Indigenous Mexican Migrant Farmworker Health

Purpose: Mexican origin migrant farmworkers are the back bone of U.S. agriculture, and there is mounting evidence that this labor force includes increasing numbers of indigenous Mexicans coming from southern Mexico. Indigenous cultural practices combine with the social, political, and economic marginalization of indigenous Mexican communities, in both Mexico and the U.S. to limit access to and use of mainstream healthcare. In many U.S. farming areas, Nahaut, Zapotec, Mayan, Triqui, Mixtec, and other indigenous groups from Mexico are isolated from stable work, decent living conditions, and adequate health care. Indigenous groups suffer racism in Mexico and many come here with a fear of mainstream institutions because of prejudice, discrimination, and violence experienced back home (Holmes, 2007). When they come to the U.S., indigenous migrants endure the racism typically experienced by Mexicans from mainstream U.S. society, as well as that from non-indigenous Mexicans. As many speak little Spanish, no English, and come from historically marginalized cultures, migrant farmworkers of indigenous Mexican descent constitute one of our most invisible and vulnerable populations. A culturally and linguistically appropriate questionnaire was created to assess the health and mental health status of these individuals in an effort to identify how they might differ from similarly situated non-indigenous Mexican migrant farmworkers.

Method: In collaboration with health outreach services to migrant farmworker camps, data was collected from in-person interviews conducted by bilingual, bicultural health professionals and social workers with 179 migrant farmworkers in Oregon (146) and in New York State (33). A revised Spanish translation of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) was used to measure depression severity. In addition to demographic data, information was collected on mainstream, as well as ethnospecific diseases.

Results: Our sample was composed of 121 indigenous and 58 non-indigenous Mexicans. Indigenous workers did not differ significantly from non-indigenous workers in terms of age and gender. Looking at indigenous farmworkers, 40 percent could not read Spanish or English (33 percent of non-indigenous), 81 percent had less than 6 years of education (69 percent of non-indigenous), 72 percent were living with family (64 percent of non-indigenous), 29 percent reported sending more than half of their earning to family in Mexico (36 percent of non-indigenous), and 4.6 years was reported mean total time living in the U.S. (6.0 years for non-indigenous). Data analysis showed that 79 percent of indigenous farmworkers reported having lifetime prevalence of medical disorders compared to 91 percent of non-indigenous. Sixty seven percent of indigenous farmworkers reported having ethnospecific diseases (64 percent for non-indigenous); 12 percent having major depression (5.2 percent for non-indigenous); 37 percent having other depression (37 percent for non-indigenous). Logistic regression was conducted to test sociodemographic effects on prevalence of medical disorders and depression diagnostic categories.

Implications:

The data provides promising findings that may improve our understanding of indigenous migrant farmworkers health care needs and how the health care and social work profession can better meet their health care needs.