Estrella, the protagonist in Helena María Viramontes’s novel Under the Feet of Jesus, lives in a world that many Americans refuse to look at. A world that many Americans do not or pretend not to know about. This is the world of the Latin American migrant worker. A 2017 article in the Los Angeles Times indicates that the number of jobs available in farm work are on the rise, yet the number of people willing to do said work is steadily declining. The Article states “the flow of labor began drying up when President Obama tightened the border. Now President Trump is promising to deport more people, raid more companies and build a wall on the southern border” (Kitroeff & Mohan 1). This is a clear-cut example of the American hypocrisy that exists in the popular discourse about Latin American migrant workers. The truth about this type of work is simple, American-born people do not want to do it, and people like Estrella and the piscadores of Viramontes’s novel are the ones who have no other choice. Through this novel, we can understand a part of the working class that is largely demonized and taken advantage of while doing the unpleasant work no one else will.
About the presenterAndrew Schlosser
Aspiring English professor and writer. Student at St. Joseph’s College in Patchogue on Long Island.