By JACK PALMER
palmer@crescent-news.com
Baldemar Velasquez vividly remembers his first visit to Defiance College nearly four decades ago.
"I was invited by professor Dante Germanotta to speak to one of his classes," recalled Velasquez, who founded the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) as a college student in 1967. "Afterwards he invited me over to his house for a cookout and we talked about social justice."
Velasquez returns to DC as opening night keynote speaker for the annual McMaster Symposium, which kicks off Wednesday. He will speak at 7 p.m. in Schomburg Auditorium.
"We kindled some interest that day at Defiance College and several students became FLOC volunteers," recalled Velasquez. "People like John Gage, Jack and Bev Osborn, Newton Brown volunteered for two or three years in Putnam, Henry and Fulton counties. Dr. Germanotta also helped us in many ways."
Velasquez has spent his life working for social justice for all peoples. He holds a degree in sociology from Bluffton University and honorary doctorates from Bowling Green State University and the University of Toledo.
Since opening the original FLOC office in downtown Ottawa, he has built the migrant farmworkers union into an international force. Its home office is now in Toledo.
His passion for the migrant cause was sparked by personal experience.
Born in Texas in 1947, Velasquez came to Midwest as a young boy with his family to work the fields planting, weeding and harvesting pickles, tomatoes, sugar beets and berries.
"The first winter in Ohio we were stranded in Port Clinton," he stated. "We ended up staying there five or six years before we were able to move in with friends in Putnam County. Our family lived in one room out of an abandoned farm house we shared with other Mexican families. My brother and I slept on the same couch. We didn't have any toys so we played games with the rats."
He started school, learned English and worked the fields with his family every summer.
"Every winter we got in debt in order to pay for food and other living expenses, so we went the summers getting out of debt. My dad believed strongly in paying back everything you owe, which took about eight years."
When Velasquez graduated from Pandora-Gilboa High School in 1965, he considered joining the Marines or getting a job to help his parents.
"I didn't think college was for Mexican kids," he said. "But my English teacher, George Vance, encouraged me. He said my grades were good enough and I could do it."
So Velasquez headed back to Texas to Pan American University, where he could live with his grandmother and hitchhike to class.
"It was the only place I could afford," said Velasquez. "I started out in engineering but quickly changed my mind. The area was a predominantly Mexican-American population and I saw that all the elected leaders and law enforcement were all white. It was the heyday of the civil rights movement and I saw the misery of farmworkers. I transferred to the social sciences."
With the help of a Catholic priest in Ada, he lined up financial aid to transfer to Ohio Northern University for his sophomore year.
"During my Christmas break that year from Ohio Northern, I volunteered for a week in the Hough section of Cleveland. I stayed in a house with rats and shared my own experiences as a boy. One of the men I worked with, an African-American, asked me why I wasn't doing something to help my own people."
By the following summer, Velasquez was helping northwest Ohio migrant workers have their own voice in the conditions that affected their lives.
Only 20 years old himself, he lived on bare necessities and was even arrested for distributing leaflets in migrant camps.
"I soon discerned that it was the agricultural corporations, rather than the growers, who controlled the conditions which affected the migrant workers," said Velasquez. "Most farmers were contracted in the crops we harvested and paid an amount per ton or other unit. The worker's piece rate had to surpass the break-even point or else the farmer wouldn't make a profit.
"The company pressed the farmer and the farmer pressed us for productivity," he continued. "I wondered if the company ever had an appreciation for those of us at the bottom of the supply chain."
Under Velasquez's visionary leadership, FLOC's focus began changing the structure of the agricultural industry through three-way negotiations among farmworkers, growers and corporations."
"It wasn't easy and it didn't happen overnight," he said.
In 1979, FLOC workers voted to boycott Campbell Soup Co. in their call for negotiations. Four years later, Velasquez led a 600-mile march of 100 farmworkers from Toledo to Campbell's headquarters in Camden, N.J.
"Campbell Soup realized we were not going away," said Velasquez.
In 1986, FLOC signed a historic three-way contract with the company and its tomato and pickle grower associations in Ohio and Michigan. This victory was soon extended to Heinz and other major food-processsing corporations in the Midwest.
Campbell Soup no longer uses northwest Ohio growers for its products, but FLOC has turned its attention to North Carolina and the Mt. Olive Pickle Co. Following a five-year boycott, FLOC signed contracts with the company and the North Carolina Growers Association in 2003.
"Our focus right now here in the U.S. is R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.," said Velasquez.
FLOC is also working in Mexico, where its mission is to educate Mexican workers about their obligations and rights before coming legally to the United States as H2A visa workers.
"There is a corrupt system in Mexico in recruiting workers by recruiters working for U.S. growers," said Velasquez. "Unscrupulous labor contractors lure workers to the U.S. with promises of a better life and decent wages, charging thousands of dollars of fees in the process.
"We're not going to clean up all the corruption in Mexico, but we need to educate the workers. Right now the North Carolina Growers Association are about the only ones running a clean ship."
Velasquez said he is looking forward to coming back to Defiance.
"The McMaster program is a phenomenal concept, taking young people and having them experience things that are different," he stated. "One of the ways you eliminate ignorance is through understanding."