Synopsis:
Pedro: A Journey to Activism by Liesl Cohn De León
Pedro, a 37-year-old Mayan-Chuj from Nentón, Huehuetenango, arrived in Oregon as a teenager. He worked in nurseries and the grape and blueberry fields for several years. In 2019, there was a car accident where Pedro’s cousins died and his father went into a severe coma for several months. Two years after that tragedy, in 2021, Pedro’s uncle died working in the fields due to extreme heat. The organization Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN) helped Pedro to overcome these difficult times, providing him with emotional and legal support, which made him reflect on the lives of his paisanos, so he decided he wanted to help other indigenous farmworkers who experience the same difficulties for them to learn their rights. Now, Pedro works as an indigenous leader and activist at PCUN with the Guatemalan community in Woodburn.
Producer’s Bio:
Liesl Cohn De León is a Cultural Anthropology doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oregon. Her current research is about how Guatemalan Maya migrants in Oregon build their identities and sense of community in this new territory as a process of construction of collective memory.
