THE REAL COACHELLA

Ask the average American what they think of when they hear “Coachella” and you’ll likely hear them talk about the influencer-choked music festival boasting legendary performances and larger-than-life headliners. The festival’s marketing team has done such a marvelous job branding the name Coachella over the last couple of decades, that the festival’s homepage is the first search result when one Googles the name. Over time, it’s become a spacetime famous around the world for an event that occurs each spring in Indio, but is virtually unknown for the half a billion dollars worth of harvested fruits and vegetables each year by migrant laborers struggling to survive every day in anonymity.

On the first weekend of the Coachella Festival 2017, while an estimated 125,000 people from all 50 U.S. states (and approximately 19 other countries) descended upon the Empire Polo Club grounds, Layel and I arrived in downtown Indio, albeit for a different reason: to learn about the REAL Coachella.

During the three days we were there, we had an opportunity to visit with various residents of East Coachella Valley, all who told us about their lives and their hopes for the valley.

These are three of their stories.

NORTH SHORE AND THE SALTON SEA

Conchita greeted us with a timid smile at the gate of her driveway. The sun was blazing directly overhead, the day bright and warm. Spring was still yawning in the valley.

“It’s such a beautiful day today,” she said as she led us to a folding table set up under the shade of a carport on her driveway, where she had already set out sealed water bottles for us. “I enjoy this time of year; it’s not too hot. But when summer arrives, that’s when the smell of death also comes from the lake.” She pointed south towards the horizon, and as I squinted in the direction she was pointing, I realized the shiny wavy mirage off in the distance was actually the surface of California’s largest lake: the Salton Sea. “It’s a three minute drive from here. As you can imagine, the smell is very strong.”

**Conchita displays some of her tejidos.**

For the past five years, Conchita and her family have lived in their small home in North Shore, an unincorporated area in Eastern Coachella Valley situated on the north rim of the Salton Sea. Most of North Shore has been abandoned by former inhabitants who purchased property during the real estate boom of the ’60s and ‘70s. Today, most residents are migrant Latino agricultural workers who live in mobile homes. Conchita, originally from Michoacan, migrated with her husband to the valley, where he’s been able to consistently find work. Together, they have one child and another on the way. Over time, she grew acclimated to the weather, even growing fond of the serenity of the valley. But summer turns her family’s living situation into an inescapable nightmare.

Since the early 1970s, the Salton Sea undergoes a harrowing phenomenon every summer: masses of its fish die. Over the years, residents became accustomed to seeing tens of thousands of fish carcasses floating onto the shores of the lake every summer. But the last couple of decades have seen an increase in fish die-offs.

Over the years, as the salinity of the lake steadily increased (it’s now saltier than ocean water), all of the freshwater fish disappeared, leaving a few saltwater species to thrive. But then, even saltwater fish began to die en masse. On August 4th, 1999, the largest recorded body-count at the Salton Sea for one single day occurred, with approximately 7.6 million fish found floating to the surface of the lake. Since then, the lake continues to claim hundreds of thousands of tilapia fish every summer, some years delivering higher counts than others.

In the early 2000s, scientists discovered that fertilizer runoffs from nearby agricultural grids, along with the hot summer temperatures create the perfect environment for massive algae blooms in the lake. When the algae dies, it sinks to the bottom, where it sits and decays. The summer winds then disturb the waters enough to stir all the decaying matter at the bottom, bringing unoxygenated waters loaded with hydrogen sulfide towards the surface, suffocating millions of fish and burping a pungent stench so potent that it can be smelled anywhere throughout the valley.

It’s not entirely clear who is responsible for clearing the dead fish. The north tip of the lake is located in Riverside County, the rest in Imperial County. Riverside County won’t clean up the fish, Imperial County can’t afford to do so. As a result, the carcasses of the fish remain floating on the surface of the lake as they begin to decompose, and all those bits of putrefied matter sink right back down to the bottom of the lake, where it all sits, waiting to be resurrected towards the surface during the next windstorm. This cycle continues throughout each summer, resulting in hundreds of thousands of fish ending up the banks of the evaporating lake, rotting in the sun until all that's left are sunbleached skeletons. On some days, depending on the wind, Los Angeles (130 miles away) can catch a whiff of the lethal gasps of this dying lake.

“You should come back during the summer to smell it for yourself. Nothing I say can prepare you for what it’s really like,” Conchita smiles as she settles herself into her chair. “We stay indoors as much as possible to escape the smell, but… it’s everywhere. Even on the hottest days, we don’t open the windows or turn on the air conditioning. I buy scent removers, air fresheners, and candles. Nothing helps.”

Conchita went on to speak about life on the North Shore: it’s quiet and peaceful, the sun is always shining, the people are friendly, the birds are always singing. But there’s also a lot of need in her community. The missing amenities often lacking from many unincorporated areas throughout California’s agricultural communities include sidewalks, street lights, traffic signs, refuse collection, public transportation, and parks. Other problems are closer to home.

“We just got connected to the water system a couple of years ago. It’s nice to finally have clean water in our house after being so accustomed to only using bottled water. But we still don’t have a sewage system. We have to pay to empty out our septic tank once every few months, and it’s expensive. If we don’t empty it, we can’t even bathe because the sewage will overflow back through our shower drain. If the city could help with at least half of the fee, it’d help us save for our children’s futures.”

Her involvement in organizing her community has made her confront the reality of what’s on the horizon for her family if the severe issues surrounding the Salton Sea are not addressed.

For instance, the lake has been shrinking, with water evaporating quickly in the summer heat. And although the lake is fed by the Whitewater River, Alamo River, and the severely polluted New River, together they don’t deliver nearly enough water to sustain the lake’s water levels. More problematic is the sewage and agricultural runoffs into the lake containing fertilizer and pesticides, resulting in toxins (arsenic, selenium, chromium 6, zinc, lead, and DDT) sitting on the lakebed for decades. And since the lake is largely flat, the water level dropping even six inches means hundreds of square acres of lakebed are left exposed to the gale-force winds the valley is known for, whipping up tons of the toxic dust into the air, affecting everyone in the area. Indio has some of the worst particle air pollution in the nation, Coachella Valley has the third highest asthma rate in California, and Imperial County has the second highest rate of emergency department visits for children due to respiratory issues. If California doesn’t address the impending doom of the Salton Sea, the air quality for the entire area of Southern California - and across the U.S./Mexico border into Mexicali - could result in catastrophic rates of severe respiratory diseases and cancers.

North Shore is literally the front line of this apocalyptic scenario. Conchita is well aware of this.

As she showed us some of her stitch handiwork and figurines her mother molded and painted, she mused, “I’d love to stay here. For the Salton Sea to be cleaned. I could see myself taking my children to play in the lake while I set up a little booth to sell my art to tourists so that I can make a little bit of extra money. It could be such an enjoyable place for all who’d visit to see the beauty of North Shore. We need help. For the sake of my children. They are the future of this country.”

**Conchita shows us some of her tejidos.**

Once our conversation was over, she led us back out to the street. Before we were able to take off to our next destination, Conchita urged us, “Please take the water bottles. You need to stay hydrated and the water around here is not good.”

We took them and thanked her. Off in the distance, a young man revved his ATV four wheeler, ready to race between abandoned houses decaying amidst the desert brush.

Thermal, EAstern Coachella Valley

We arrived in a small trailer park community after a short drive along the northern lip of the Salton Sea, where we saw vast grids of various crops (melons, cabbage, carrots, spinach, artichokes, garlic, etc.) and many date palm tree farms. In the agricultural world, Coachella is best known for its date output.

The trailer park is surrounded by a date farm, with palm trees standing neatly in rows about half a mile long each. As we stepped out of our vehicle, our guide pointed us towards a white mobile home bordering the southern fence separating the park from a field of palm trees. Out front was a short, round woman with a big red smile talking to a man who was on his way out of the park in his rusted 1970s Ford F150 truck. As we approached her, we heard her laugh loudly as he sped off.

“That guy is crazy! A real joker!” she said to us before introducing herself. Her name is Sonia. Behind her, sitting on a violet folding camping chair in the shade is her neighbor and close friend, Delfina. She stands and approaches us and we all go through another round of introductions.

Sonia beckons us closer to her mobile home. “Come! Pull up some chairs and we’ll talk here in the shade. Would you like some water?” Before we could respond, she disappeared into her trailer only to reemerge with half a dozen water bottles cradled in her arms. We each took one.

Sonia and Delfina are both field laborers, mothers, and migrants from Mexico. Sonia has lived in the park for eight years, Delfina for 14. When they’re not working in the fields, they are advocates for their trailer park, working closely with several organizations operating throughout the Coachella Valley to help improve living conditions for the many who live in unincorporated areas.

A few months prior to our meeting, they scored a major win for the trailer park after a long and arduous legal battle lasting several years: the landlord finally agreed to have a sewer line installed. Sonia pointed to a gaping hole dug out across the bypass of her trailer home, long and deep enough to be a decent-sized pool.

“Look at how big that hole is! The sewer line is tiny in comparison!” she laughed. “It’s great that we’ll finally have this line. We’ve all had to share that septic tank over there,” she pointed to the park’s west fence, approximately 150 feet from her trailer. “The tank would overflow into a ditch dug outside of the fence, and it’d all just sit there in the sun, attracting flies and mosquitos. On rainy days, it’d overflow onto the road, feces and all. And later, we’d see children running around, playing in the water, unaware of the waste. They’re just kids; they don’t know any better. But if you can imagine, seeing our babies rolling around in human shit as they play. We couldn’t live like that anymore.”

“We have clean water now, too,” said Delfina. “We got new pipes and access to the city lines about three years ago. Before, we used to have to drive really far to buy water because whatever came out of our faucet was bad for us; you’d open the faucet in the morning and it’d just smell bad. We were told not to drink the water because it had high levels of arsenic. So we'd spend more than $100 on water bottles every month. The faucet water now is supposed to be good, but you just never really know. It’s hard to trust anything they tell us.”

The park’s location presents challenges for its inhabitants. Since they’re surrounded by the date farm and various fields of produce, residents are vulnerable to chemical and pesticide exposure, as well as the mechanical pollination of the date trees. According to Sonia, as soon as the trees start to flower, workers climb the trees to pollenate them with old spray pumps. Delfina said, “Once they start spraying, the kids start sneezing. Over time, their allergies turn into asthma. The asthma then turns into other respiratory problems that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.”

**Sonia stands outside of her home, the date farm trees behind her.**

“Forget about the pollen,” Sonia said, “Helicopters still spray pesticides in the fields surrounding our trailer park. You can see it as they come in; at first, you think that it’s a regular helicopter. But then it gets close to the ground and you know what they’re doing. We’ve been told to report it when it happens, as it’s supposed to be more heavily regulated now. But very little has changed. We complained to the owners of the date farm that the fumes and pollen were affecting our children, and the workers were ordered to stop spraying. We no longer see them up in the trees during the day, but we know they still spray. We suspect that they do it at night because we still smell the fumes. It worries me that the fumes may overpower us one night and we may not wake up the next morning.”

Both women went on to describe what it was like working in the fields. Sonia works as a field hand, picking bell peppers. “It’s my specialty!” she proudly proclaimed. Delfina has worked picking various crops, going wherever there is work.

“The worst thing about working on the fields is dealing with the chemicals they spray on the crops: fertilizer, untreated water, pollen, chemicals that smell like dead fish and pesticides. Touching and breathing all that stuff while we’re out there is bad. Look at me,” Sonia signaled to her upper chest, “I’ve got bumps and rashes that don’t go away.” Visible on her upper chest, directly below her neckline, were angry red splotches of skin.

Delfina recounted, “My husband and I used to work in the fields in Mexico. Back then, my husband had beautiful brown clear skin! And then, we moved here. In just a couple of weeks, he began to get rashes all over this body. We went to a doctor who prescribed some medication, but the rashes didn’t go away. He sent us to another specialist who told us that the rashes seemed to be an allergic reaction to a chemical sprayed on the crops. But what could we do? He has to work. He still goes out into the fields.”

**The date farm that surrounds Sonia and Delfina’s mobile home community.**

Both women spoke about people they worked with on the fields who they knew had severe respiratory problems including lung and oral cancers. They mentioned women who have had miscarriages or given birth to children with different birth defects like cleft lips.

Sonia continued, “With all the spraying they do around here, one can’t really be outside for too long. How are we supposed to be healthy if we can’t even go outside for a walk without having to breathe all the fumes? And then, we have to drive very far to go to a supermarket. Given our wages, we have a strict budget. We know our diet is not the healthiest. But if you only have $40 to buy food for the whole week to feed yourself and your family, would you buy broccoli for $3 that would last you for one meal, or a 10-pound bag of potatoes for $3 you could stretch for 3-4 days? These are the decisions we must make as mothers. We don’t want to fail our children, but… these are our options.”

We asked them to share thoughts about the Coachella Festival. Sonia laughed, “We’re going to be working there later today! I’m going to be hanging out with rockstars!”

“I’m just going to be picking up trash,” smiled Delfina.

For them, working at the festival is a reprieve from their lack of work. At the time of this interview, they’d been out of work for over a month, as the harvests were delayed due to the cold season lasting longer than usual this year.

“It’s a nice opportunity for nine days to make a little bit of money while we wait for the harvest to begin,” said Sonia, “We’ve already been waiting for a month. We’re ready for the work to begin!”

As the conversation ensued, we learned more about their trailer community. There are about 80 trailers in this park, each with a family. Though the majority of the inhabitants live here on a permanent basis, some are seasonal residents who migrate throughout the San Joaquin Valley, going wherever the harvests call them.

Sonia and Delfina fondly recount spontaneous cookouts, which start when someone decides to light their grill out front of their trailer. The community members look out for each other’s children, exchange food, and help each other in whatever ways they can. This has made Sonia and Delfina’s advocacy work easier, as they’re able to organize their neighbors over impromptu BBQs or communicating concerns about their children to the other mothers in the park.

“Imagine trying to do this in a city,” said Sonia. “You city people don’t know community like this. It’s a way of life for us here. It’s the only way to make it.”

We wrapped up our conversation and thanked them for their hospitality. Right before we started walking back to our car, Delfina asked us if we had made it out to the Salton Sea shoreline yet. We told her we hadn’t, but it was on our itinerary of sites to see before we left the valley. She nodded her head.

“You really should. During the summer, it smells TERRIBLE around here. If we put laundry out on the clothesline to dry and forget to bring it all in after a couple hours, the smell will work itself into the fibers of the clothes and will reek like dead fish. We have to rewash the clothes again. If there's no money for more detergent, we have to walk around smelling like death. Everybody around here recognizes the smell. It's horrible."

Undocumented and

Living on a reservation

Driving onto this reservation in Thermal is crossing into a different world.

Riverside County officials estimate there are approximately 100-200 illegal trailer parks (known as Polanco Parks by the locals) throughout the valley, though other estimates puts the number as high as 500. The larger and legal parks are typically located off of main highways, while hundreds of smaller unpermitted parks are located off of remote dirt roads and on private property, entirely obscured from passersby. Some parks spontaneously appear as different harvest seasons begin, withering into ghost towns when the work has moved on. Others are permanent locales, home to residents who stay in the valley year-round. The population of Coachella fluctuates throughout the year, with around 800,000 people in the valley for various harvests during the early part of the year, and then dropping to 200,000 people towards the middle of summer.

In this particular park, we found ourselves approximately 25 minutes from the Coachella festival grounds, on the Torres Martinez Indian Reservation. There are about 100 trailers in this property, the majority being impoverished Latino fieldworkers living in squalor. Their average yearly income is less than $10,000, with most residents living on this reservation because it’s all that they can afford. Most of the trailers do not have heat, hot water, air conditioning, or drinkable water. They constantly undergo power outages as well as plumbing issues that result in raw sewage flowing throughout the property. An average of eight people live in each mobile home, though some upwards of 30 people.

These illegal parks on the reservation came to be when Riverside County began closing unpermitted trailer parks in 1998 after several fatal fires broke out in a few illegal parks from questionable electrical wiring. County officials began to push to hold landowners liable for the parks, threatening to sue those who did not have the proper permits and leases for their tenants, as well as those who did not work with county inspectors to conduct walkthroughs to make sure all housing codes were met.

At first, the county was met with significant pushback from community advocates and religious organizations who feared that this initiative would condemn thousands of people to homelessness. Eventually, county officials relaxed their approach, offering different loan and grant programs to any trailer inhabitant who could procure proper paperwork to demonstrate ownership of their trailer. However, because most trailers had exchanged hands multiple times, resulting in lost paperwork, the initiative turned out much more complicated to accomplish. Additionally, a significant percentage of the residents were undocumented and refused to come forward for fear of legal repercussions regarding their immigration status.

In the end, the county backed off. But by the time they did, the crackdown had instigated a mass exodus of residents moving their trailers onto various illegal parks throughout the Torres Martinez reservation, away from the scrutiny of county inspectors. Since the reservation is outside of local and state jurisdiction, housing regulations and zoning laws do not apply. If there is no accountability to make certain a park is up to code for their inhabitants, then there is no real effort to make it livable and sustainable, putting residents at the complete mercy of the land owners. Unfortunately, authorities cannot intervene on behalf of the residents nor can they shut down the parks. Only the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) can do so.

In 2007, the BIA officially deemed trailer parks on the Torres Martinez reservation illegal because none had issued bureau-approved leases to any of the residents. The BIA began to push for action in the US Court for the Central District of California in 2009, aiming to close the biggest park on the reservation: Duroville. This infamous slum park was located next to a dump (operated by a tribal member) from 1992 to 2007, and was home to 300 trailers tightly packed on 40 acres. Out of the nearly 5,000 residents, most were Mexican farm workers and their families.

Duroville made national headlines for its dire third-world living conditions: desperate widespread poverty, crowded dilapidated trailers, substantial filth and waste, packs of vicious feral dogs roaming the park’s dirt roads, irregular access to water and power, and consistent exposure to the toxic smoke and poisonous dust emanating from the nearby dump that gave children nosebleeds. After years of litigation, a new trailer site (complete with new mobile homes) was finally developed in 2012 just six miles from the park, where all of Duroville’s residents would relocate. Duroville was officially ordered closed by a federal judge in 2013 and was entirely demolished by the end of that same year.

Even though the reservation’s biggest and bleakest park was closed, smaller ones continue to operate throughout the reservation. And because the circumstances of these parks are not as extreme as that of Duroville, very little has been done to help alleviate the situations of those living in them.

It’s in one of these small unnamed parks where we met Maria. As we walked up to the gate surrounding her trailer, we saw her sitting on a bench in the shade as she watched over her three children in the middle of play. She slowly got up and hobbled over to the gate to let us in; we couldn’t help but immediately notice that she was expecting her fourth child in the very near future. We stepped into her little yard and a small puppy -whom the children named “Regalito” (“Little Gift”)- ran up to us and started sniffing my shoes. I bent over to pet it and instantly noticed several lentil-sized fleas engorging themselves on the dog’s irritated flesh. I’d never seen fleas so big in my life.

Maria’s trailer and its surroundings were in absolute decay. There was garbage strewn everywhere just outside of the trailer’s fence: old faded plastic bags, car parts, a broken washing machines, rusted electrical appliances, filthy mattresses and ripped box springs, bald car tires half buried in the sand, remnants of a demolished mobile home, and flies buzzing above piles of refuse. It was a bit shocking to see children play with all this filth surrounding them; we often relate these scenes to third-world nations. But just half-an-hour from the Coachella festival, this is how people live.

Maria is a warm-hearted migrant indigenous woman from Guatemala who has been living on the reservation for 14 years. Her native tongue is Mam, an indigenous language from rural Guatemala. Over the years, she’s learned enough Spanish to communicate with her neighbors and to find jobs, but has had a very difficult time learning English. Her family shares the trailer with five other adults. Both Maria and her husband are fieldworkers, each making approximately $8 an hour picking broccoli. They’re also both undocumented. A decade ago, her husband was deported back to Guatemala and it took them both several months to gather $5,000 to finance his smuggling back into the United States.

When asked about what it’s like living on the reservation, she shrugged and said, “I don’t like the trash. People come from outside of the reservation and dump their trash here. During hot weather, it smells like dead animals. We don’t turn on the air conditioning because the smell gets into our trailer. Sometimes the land owners blame us for the trash that appears near our trailer and they fine us. We have no choice but to pay. ”

Illegal dumping has been a major concern for many of the park’s residents. According to the EPA, the Torres Martinez reservation is home to some of the worst illegal and toxic dumps of any tribal reservation in California, Nevada, and Arizona. To date, the EPA has managed to close half of the dumps located on this reservation. But even still, the illegal dumping and burning of trash continues, often near the mobile home parks.

She went on to explain some of the other challenges of living on the reservation. For instance, as they are not on county grounds, they do not have access to county water pipelines. On this particular park, residents pay for water that is sourced from a well on the reservation. Despite the landlord’s efforts to treat the water, Maria describes it as undrinkable. During times of drought, she says that muddy water comes out of the faucet, and when it clears up, the water smells and tastes very strongly of bleach. Not wanting to expose her family to bad drinking water, she and her husband spend over $120 on water bottles per month.

Theft is also a big problem on the reservation. Maria described several occasions of tools and property disappearing from her trailer, as well as instances of men trying to break into her home while she and her children were alone inside. Fearing interacting with police on these matters, she’s taken her concerns to her landlord.

“First they ask me if I’ve paid my rent. I remind them that we always do. Then they say that they’re going to look into it. But nothing ever happens. I fear for my children. I don’t dare leave them alone, even for just a little bit while I go buy something from the store,” she said.

We inquired about her thoughts regarding the Coachella Festival. She looked confused. 14 years of living in the area and she had never heard of the festival until we asked her about it.

We asked her about what she’d like for herself and for her family. She smiled and shyly shrugged while crossing her arms and resting them on her protruding belly. We sat in silence before she said,

“I don’t like living like this. But moving is not an option. We don’t earn enough to afford living anywhere else. It’s hard to find better jobs without an education. I still struggle with Spanish. I’ve gone to adult school to get a GED, but even the basic courses are too advanced for me. But at least I can read a little in Spanish. Many others around here can’t read at all.”

She went silent for a minute, looking out into the sky before continuing.

“I often think back to where I grew up. I felt free. We grew our own food, we washed our clothes in the river, we had clean water, the air was crisp and clean. Finding jobs was very hard, but at least we were free. Here, we don’t even have a voice. To speak up means to lose everything we have. But we can’t go back. What would we go back to? It’s all very different now. And my children? We need to stay here for my children.”

As we were leaving, Maria asked her daughter to run inside the trailer to get some water bottles for us. We politely declined. Maria insisted until we showed her our bottles as proof that we were doing our part to stay hydrated. She smiled and waved goodbye, Regalito standing beside her, sleepily sending us off with a big puppy yawn.

Even if we didn’t have any, I’m not sure that I could have taken any from a family who counts on each individual water bottle to survive.

These three interviews weren’t the only ones we conducted. We spoke to an elderly gentleman who worked as a field laborer all of his life, up until he was 72 years of age. We spoke with a woman who recounted working upwards of 18 hours a day (a day shift and a night shift) for years at a time in order to make ends meet and provide for her seven children. We hung out with a UC Berkeley graduate who returned to her parents’ small trailer community in Thermal to live with her family and work to better the conditions of the people of ECV. We spoke with an artist who runs an art studio in downtown Coachella and who was instrumental in bringing the Coachella Walls art initiative to the small community.

The interviews took us to various different corners of the valley, and several times we found ourselves driving by the front gates of the raging party that was Coachella Festival 2017. As we’d sit in traffic, waiting for an event officer to wave us through to the next line of vehicles, we’d gaze at all the young people trekking to and from the event on the sidewalks, wondering if any of them had the desire to explore what was just yonder the festival’s fences. We wondered if any of them had made it to the silent crunchy graveyard shores of the dying Salton Sea, if any of them had seen the vast fields of various crops of fruits and vegetables that ultimately make it to their local grocery stores, if any of them ventured into downtown Coachella to see the touching tributes to the field laborers painted on the walls of different buildings. We wondered if any of them actually knew that there’s a thriving community in Coachella that was there long before event organizers first thought to bring the music function to the valley.

We arrived here knowing that there was more to Coachella than just the manufactured experience of entertainment for today’s youth. Every person we spoke with gave us a narrower and deeper understanding of the resilience, strength, and valor of the unseen people of Coachella. The fields of the ECV are worked by people who want nothing more than to care for their families. The youth of Coachella dream about leaving the valley and never returning while older generations worry and lament that their best efforts were not enough for their children. And as the field laborers age and their children leave the valley, newly-arrived migrants take on the responsibility of caring for the fields for poverty wages, feeding a nation that expects too much from them yet takes them for granted in the worst kinds of ways.

This is the real Coachella.

And when the party is over, the struggle continues. Just like it always has.