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Surviving The Field: Providing The Bare Minimum For Farmworkers In New Mexico, Annie Swift

New Mexico Law Review

People have cultivated the land now known as New Mexico for millennia. Throughout the last century, however, state law has denied important protections to agricultural workers and thereby contributed to the creation of an agrarian working class that is especially vulnerable to political majorities and powerful interests. For example, the New Mexico legislature explicitly exempted certain farm workers from the Workers’ Compensation Act in 1937, and from the Minimum Wage Act in 1966. Nationally, farm workers have faced exclusion from various labor, health, and safety laws. Consequently, farm workers have enjoyed few legal safeguards against the risk of injury and …