Yucucani, in the state of Guerrero. For a period, I worked with my grandpa in his cornfields and banana fields. Pretty much everybody here are small little farmers; they grow corn to make tortillas, and they also plant a bit of tomatoes and chili. We don’t have any agricultural companies here, so everybody plants stuff that they need and that’s it. I started before I was 8, helping with small things here and there, until I moved to the U.S. with my parents in 2008. They wanted a better life and to make money to build a house in Mexico in case things don’t work out in the U.S.

HH What was the experience of leaving Mexico and moving to the United States like for you?

Lelo When I got to the U.S., my parents signed me up for school, but I only spoke Mixtec, my native language. I didn’t speak Spanish or English, so it was tough that first year. But I picked things up pretty fast. I got a lot of awards for reading and math and all that. But it wasn’t easy. Being a kid of a farmworker in the States is really hard.