Pounding Grapes
Juliana Aragón Fatula
After Xavier Viramontes’s Boycott Grapes, Support the United Farm Workers Union, 1973, offset lithograph
The maple leaves still green. The silent rain falls like bullets. An old woman tries to open her trunk and drops her keys. She bends to pick them up, her oranges roll out of the bag and down the hill toward Ninth Street. I continue walking into the Hilltop Market. I search for bargains in the produce section. As advertised in the ads: Grapes $1.69 a pound. Lettuce $1.09 a head. Organic cantaloupe $2.50 each. Why are they so expensive? I can’t afford to buy fresh produce for my kids. How the hell did my parents afford fruits and veggies when I was a kid? This is ridiculous. I pop a grape in my mouth and suck the fruit out of the skin. Seedless, tasty. I grab a handful of grapes, look around, no one watching. Plop. Mmmmm. I grab two handfuls and begin to squeeze.
“Can I help you ma’am? Finding everything today?”
I scoot away. “I’m fine, just picking grapes,” I mutter, almost caught purple-handed.
Two kids plus me and their dad in a five-bedroom house. Struggling to make a living in the city. Delicious. Purple juice dribbles down my face. I quickly wipe it with my sleeve and move on to the lettuce. That’s outrageous, I think to myself. I return to the grapes and grab two handfuls and shove them in my mouth. I love the scent, the color, the texture, the taste. I put my hands in the grapes and pound them with my fists.
I remember the revolution. My grandparents, braceros, working in the fields for pennies. My parents working two jobs and still not able to pay the rent. I remember the Boycott Grapes poster in my first apartment. Viramontes the artist. I remember his name because his first name began with an X and his last name with a V and that was so cool. Xavier Viramontes.
I had not been a part of the revolution. I wasn’t even born yet, but the poster reminded me of my grandparents and that’s why I hung it on the wall. To remember: ten kids plus Mom and Dad in a two-bedroom house. Struggling to make a living working in the fields, braceros in Northern New Mexico, migrating to southern Colorado, picking lettuce and grapes from sunrise to sundown. The Children of the Sun.
I put my two fists together and pound the grapes. Will the next generation know what the symbol represents? How to make picket signs and protest for justice? Why they had to boycott grapes? How solidarity brought them to unity and gave them a voice? Will they see Boycott Grapes and comprehend what was learned 50 years ago in the Delano grape strike?
The United Farmworkers: the eagle, symbol of la causa, an image of an Aztec warrior chief pounding grapes between his fists. His headdress and jewelry show a rich man with an angry face, the grape juice drips between his fists and onto the words below. The campesinos, farmworkers, went on strike and refused to work. I see the faces of all of those brave men and women who took a stand and fought not with violence but with peaceful protest and picket signs.
My hands stained purple. I walk away, wipe them on my jeans. In the parking lot I see an elderly woman trying to load her groceries into her car. I stop to lend a hand, a purple hand. Then I hug the old woman, smile, and continue on my way singing, Unidos en la huelga, no nos moverán.