The Place of the Embodied Anthropologist

In the ethnographic piece, Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies, Seth Holmes immerses himself in

the lives of the indigenous Oaxacans known as the Triqui. There are political and economic

forces working against the Triqui causing them to migrate up and down California and

Washington to work on farms. These migrant workers pick fruit for starvation wages, in

deteriorating homes and in toxic fields for months at a time. The Triqui and other migrant

workers do this trek indefinitely in an inescapable cycle of suffering that is passed down to their

children. Seth Holmes travels with the Triqui people in order to better understand U.S.-Mexico

migration process as he opens the conversation on exploited migrant workers on the west

coast. Having multiple social identities and positions all very different from a Triqui migrant

worker, Holmes shows there are things he can and cannot speak on. Although at times his

differences impact his research, Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies provides us with the means to figure

out what Holmes can and cannot bring to the conversation.

The first sign of Holmes identity impacting what he can bring to his work is his relation to

the research he is about to embark on. As a studying graduate student in anthropology in the

early 2000s, Holmes sets out to create a dissertation saying, I actively searched for an

interesting and important ethnography project to undertake. Given the critical social, political

and health related to the U.S.-Mexico migration, I chose to work in this context.(3) Holmes

takes on his dissertation for the greater critical state of U.S.-Mexico migration issues. Without

Holmes intent to research the Triqui it would be reasonable to assume their suffering would

continue as it had been. By exposing the various traits of their demise to having U.S. roots, we

find out that this is a more deeply embedded issue than purely migration. Holmes identifies that

the North American Free Trade Agreement or (NAFTA) is in fact one one of these political

forces that displaces migrants. NAFTA made it so that American crops could be sold cheaper
than identical crops in Mexico. This forces field workers in Mexico to migrate to America, work

the same jobs and are exploited for their non-American status to work for slave wages. By

addressing NAFTA as a main issue, Holmes can identify and convey its negative impacts as a

fact relating to the Triqui demise due to his familiarity with U.S. politics and his anthropological

studies.

Seth Holmess economic affluence when compared to the Triqui workers plays a role in

how Holmess research is received. Holmes works in field laboring to accomplish his research

through a process called embodied anthropology. He wishes to observe the farm pickers and in

return they react positively when he works alongside them in their day to day laboring. Through

the process of doing his research on the farm while also doing the same work as the migrants,

Holmes tries to achieve embodied anthropology. When Holmes begins looking at the farms

racial hierarchies he talks with a native Triqui worker named Samuel who says, Right now, we

and you are the same; we are poor. But later you will be rich and live in a luxury house. I

explained that I didnt want a luxury house...Samuel replied, looking me in the eyes, But you

will have a bathroom on the inside, right?(80). Unlike Holmes, the migrant workers are

vulnerable to structural changes. Seth Holmes ability to leave the farm at will and continue his

life outside of agricultural work shows he isnt in a vulnerable position. The migrant workers exist

in an involuntary cycle where if they cant work on the farms then they are certain to die. This

example is why Holmes cannot fully immerse himself through embodied anthropology: his social

identity is too different from the social identities of the Triqui workers to fully share their

experience and convey that experience accurately to the reader.

Holmes uses his social identity as a white man to his advantage when he expands his

research interviews from the farm pickers to the greater production on the Tanaka Farm in

Washington and the surrounding town of Skagit Valley. Holmes is looked at as out of place by
the other pickers as a white man working in the field where the only other white people are in

positions of authority over migrant workers. Since Holmes is white, it allows him to gain insight

on things that the white people in power wont say in front of people of color. In a conversation

with J.R., a local man from Central California and his wife who are befriended by Holmes

explains, They [Mexicans] want to keep their culture. Youve got to get people blended right

away. People have to mix. If you dont mix and youre alienated over there, guess what? Youre

different.(160). Holmes is able to obtain this opinion of J.R.s not through any coercion but

simple because Holmes complexion made J.R. at ease with sharing his problematic

hybridization rhetoric. This insight that Holmes acquires on how the other members of the Skagit

Valley view the migrant workers is key to understanding Triqui oppression.

Alongside anti-migrant speech, the Triqui face misrepresentation in the medical field.

Holmes uncovers that the way in which physicians are trained doesn't include a holistic

approach in which the Triqui are accustomed to. Bernardo is a Triqui migrant whos life of

agonizing labor and political turmoil causes him to have debilitating stomach aches. When he

seeks medical attention hes given a translator who misinterprets his stomach pain had been

from a boxing accident. Holmes is able to analyze the correlation of what the doctors say and

how they treat him when he says, Physicians in the United States and Mexico are not trained to

see the social determinants of health problems, or to hear them when communicated by their

patients...This acontextuality is seen when the sections of medical charts reporting social history

entirely exclude and when torture is reported as boxing. Thus it is unavoidable that they would

fall into a trap of using a narrow lens that functions to decontextualize sickness, transporting it

from the realm of politics, power, and inequality to the realm of the individual body(152). When

Holmes made the connection between improper training and migrant suffering he showed it

through Bernardo. Seth Holmes use of embodied anthropology in befriending Bernardo, proving
his research through someone who is living it add so much to understanding the extent of the

Triqui worker experience. Since Holmes is a trained physician, his analysis of the inefficient

medical treatment has credibility. Through identifying that Bernardos suffering is involuntary,

Holmes can credibly accuse the way doctors treat migrant workers as counterproductive to their

health care.

The ideal way to gain knowledge about these migrants day to day lives would be an

resh Fruit, Broken Bodies provides

autobiography of the Triqui migrant experience. However, F

information that Triqui workers wouldnt be able to provide without Holmes formally educated

background. Although, as we discussed Holmes social identities and positions prevent him from

being able to fully immerse himself with the farm workers day to day. It would have the most

accurate information if it was written by someone who has undergone the migrant experience

authentically, although through Seth Holmes narrative we are able to see the Triqui suffering

through a highly educated lens. Through Holmes educated lens we are given new information

and perspectives from an Anthropologist and a Physician, these social positions are breadths

that are applied to his research which brings credibility and insight beyond what the migrant

worker could provide. He shows that more importantly than who is representing the migrant

suffering, it is still happening when he says, American society gains so much from migrant

laborers and gives little back beyond criminalization, stress, and injury. This dishonest

relationships must change...the Triqui people I know told me repeatedly that being given legal

temporary worker status would be their first hope(197). Granting temporary work status for

migrants would ensure they are paid a minimum wage among many other things that would

reshape this dishonest relationship. Holmes shows that what we can and cannot speak on is

less important than getting society to recognize and implement systems to help migrant workers

escape this cycle of suffering.