Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and the San Quintín Justice Plan
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Activism
/ February 23, 2026
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and the San Quintín Justice Plan
Field workers’ highway blockades send a warning to Mexico’s president.
David Bacon
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SAN QUINTÍN, BAJA CALIFORNIA, MEXICO—A farmworker brought her two children to the highway blockade.(David Bacon)
San Quintín, Baja California, Mexico—In the dead of winter, Baja California’s Transpeninsular Highway is the road strawberries take on their journey from the San Quintín Valley north to US supermarkets. For a week this January, though, as waiting consumers froze in Midwestern cities, the huge semitrailers loaded with fruit ground to a halt, blockaded three hours south of the border by the people whose labor produces the harvest.
Every morning for over a week, hundreds of workers threw tires and traffic cones down on the highway’s asphalt, and the trucks stopped. After sunset, huge crowds of men, women, and children, dressed in the frayed clothing of field workers, milled around bonfires. The glowing red lights of the huge vehicles, lined up motionless into the distance, lit their blockade.
Walberto Solorio Meza, president of the Growers Council of Baja California, warned that highway closures put the whole strawberry crop in danger. Last year San Quintín Valley companies harvested over 100,000 tons of berries, worth more than a quarter of a billion dollars.
Finally, on February 2, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum came to the valley, in response to the conditions that sparked the blockades. There she announced the San Quintín Justice Plan, a commitment made at her inauguration over a year ago. Sheinbaum scolded leaders of her party for being more interested in taking selfies with her than attacking social problems like child labor and pesticide exposure. “San Quintín is an area with a lot of poverty [with] many struggles by farmworkers for their rights,” she explained later. “I told them to go into the community, get close to the people.”
Mexico plans to create a “labor certification” that exporters must have in order to send farm products to US markets. Employers will have to ensure that workers are enrolled in Mexico’s social security system and abide by labor standards. The San Quintín Justice Plan includes an Integral Service Center, education initiatives, a Justice Center administered by the federal secretary of labor and social services, and support for workers in gaining legal land titles.
The blockades here, and others like them elsewhere in Mexico, show how widespread desperation and anger have become in many rural areas. They highlight a growing danger for the …
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.
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Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and the San Quintín Justice Plan
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Current Issue
Activism
/ February 23, 2026
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and the San Quintín Justice Plan
Field workers’ highway blockades send a warning to Mexico’s president.
David Bacon
Share
Copy Link
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Ad Policy
SAN QUINTÍN, BAJA CALIFORNIA, MEXICO—A farmworker brought her two children to the highway blockade.(David Bacon)
San Quintín, Baja California, Mexico—In the dead of winter, Baja California’s Transpeninsular Highway is the road strawberries take on their journey from the San Quintín Valley north to US supermarkets. For a week this January, though, as waiting consumers froze in Midwestern cities, the huge semitrailers loaded with fruit ground to a halt, blockaded three hours south of the border by the people whose labor produces the harvest.
Every morning for over a week, hundreds of workers threw tires and traffic cones down on the highway’s asphalt, and the trucks stopped. After sunset, huge crowds of men, women, and children, dressed in the frayed clothing of field workers, milled around bonfires. The glowing red lights of the huge vehicles, lined up motionless into the distance, lit their blockade.
Walberto Solorio Meza, president of the Growers Council of Baja California, warned that highway closures put the whole strawberry crop in danger. Last year San Quintín Valley companies harvested over 100,000 tons of berries, worth more than a quarter of a billion dollars.
Finally, on February 2, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum came to the valley, in response to the conditions that sparked the blockades. There she announced the San Quintín Justice Plan, a commitment made at her inauguration over a year ago. Sheinbaum scolded leaders of her party for being more interested in taking selfies with her than attacking social problems like child labor and pesticide exposure. “San Quintín is an area with a lot of poverty [with] many struggles by farmworkers for their rights,” she explained later. “I told them to go into the community, get close to the people.”
Mexico plans to create a “labor certification” that exporters must have in order to send farm products to US markets. Employers will have to ensure that workers are enrolled in Mexico’s social security system and abide by labor standards. The San Quintín Justice Plan includes an Integral Service Center, education initiatives, a Justice Center administered by the federal secretary of labor and social services, and support for workers in gaining legal land titles.
The blockades here, and others like them elsewhere in Mexico, show how widespread desperation and anger have become in many rural areas. They highlight a growing danger for the …
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and the San Quintín Justice Plan
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.
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Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and the San Quintín Justice Plan
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Economy
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Current Issue
Activism
/ February 23, 2026
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and the San Quintín Justice Plan
Field workers’ highway blockades send a warning to Mexico’s president.
David Bacon
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
Ad Policy
SAN QUINTÍN, BAJA CALIFORNIA, MEXICO—A farmworker brought her two children to the highway blockade.(David Bacon)
San Quintín, Baja California, Mexico—In the dead of winter, Baja California’s Transpeninsular Highway is the road strawberries take on their journey from the San Quintín Valley north to US supermarkets. For a week this January, though, as waiting consumers froze in Midwestern cities, the huge semitrailers loaded with fruit ground to a halt, blockaded three hours south of the border by the people whose labor produces the harvest.
Every morning for over a week, hundreds of workers threw tires and traffic cones down on the highway’s asphalt, and the trucks stopped. After sunset, huge crowds of men, women, and children, dressed in the frayed clothing of field workers, milled around bonfires. The glowing red lights of the huge vehicles, lined up motionless into the distance, lit their blockade.
Walberto Solorio Meza, president of the Growers Council of Baja California, warned that highway closures put the whole strawberry crop in danger. Last year San Quintín Valley companies harvested over 100,000 tons of berries, worth more than a quarter of a billion dollars.
Finally, on February 2, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum came to the valley, in response to the conditions that sparked the blockades. There she announced the San Quintín Justice Plan, a commitment made at her inauguration over a year ago. Sheinbaum scolded leaders of her party for being more interested in taking selfies with her than attacking social problems like child labor and pesticide exposure. “San Quintín is an area with a lot of poverty [with] many struggles by farmworkers for their rights,” she explained later. “I told them to go into the community, get close to the people.”
Mexico plans to create a “labor certification” that exporters must have in order to send farm products to US markets. Employers will have to ensure that workers are enrolled in Mexico’s social security system and abide by labor standards. The San Quintín Justice Plan includes an Integral Service Center, education initiatives, a Justice Center administered by the federal secretary of labor and social services, and support for workers in gaining legal land titles.
The blockades here, and others like them elsewhere in Mexico, show how widespread desperation and anger have become in many rural areas. They highlight a growing danger for the …
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