LAS VEGAS — He was driving home to Avenal, Calif. To the unpracticed eye, the acres of cracked, dry earth on either side of I-5 would have come off as simply an ugly backdrop to the progress of the modern highway system.
But Jose Ramirez knew better. He didn’t know the statistics. He didn’t know how economists measure the dent that the long dry, angry land was making in the gross annual product of California’s Central Valley.
But nobody had to tell him about the ominous prediction those arid fields hold. That government-mandated water crunch has left an incredible 600,000 fallow acres in its wake. He knows what those fields once meant and what’s left of them still mean to the valley, to the residents and to his family.
Ironically, the voice coming over the car radio at that time belonged to Mario Santoyo, the director of the Latino California Water Commission.
Santoyo was speaking about the way the government had sliced away at the very water that was the life’s blood of the valley. He was speaking about a powerful environmental coalition of more than 300,000 members that had sued the state fish and game commission on behalf of a six-inch fish called the long fin smelt and won. It had sued because the fish had been placed on the endangered species list.
All the environmentalists demanded was what they said was a simple act. They wanted to drastically reduce the flow of water from the pumping stations up by a slice of the valley the farmers call “the delta.” That water previously was headed for the Central Valley
That was roughly eight years ago. It has been a long, and sometimes losing fight. But Ramirez, a 13-0 fighter on the Pacquiao-Bradley undercard this week, comes to the moment in the armor of ”Central Valley toughness.”
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It was there, in a place called Delano, that Caesar Chavez organized the first farm workers union. It was in the valley with its huge Latino population, that the Latino Water Commission was formed by those who suffer the most from a legal but illogical court decision that put an entire work force in the most productive farm lands in the country at risk of disappearing.
In speaking of the curtailed pumping and rerouting of water after the court decision, Devin Nunes, a Republican assemblyman who represents part of the Central Valley said ”There’s plenty of water, but the courts say it can’t be touched, so it’s flowing out to sea under the Golden Gate Bridge and a lot of the farmland dries up.”
The Latino Water Commission’s response was to organize an historic march of farmers and pickers and activists. It was not aimed at the environmentalists. This fact was not lost on the Mendota marchers. They were not there to kill the smelt. They were there to find a solution. As one farmer said on the 35-mile 2009 protest march from Mendota (by then 50 percent unemployed) to the San Luis reservoir in which 10,000 people took part:
”Sacrifice the value of what we do? Sacrifice the people who live and work here? All for a six-inch fish. Well, that just ain’t gonna happen.”
Ramirez is no expert on the economic impact of the valley on America. But he knows all you need to know about what has become the thirsty fields of California.
It’s ultra Class 1 soil is the backbone of California’s $36.9 billion a year agricultural industry. Its 6.3 million acres of farmland produce more than 350 crops, representing 25 percent of the nation’s food output.
“My mom and dad took me into the fields where they picked when I was 5 because there was nobody to watch me,” Ramirez said. “But when I got school age, that was it. They put me on the bus and never let me pick again until summer vacation from high school. When I joined them, our [household’s] weekly pay rose to $400.”
They are East Valley people, where most of the crop pickers live. He was raised in a house with four families ? 16 people ? living in four rooms. But nobody in the Ramirez house complained. They were united in the same dream that all the east side of the Valley shares.
It’s simply that none of the next generation they raise shall have to spend a lifetime in those fields. For Juanita and Carlos Ramirez, that thought speaks volumes.
“It gets to be 100 or more degrees in those fields. When I worked high school vacation there,” Ramirez, said. ”There were little kids and 60-year-old women. My classmates and I tried to help the older ladies, too. ”
But there is more than familial rhetoric behind Ramirez plea. He called Santoyo after he heard that broadcast and he has become a spokesman for the movement, who is articulate beyond his 23 years.
He has spoken to the faithful at rallies. He has gone to the state capitol several times and told his family’s story to the legislators who have the power to find a way to turn the pumps up to a higher capacity again if they assert it.
When he speaks, the blue-and-white T shirts reading ”Agua y Trabajo” (water and work) his group wears bear mute testimony to what these people are fighting for. So do the buttons each wears: ”Turn on the Pumps.”
This is particularly true when you realize that shippers and box makers and truckers are being put out of work along with the pickers and the farmers — all for a 6-inch fish most of the environmental lobbyists have never seen.
“I told them about my family,” Ramirez said, ”and about the jobs lost in the valley all because we need water. I told them what the water means to everyone who works or lives in the valley.”
Boxing and the water issue have occupied most of Ramirez’ life. The first day he went to a gym, he was 8 years old and nothing that happened that day indicated he would ever be in this position.
“I threw a wild combination at the practice bag and I grazed it and it shot back and hit me in the face,” he recalled. “I ran out of the gym and didn’t come back for three weeks. I weighed 57 pounds and I was 8 years old and I won my first fight and they gave me this big trophy … so big I had trouble carrying it down the ring steps. I knew right there that I wanted more and bigger ones.”
He got them.
He was an amateur sensation through his teen years, winning two junior Olympics, qualifying for the Olympics. He turned pro at 19. As you might expect, he has become the symbolic hero of the Central Valley. But there is more than that. He has been involved in five fight cards named ”The Fight for Water.” The last one drew 13,000 fans to the arena in Fresno.
“This is great boxing country,” Santoyo said, ”But I know it was the water issue that brought so many of the 13,000 to Fresno for his last fight. He made them all conscious of the battle for water in the valley with his last fight.”
Santoyo knows that Ramirez could have left Avenal a long time ago and he admires the role the fighter has aggressively taken. ”He’s fighting for a way of life,” Santoyo is quick to say. “People don’t understand when they see us in the field. My family were pickers, but now I have a master’s degree in civil engineering. My brother is a doctor. Jose Ramirez is sending his younger brother to San Jose State. For Latinos, this is something to take pride in. It’s acceptable work.”
To which Ramirez simply adds: “I feel like I’m fighting for more than myself.”
