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Crescencio
Bernardo is an older Triqui man who started migrating to the United States for work in the 1980s and was granted U.S. residency under an amnesty program. Ever since, he divides his time between his native Oaxaca and Alaska (where he works seasonally at a fish processing plant). In Oaxaca, he has witnessed severe violence related to a long conflict between the Mexican military and a local Indigenous militia. Many of his friends have died, and he was abducted and tortured by the government for several days eight years before Holmes met him. Ever since, he has suffered a severe stomachache that makes it difficult to eat. However, when he goes to a doctor in the U.S. for help, the doctor thinks his chest is hurting (not his stomach) and that he got injured while boxing (not at the hands of the Mexican army). He asks for the medicine that he already knows to work, but the doctors ignore him and bill him $3,000. In Oaxaca, Bernardo’s doctor is convinced that Triqui people make themselves sick by eating badly and sleeping in a bent-over position. Holmes explains that both doctors ignore the structural and political aspects of the violence that caused Bernardo’s pain. Instead, they blame him for it, which reinforces racist ideas about Indigenous Mexicans’ supposed behavioral and cultural inferiority.
Bernardo Quotes in Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies
The Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies quotes below are all either spoken by Bernardo or refer to Bernardo. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 4
Quotes
The suffering of Triqui migrant laborers is an embodiment of multiple forms of violence. The political violence of land wars has pushed them to live in inhospitable climates without easy access to water for crops. The structural violence of global neoliberal capitalism forces them to leave home and family members, suffer through a long and deadly desert border crossing, and search for a means to survive in a new land. The structural violence of labor hierarchies in the United States organized around ethnicity and citizenship positions them at the bottom, with the most dangerous and backbreaking occupations and the worst accommodations. Due to their location at the bottom of the pecking order, the undocumented Triqui migrant workers endure disproportionate injury and sickness.
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Chapter 7
Quotes
If health professionals responded to sickness by treating not only its current manifestations but also its social, economic, and political causes, we could create a realistically critical public health and a "liberation medicine." This latter term alludes to liberation theology, in which a reflective engagement with those who are poor and suffering leads to new ways of thinking and practicing theology in order to achieve social justice. While there is genuine need for the skills of narrowly trained, competent biomedical physicians, I am convinced this is not enough.
As shown by the health care experiences of Abelino, Crescencio, and Bernardo, medical skills practiced without recognition of the social structures causing sickness are doomed to address only the downstream, biological and behavioral inputs into disease. This leads to ineffective health care at best and complicit, injurious health care at worst.
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Bernardo Quotes in Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies
The Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies quotes below are all either spoken by Bernardo or refer to Bernardo. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 4
Quotes
The suffering of Triqui migrant laborers is an embodiment of multiple forms of violence. The political violence of land wars has pushed them to live in inhospitable climates without easy access to water for crops. The structural violence of global neoliberal capitalism forces them to leave home and family members, suffer through a long and deadly desert border crossing, and search for a means to survive in a new land. The structural violence of labor hierarchies in the United States organized around ethnicity and citizenship positions them at the bottom, with the most dangerous and backbreaking occupations and the worst accommodations. Due to their location at the bottom of the pecking order, the undocumented Triqui migrant workers endure disproportionate injury and sickness.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7
Quotes
If health professionals responded to sickness by treating not only its current manifestations but also its social, economic, and political causes, we could create a realistically critical public health and a "liberation medicine." This latter term alludes to liberation theology, in which a reflective engagement with those who are poor and suffering leads to new ways of thinking and practicing theology in order to achieve social justice. While there is genuine need for the skills of narrowly trained, competent biomedical physicians, I am convinced this is not enough.
As shown by the health care experiences of Abelino, Crescencio, and Bernardo, medical skills practiced without recognition of the social structures causing sickness are doomed to address only the downstream, biological and behavioral inputs into disease. This leads to ineffective health care at best and complicit, injurious health care at worst.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
