“For Others to Live as Humans”: Envisioning Mayan Dairy Worker Organizing in West Texas

Many factors in Guatemala’s history and present—such as the civil war and genocide, the “post-conflict” violence, and the economic situation—have contributed to the immigration of Guatemalans to the United States. However, an additional factor may explain the presence of a large number of the country’s Kiche-Speaking Mayans in a cluster of West Texas towns including Hereford, Friona, and Bovina: the usefulness of this supply of exploitable workers for dairy operators in the area. In their study of the meatpacking industry, Champlin and Hake showed how employers have facilitated “an immigration policy that tolerates or even encourages the hiring of low-wage immigrant labor while it demonizes the immigrant.” This ensures a cheap, non-union workforce which is made complacent by its precarious undocumented status. Much of the same can be said for the West Texas dairy industry: Guatemalans in the US are largely undocumented, and in this industry they earn low wages and are not unionized (Massey and Pren; Ribera et al.; Rodriguez). However, seeing as Guatemalans have a rich history of labor and Indigenous organizing, and those employed in dairies have poor working conditions and tight social structures, it is plausible to expect this complacency to be short-lived.  In this paper, I will provide background on the history of organizing and protest by Guatemalans, highlight key features of their working conditions and social structures in the dairy industry, and finally use these elements to envision the demands and methods of hypothetical worker organizing by Mayans in these facilities.

Guatemalan Organizing & Protest

In Guatemala, the period from the military coup in 1954 to the civilian government in 1986 was marked by extreme repression of the labor movement in the form of kidnappings, murders, and intimidation of activists. One worker who attempted to unionize his textile plant was blindfolded and taken to a room where his kidnapped coworker was “hanging still alive, his body in shreds”. In spite of this, a labor movement with lean membership but militant tactics persevered. In 1977, 70,000 workers went on strike, though many of them were not active in unions. Even after the urban counterinsurgency had eliminated most union structures, workers at the Coca-Cola Bottling Plant in Guatemala City had established, by 1985, an outspoken union with the highest factory wages in the city. When the company attempted to shut down the plant to eliminate their organization, they occupied it for a year and won reopening (Levenson Estrada).

Although the labor movement was mostly focused in the cities, Mayans in the countryside were also involved in a broad range of resistance strategies against the military government during this period. The tactics ranged from the politicization of cultural institutions, such as reinas indígenas (Indigenous pageant queens), to support of or participation in armed struggle with the major guerillas such as the Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres and the Organización del Pueblo en Armas. The Indigenous struggle combined cultural and class themes, using the foreign framework of Marxism to make claims for Indigenous social and economic rights. However, the genocide and civil war of the 1980s largely eliminated these forms of resistance, and the Mayan activism which emerged later had a more narrow cultural scope (Konefal).

After the genocide, civil war, and “post-conflict” violence drove many Indigenous Guatemalans to the United States, they became involved in labor struggles here, where the common union-busting tactics could not compare with the repression they had faced back home. These struggles have taken place mostly in the agricultural sector, where many Latino immigrants are employed. For example, Mayan immigrants played key roles in organizing the Case Farms poultry plant in Morganton, NC, and several meatpacking plants in Omaha, NE (Fink; Gabriel). Although they are frequently lumped in with other Central Americans in coverage, Guatemalan Immigrants have also participated in struggles such as Justice for Janitors in Los Angeles and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in the Florida tomato fields (Oglesby).

Working Conditions in Dairy

In the West Texas towns where the local Mayan community is concentrated, such as Hereford, Friona, and Bovina, the largest employers (and most visible landmarks) are dairies. To envision the demands that could be involved in workers organizing in these facilities, we must first understand the workplace issues that are present.

The most prominent issue seems to be health and safety. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of cases with days away from work per 100 full-time workers in the industry in 2023 was 1.8. This is in comparison with 1.6 for the broader “agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting”, and 1.0 for “all industries including private, state and local government”. In the same year there were 21 fatalities in dairy.

In our interview, Dr. Anabel Rodriguez described, in order, the top three sources of injuries on dairy farms: slips, trips, and falls; animal handling; and manure lagoons. Animal handling refers to risks such as being trampled by cattle, which is a particular danger with a herd of thousands. Manure lagoons (also called anaerobic lagoons) are storage spaces for manure which release toxic gasses and are highly deadly. Manure lagoons can cause chain fatalities, where one worker dies attempting to save another (Rodriguez). Dr. Rodriguez mentioned a recent extreme incident in Keensburg, CO, where six workers were killed by exposure to hydrogen sulfide (Thomas).

For this dangerous work, dairy workers receive low wages and inconsistent benefits. As of 2020, the average starting wage on U.S. dairy farms was $11.24, while the average hourly wage (excluding salaried workers) was $13.90. The same study found that only 58.1% of employees work at dairies which offer health insurance, and only 46.6% at dairies offering paid sick leave. Additionally, dairy workers seem to work long hours. The study lists the weighted average of days off per week as 1.4 and the average length of a milk shift as 8.5 hours. For calculations of yearly compensation, the report uses 2500 hours, explained as 50 weeks of 50 hours each (Ribera et al.).

Mayan dairy workers are often in particularly vulnerable positions. According to Dr. Rodriguez, many of them speak only Kiche and must rely on someone who speaks Spanish. Additionally, the benefits in Ribera et al. paint a picture of employers who provide many basic resources, such as housing and transportation, for their employees. While these are valuable benefits, they also give the employer greater leverage over workers.

Social Structures

Dr. Rodriguez offered some anecdotal insights into the social structures of Mayan workers in West Texas dairies. The management structure is made up of three layers, each of which has its own ethnic and linguistic characteristics. At the top, there are the producers (owners), who are usually white men of US origin. Below them, there are managers, who are usually Mexican, have been in the US for several decades, and speak Spanish. Finally, there are workers, a significant fraction of whom are Mayan and speak dialects of Kiche (Rodriguez).

The Kiche-speaking workers usually form a small group, based on kinship ties, which works together. (Workers at a plant often share a Guatemalan municipality of origin.) One member—someone with more experience in the US, for example—speaks enough Spanish to communicate with managers. This organic leader brokers communication for the entire group, who speak neither Spanish nor English (Rodriguez). This pattern appears widespread in Mayan immigrant communities, as The Maya of Morganton mentions a group of twenty Qanjobal workers who walked off the job at Case Farms in 1991 to protest a shortened shift. They communicated exclusively through a man named Don Pancho, who spoke Spanish.

Additionally, there are certain non-workplace social structures common to the Mayan community which may be key for organizing. In academic writing about Guatemalan diaspora labor organizing, soccer teams and religious communities are frequently mentioned as important sites (Fink; Gabriel). In one Omaha, NE, engagement with these institutions was key to beginning an organizing campaign among meatpacking workers (Gabriel). However, the valence of religious institutions is complicated: one worker interviewed by Fink explained his refusal to join the union with his Evangelical faith.

Demands and Methods

It is finally time to sketch what the demands and methods of organizing among Mayan workers at West Texas dairy plants could be.

Worker demands would likely focus on safety. Dairy operators have a variety of tools at their disposal to address existing safety issues, in line with the CDC Hierarchy of Control (Rodriguez). Workers could use this framework to identify and demand specific safety measures, such as gas meters near manure lagoons or training for animal handling. Besides safety, demands could focus on higher pay, stronger benefits, and shorter hours.

Organizing methods would take advantage of leaders identified through the community’s social structures. When assembling an organizing committee, the “organic leaders” of Kiche-speaking workgroups, as well as trusted members of soccer teams and religious groups, would be the top candidates. Organizing would have to take place primarily in Kiche, with Spanish used with the non-Mayan Latino workforce. 

Instead of a union organizing approach, which focuses on winning National Labor Relations Board elections and negotiating a collective bargaining agreement with the employer, a worker center model could also be considered. These are independent, community-based organizations which “combin[e] service provision with organizing and advocacy.” They are especially popular among immigrant groups and have been used frequently by Latino workers in the agriculture industry (Garrick).

Conclusion

Ultimately, workers are the only ones capable of organizing themselves, and when they finally do so, the knowledge of a single dairy worker will be far more valuable than this entire paper. If one conclusion can be drawn from its contents, it is that the Mayan dairy workers of West Texas will someday demand their dignity, as their countrymen have many times before. Although for these workers, in this context, it may seem unthinkable, they will simply face the same decision explained by one Guatemalan unionist, who spoke of organizing in the face of dictatorship: “You question yourself, whether you call life one thing which is not life, and whether you prefer to be a human being for a short time or a vegetable for a long time. You know that by choosing to be a human being for a short time you point the way for others to live as humans. I think this is the process most workers go through when they are in the labor movement” (Levenson Estrada).

Works Cited

• Bureau of Labor Statistics. “TABLE 1. Incidence Rates of Nonfatal Occupational Injuries and Illnesses by Industry and Case Types, 2021.” Www.bls.gov, 2023, www.bls.gov/web/osh/table-1-industry-rates-national.htm.
• ---. “TABLE A-1. Fatal Occupational Injuries by Industry and Event or Exposure, All United States, 2023.” Bureau of Labor Statistics, 19 Dec. 2024, www.bls.gov/iif/fatal-injuries-tables/fatal-occupational-injuries-table-a-1-2023.htm.
• Champlin, Dell, and Eric Hake. “Immigration as Industrial Strategy in American Meatpacking.” Review of Political Economy, vol. 18, no. 1, Jan. 2006, pp. 49–70, https://doi.org/10.1080/09538250500354140.
• Fink, Leon. The Maya of Morganton. UNC Press Books, 2024.
• Gabriel, Jackie. “Si, Se Puede: Organizing Latino Immigrant Workers in South Omaha’s Meatpacking Industry.” Journal of Labor Research, vol. 29, no. 1, Aug. 2007, pp. 68–87, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-007-9025-y.
• Garrick, Jessica. “How Worker Centers Organize Low-Wage Workers: An Exploration of Targets and Strategies.” Labor Studies Journal, vol. 46, no. 2, Jan. 2021, p. 0160449X2198942, https://doi.org/10.1177/0160449x21989429. Accessed 3 Apr. 2021.
• Konefal, Betsy. For Every Indio Who Falls : A History of Maya Activism in Guatemala, 1960-1990. University Of New Mexico Press, 2010.
• Levenson Estrada, Deborah. Trade Unionists against Terror : Guatemala City, 1954-1985. The University Of North Carolina Press, Cop, 1994.
• Massey, Douglas S., and Karen A. Pren. “Unintended Consequences of US Immigration Policy: Explaining the Post-1965 Surge from Latin America.” Population and Development Review, vol. 38, no. 1, Mar. 2012, pp. 1–29, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2012.00470.x.
• Oglesby, Elizabeth. “How Central Americans Expanded the U.S. Labor Movement.” YES! Magazine, 5 Sept. 2022, www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2022/09/05/immigrants-labor-movement-workers-rights.
• Ribera, Luis, et al. “A National Survey of Hiring, Compensation and Employee Treatment Practices on U.S. Dairy Farms.” Farmers Assuring Responsible Management, National Milk Producers Federation, Mar. 2020, nationaldairyfarm.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Nationwide-Dairy-Labor-Survey_FARM-Workforce-Development.pdf. Accessed 12 Nov. 2025.
• Rodriguez, Anabel. Health and Safety of Dairy Workers. Interview by Andrew Berka, 29 Oct. 2025.
• Thomas, Dillon. “What Is H2S? Dairy Expert Explains Toxic Gas That Likely Killed Six Northern Colorado Farm Workers.” Cbsnews.com, CBS News, 23 Aug. 2025, www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/h2s-dairy-expert-explains-toxic-gas-likely-killed-six-northern-colorado-farm-workers/.