Nina's Song: Honoring a Farmworker who Died

Editor: Nandini Gunewardena, author of "Pathologizing Poverty: Structural Forces versus Personal Deficit Theories in the Feminization of Poverty" that appears in our winter, 2009 issue on "The Hidden Dimensions of Poverty: Rethinking Poverty and Education," sent in this e-mail. Dr. Gunewardena gave us permission to reproduce it on our blog. The author can be reached at: nandini@ucla.edu Nina’s song, in commemoration of the life and death of farmworker, Agustin Gudino, gives a human dimension to our articles.

POST FROM AUTHOR, NANDINI GUNEWARDENA

This is to share the poignant song composed and sung by twenty-year old Nina Marie Fernando, my niece (Ramani's daughter), a junior at Redlands University, in memory of a farm worker Augustin who died in the Grape fields due to heat stroke on July 21st, 2005 in Kern County.

She sung this at a prayer vigil last week in downtown L.A. for all farm workers who have died in the fields, including the pregnant teen who died recently - part of her work as an intern at CLUE (Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice), Los Angeles.

The words are below. Click on this link youtube.com to listen to Nina's haunting voice, and enter "Nina Fernando" in the search field to get to the song. [Or go directly to:

Nina Performs "Agustin's Song" ]

Agustín’s Song

by: Nina Marie Fernando

Escuchanos en los campos
Nuestro dolor y nuestro sueño
Queremos ver los colores
De justicia y unidad

Remember us at your table
How each fruit was plucked with a dream
How we thirst to be acknowledged
How we hunger to be seen

I became a sacrifice
To the sun that gives us life
We are lost, apathetic, in darkness
Shine a path toward what is right
I came here with nothing in my hand

But I had strength in my heart
My voice was silenced, my strength exploited
Now hear my plea
As I stand, take my hand