Cesar Rodriguez
Golden Leaf (Signed)
Published by KWY Ediciones, 2024
First Edition
Size: 21 x 29 cm
71 pages
Softcover
Languages: Spanish and English
Hoja dorada, or “golden leaf,” tells the story of the lives of tobacco workers who travel from the mountains of Jalisco, Nayarit, Durango and part of Zacatecas to the tobacco fields of coastal Nayarit, Mexico.
Most of the families are indigenous Wixaritari, Wixarika in the singular. Entire families who travel long distances to work in the region that was once called the Gold Coast because of the profits it left for the big tobacco companies, but not for the day laborers. The families often come from far away, on foot, and stay for the entire tobacco cutting season, which lasts about six months. They live in the same tobacco fields in very poor conditions, they sleep in enchanted tents, they cook in stoves made of the same clay they sleep on, and they bathe in irrigation canals contaminated with chemical pesticides.