Sergio wins Centro Hispano Scholarship

Activist Eyes Better Treatment For Workers
The Banquet Speaker Called For More Respect For Undocumented Laborers.
Wisconsin State Journal
Saturday, November 5, 2005

The social and legal status of undocumented workers was the focus of Centro Hispano of Dane County's annual banquet Friday night. Labor activist Baldemar Velasquez thanked the advocacy organization for "opening the doors to make America what America is supposed to be for all the people" before a crowd of several hundred people at the Marriott Madison West hotel in Middleton.

Velasquez, 58, of Toledo, Ohio, has spent nearly four decades empowering migrant workers through the union he founded in 1967, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee. FLOC has brokered landmark contracts between powerful companies and the people who pick their produce.

"We're not asking for handouts. We're not asking for charity. We're asking for a fair day's pay for a fair day's work," said Velasquez, who was born in Texas to migrant workers and labored in the fields from the age of 6.

Velasquez illustrated workers' hardships through the case of Urbano Ramirez, a father of five who died in 2001 while harvesting cucumbers in North Carolina. Velasquez said Ramirez complained to a supervisor about heat stroke, and he was told to sit under a tree. That's where fellow workers found his body 11 days after the bus back to the labor camp left without him. "Who cares? He was just some disposable Mexican," he said.

In a bellow that mixed English and Spanish and invoked scripture, Velasquez implored the United States to change laws to protect immigrants with and without papers and allow them to get driver's licenses in every state. "God judges nations, not just individual men and women," he said. "If we want God to bless America, let's get America right with God."

Ten area students received scholarships for academic excellence, including a $1,000 scholarship for Sergio Barbosa-Mireles.

Recently retired educator Juan Morales was honored with Centro Hispano's annual Roberto G. Sanchez Award, named for a former UW-Madison professor. Morales, a former migrant worker himself who went on to earn a master's degree, spent 20 years supporting Latino students at Madison Area Technical College. Morales' message to the crowd, "Si, se puede," which was roughly translated as "Yes, we can," captured the determined mood in the room.