In the fields of southern Gran Canaria, where the sun scorches and the wind carries volcanic dust, women have been at the heart of the tomato harvest. But their work was marked by invisibility, exploitation, and the machismo imposed by the bosses and foremen of Las Palmas, who came to command them as if they owned their bodies and their days.
“When my period came, I had to make do with whatever I could get or lose my pay,” recalls Maruja, from Vecindario. Her hands bear calluses that still bear witness to the furrows of yesteryear. “There wasn't a place to stop, not a single break. My whole body ached, and I had to keep going. If I complained, they looked at me as if I were weak.”
“I started when I was twelve in Maspalomas,” says Rosita, adjusting her dirt-covered apron. “The boss would touch me more than once, and if I said anything, he wouldn't get paid. My mother would tell me: 'Suck it up, there's no other way here.' Some resisted, others sucked it up… we all learned to navigate between fear and need.”
In Ingenio, Antonia, just turned eighty, remembers the daily wages of the 70s: “We were paid 75 or 100 pesetas a day. That was enough to feed the whole family. The days were from sunrise to sunset, carrying boxes and folding tomatoes. More than one of us cut ourselves, sprained a finger, or fell off the boxes. Back pain and dust-ravaged lungs were part of the job, but they didn't even call it an illness.”
Women began to organize, albeit clandestinely. In 1978, some workers met in packing houses to discuss their rights, plan strikes, and demand better conditions. “They beat us, fired us, looked down on us,” recalls Lola, from San Bartolomé. “But some seeds of dignity were planted in those furrows.”
Menstruation, abuse, and everyday machismo were shadows that accompanied the harvest. “If you complained of pain, hunger, or humiliation, they called you lazy or rude,” says Carmen, from Vecindario. “We had to swallow the shame, the pinches, the 'come here' from the Las Palmas foremen, and keep loading tomatoes.”
Today, tomatoes from southern Gran Canaria travel halfway around the world, but the memory of these women lives on in every row. Each testimony echoes the machismo that survived among tomatoes and soil, the silence forced by necessity, and the strength of the women who kept the agricultural economy of southern Gran Canaria going despite everything.
“If anyone wants to know the truth about this trade, they should look at the furrows,” Antonia concludes. “There lies our history, with the sweat, the pain, and the dignity that no one wanted to tell.”
PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE HARVEST MUSEUM - BETANCORES WELL
