JINHA

NEWS CENTER – After a violently repressed two-month struggle, the agricultural laborers of Baja California's San Quintin Valley achieved the majority of their demands yesterday, including demands related to child labor and sexual abuse. Workers are continuing to fight for a higher wage.

The migrant workers in the San Quintin Valley largely come from indigenous communities to work in the fields in the northern state of Baja California. When they arrive, they encounter working conditions including low-paid and precarious labor and widespread sexual harassment of women workers.

Women's news agency CIMAC, reporting on working conditions for women in San Quintin, met with 20-year-old worker María, who wakes up at 3 a.m. every morning to make it to the fields and returns every night to care for her family. María described the role of the thick clothes she wears in the fields as not just protecting her from toxic chemicals, but from the harassment of overseers—extremely widespread. Now, with the recent agreement, workers have won their demand for measures to be taken against sexual harassment, after a long struggle.

Workers started their strike for better working conditions and pay on March 17. This past Sunday, as workers took the main highway in Baja California, police killed three and wounded 70 in their violent crackdown of the protests, hospitalizing seven. Police, who chased workers into their homes to beat them, arrested 17 workers, who were held on extremely high bail. As the workers organized a boycott in the U.S., the main market for their products, the Mexican government and the company finally sat down at the table for talks yesterday, in a negotiating session that lasted for 15 hours.

While the main demand of wages is still not resolved, so far workers have guaranteed a number of their demands, especially those for women and children.Workers will be included in social security, with pensions and healthcare, as required by Mexican law. There will be regular inspections related to both sexual violence and child labor.The workers have won educational and care centers for children and a hospital for workers, in addition to freedom for the workers arrested during the protests.

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