Forty-nine indigenous Mixtecs were rescued from a Colima cucumber field this week, bringing to 452 the number of people found working in slave-like conditions since last month.

Today, the Labor Secretary made the charge that organized crime networks are behind the recruitment of day laborers to work in the agricultural industry, a situation that Alfonso Navarrete Prida described as a serious “form of exploitation.”

Within the framework of a program called Dignified Work in Mexico, the Labor Secretariat has made 43,674 assessments through 12,393 worksite inspections benefiting, it says, just over one million workers. Targeting repeat or serious violations, the secretariat has fined 16,159 businesses a total of 140 million pesos (US $9.3 million), and issued 12 work sites with indefinite suspensions.

Navarrete noted the principal violations at the Colima site included forced youth labor, the exposure of agricultural workers to dangerous substances like fungicides and pesticides without any protective equipment, and a lack of social security. He also cited “an absence of control in the use of chemical substances by workers and fumigators.”

Children as well faced serious health risks from uncontrolled access to chemicals. The site also contained unsanitary bathrooms and latrines, with only a single distant well, a lack of food, and no potable water.

Workers seemingly were paid no benefits, children were found working barefoot in packing lines and all laborers suffered from a lack of protection against extreme temperatures. On top of it all, pay was piecework, resulting in certain farm workers “never achieving the minimum wage.”

The Colima workers named a Mixtec man from their own community in the Costa Chica region in Guerrero as the recruiter who took local citizens to agricultural fields in Colima, Jalisco, Michoacán and Sinaloa. Feliciano Martínez García set up “company towns” where workers had to buy daily necessities from him at a type of company store.

Navarrete Prida described how “unscrupulous intermediaries deceived and abused vulnerable populations, obtaining profits through the hard work of others.”

Investigations are continuing in Sinaloa, Zacatecas, Guanajuato and Guerrero.

About 200 members of the Rarámuri indigenous tribe were freed two weeks ago in Baja California Sur where they were working under “shameful conditions” on the potato harvest. And last Tuesday, farmworkers closed the Baja’s Transpeninsular Highway to protest conditions and wages.

Sources: Milenio (sp), El Universal (sp)