"Flight of the Happy Farmers" (An excerpt from a book manuscript, Corn People on the Global Assembly Line: Inside the Immigrant Worker's Struggle)

Leon Fink, University of Illinois, Chicago

Part of a larger study of Guatemalan poultry workers in North Carolina, FLIGHT OF THE “HAPPY FARMERS” juxtaposes issues in labor and immigration history. In trying to make sense of an informal worker protest among new migrants, I trace the participants back to their home villages in Guatemala and their reasons, often complicated, for leaving. Inevitably, I run up against the problem of interpreting the rationales of politically "silenced" peoples--the same issue which has drawn attention in the controversy surrounding anthropologist David Stoll and the testimony of Rigoberta Menchu.

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