GREAT PHOTOJOURNALISM

Great Photojournalism

Christian Als

The lettuces, herbs, spinach, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and other warm season products are cultivated in plastic greenhouses where the environment can be maximally controlled.

Many illegal immigrants undertake perilous trips to reach Europe. But rather arriving in the land of milk and honey, for many the cold reality is working in a hot, plastic greenhouse in Spain's Andalucia region. And too many days are spent in bed with no work in the farms.

From the lens of a passing satellite, Almería province is one of the most recognisable spots on the planet. The roofs of tens of thousands of closely packed plastic greenhouses form a blanket of mirrored light beaming into space. El Ejido, with a population of 75,000 and no tourist attractions, is in the middle of one of the world's biggest vegetable growing regions.

Working inside the plastic is hot and toxic. It is an almost exclusive field of immigrants, a large portion of them "illegal" Africans who risk their lives to cross the straits between the Spanish and Moroccan coasts.

According to SOC, a local NGO in Almeria, there is today an appalling level of poverty in El Ejido. It is common for seven or eight immigrants to live together in the same cortijo, but here is a strong sense of solidarity among them. Often they are forced to gather surplus or rotten vegetables in the greenhouses. Worker constructed shelter, similar to many used as housing.

There are large fines for those farmers who employ immigrants without papers. But the Africans knows that a car will eventually pull up and load them in the back. Even if Bamo doesn't find work today, he will come back again tomorrow, as he has done for the past eight months.

With an annual production of 1.5 million tons of vegetables, Almeria is one of the world's biggest vegetable growing regions.

The social situation in El Ejido is very tense, because there is still a large population of African workers in the region who try, often in vain, to find work even for a few hours. Africans continue to arrive on the beaches of Andalucia and many of those newly arriving seek to find a first job in the greenhouses of El Ejido.

At daybreak each morning, Bamo and the other inhabitants of the shacks assemble in a square nearby, one of many locations in the area where the Spanish farmers come to pick their workers for the day. They will be paid around 25 euro for a full day.

Some 11,000 of El Ejido's population of 75,000 are immigrants brought in to work on the farms. Most of them are Africans, Romanians and Moroccans. Each year, tens of thousands of immigrants flood into the area looking for work in the intensive plastic gardens that supply fruit and vegetables to half of Europe. For most, the hothouses are simply the quickest way to a work and residence permit.

The fruits and vegetables grown in the area are worth about $1.8 billion a year. Andalucia's regional Socialist president, Manuel Chaves, said that "If all the immigrants left, El Ejido's economic activity would collapse." However, one farmer said that the major problem is that there are twice as many workers as there are jobs.