For the migrant worker, the circumstances of a plantation worker in El Salvador are similar to that of an exploited worker in the U.S, as a result of capitalism. So in this project I’m tackling topics about the treatment of labor in the US and in El Salvador using coffee as a medium and painting on burlap coffee bags. 

My father who worked for pennies in the coffee plantation fields in El Salvador, is living proof that history is not too far from the present. The U.S. heavily relies on Latin America to produce large quatities of coffee and fruits (etc.) while exploiting the workers who live there. In El Salvador, there is a long history of workers mass protesting for unions and worker’s rights, and recieving harsh backlashes from the governement, military and wealthy landowners. Often than not, it is margenalized communities who are in the front lines of these protests. To this day, laborers still work under extreme conditions in El Salvador and other Latin American countries for U.S. companies that take advantage of deregulated worker’s rights. The same can be said for the migrants who come to the U.S. and are still working in farming fields, in the front line of the medical fields, and etc. With this new project I want to begin to discuss what intergenerational trauma means to real people.