If the first cut is made correctly, the worker lifts the celery to a horizontal position parallel to the ground and makes the second cut, a sharp downward thrust with the straight edge of the knife, squaring off the first cut at the root. As he finishes this cut he loosens his hold on the knife to make a circular motion with his hand at the just squared-off root, trimming away the remaining loose strands and tendrils. While trimming these “suckers” he turns the piece of celery over with his other hand and then makes the third cut, which trims the top edge of the piece of celery and leaves it about fourteen inches long. Then he drops the celery on top of all the trimmed stalks that protect it from the dirt. When a worker is learning, he masters the strokes, develops his own style, and takes his time. An experienced apiero does the whole operation in one fluid motion, at a rate of about one piece of celery every three to five seconds.
People who can do it well are a sight to behold. The fastest cutter at West Coast Farms in the mid-1970s was nicknamed Tremendo. He was not tall; he had earned his name with his massive chest and arms. He had Indian features, came from a small town in Michoacán, and was particularly robust, on a job where everyone is vigorous. He was one of the younger men, in his early twenties. Piece-rate crews do not generally have teenagers on them; most people are between their mid-twenties and their mid-thirties, with a sprinkling of veterans in their forties and fifties, and sometimes even sixties. Very young men don’t have enough endurance to do this work, some apieros say, pointing out that long-distance runners (unlike sprinters) reach their peak when they are middle-aged. Others say that the young are too easily distracted to get through a season, or that the only way to make yourself do this work is if you face deep necessity and obligation, and the young have not lived long enough for that. Quite simply, they say, it is a job for family men, not bachelors. Tremendo, young and with neither wife nor children, was an exception on the crew.
His cutting technique was nothing to marvel at. What made him special was the energy with which he went about his task. He rarely straightened up or paused at the end of a row, and he seemed to get stronger as the day went on, like the NBA great Moses Malone, who at the height of his career came on strongest in the fourth quarter, earning himself the nickname Train, as in “this train just keeps on comin’.” Tremendo didn’t start quickly, but usually by midmorning he was ahead of the other cutters, and he always extended his lead in the afternoon. He worked alongside his compadre, Jose Olivarez, who was not as fast, so during the day Tremendo would move over to Jose’s row and give him a little ride, enabling the two men to remain close together as they worked. That in itself was not unusual; sometimes even three people would help one another out in this way. What was remarkable was that Tremendo could do it and still lead the crew.
One Thursday, Tremendo was challenged to a race. It wasn’t a formal challenge, not begun with a bet or a dare or even a word, as far as anyone could tell, and most of the workers didn’t even realize the race was happening until it was well under way. There was a man on the crew who usually worked as a closer, stapling shut the filled boxes of celery. He was called Manguera (“hose”), because his body was so flexible. He was also called el Joker, because he could do any job on the crew well—cut, pack, close, or make and distribute boxes. On Monday he had traded positions with a cutter and spent the whole day cutting, which was odd because the position of closing the boxes belonged to him by seniority, and closing is easier than cutting. He kept quiet about what he was doing, telling those who asked only that he wanted to “loosen up my back,” which, as Pablo Camacho later remarked, was like a scorpion saying he wanted to sharpen up his sting.
Manguera’s stroke was beautiful. Long and narrow, his movements fluid, he made the job appear effortless, as if the celery were gliding through his hands and floating to the ground below. He often made his first thrust of the knife so accurately and cleanly that he didn’t have to make the second cut. He just had to clean the end of the celery with the short circular motion of the side of his knife hand and then cut the top end off and drop it to the ground. By sparing himself the middle cut, he saved a lot of time. He worked Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this way, staying in the middle of the pack, loosening up his back. On Thursday, at some point before the morning break, Manguera, several rows away from Tremendo, was working ahead of him. This was not happenstance. It had to be a race.
It turned out to be a long race: about six hours, with a half hour for lunch and two ten-minute breaks. A marathon takes about three hours, and the competitors aren’t stooped over, with dangerous knives in their hands. The two cutters were soon working far ahead of the rest of the workers, who stood up for long periods to watch, thereby holding up the general progress of the day’s work. There was no clear finish line, as foremen hardly ever tell the crews how long they are going to work. How much apieros cut and pack depends on how many boxes the brokers will sell that day, and foremen say that if they were to tell the workers one thing in the morning it might change by the afternoon, so it is best not to tell them anything at all.
But if the foremen at West Coast Farms that day didn’t help the race by establishing a finish line, neither did they hurt it by hassling the two racers about the quality of their cuts or by telling the other workers to stop watching and hurry up. The race was the event of the day. Even the supervisor, who usually didn’t spend much time in the fields, spent a good part of the day watching the two men work.
Nothing dramatic happened. Neither man dropped dead of a heart attack. Nobody keeled over with a back spasm. No fingers were cut. Manguera now works as a high-in-demand handy man in Watsonville, a true joker, and suffers no particular aches and pains that he could trace to his years as an apiero and strawberry picker. Tremendo has not been so lucky. His chronic back pain earns him a small disability check but prevents him from doing physical labor. That is hard on him, but he and his wife have managed: they run licensed daycare out of their home that supports their family of five. Although that one-day race did not do him in, Tremendo’s bad back is certainly a legacy of his time in the fields.
Manguera built up a big lead. At lunchtime it looked insurmountable. But after lunch he began to fade, and on came the big train. As he gained on his challenger, Tremendo began to bellow out screams of joy. It was a slow process; Tremendo was gaining but Manguera did not collapse, and when the crew stopped for the afternoon break, the foreman marked the place where the cutting would stop for the day. The mark seemed to clinch victory for Manguera, as there didn’t seem to be enough time for Tremendo to catch him. And that is the way it happened, but with a twist. Twenty yards before Manguera got to the finish line, he straightened up and stopped cutting in his row. Then he walked over to Tremendo’s row and, starting at the finishing point, cut back toward Tremendo, giving him a ride. In no more than five minutes Tremendo’s row was done. Then the two of them walked back to Manguera’s row and finished the last twenty yards, talking, comparing strokes, standing up while they were trimming the celery, enjoying the end of the day together.
“It is back breaking work,” people say, and although backs don’t exactly break, back pain is nearly universal in the fields, and back injuries are common. The work stresses the muscles and the frame. From bending over much of the day, the muscles in the back get overstretched and strained. The long up and down muscles in the front of the torso get overcontracted, which is why it is hard to stand up at the end of a row. The overworked muscles sometimes spasm, and cause farm workers to spend days in bed on their backs or crawling around their homes on their knees. Also, while a worker is bent over, the front of the vertebrae get compressed, which over time causes arthritis. All of these conditions taken together—overstretched back muscles, overcontracted stomach muscles, overworked vertebrae—are dangerous to the discs between the vertebrae, and in the worst cases can cause those discs to bulge, slip, or rupture.
Agriculture ranks third (behind construction and transportation and public utilities) in nonfatal job-related injuries and illnesses in California. Nationally, “overexertion” is listed as the most prevalent cause of injuries on the