MECCA, Calif. — Dust swirled in the air as Luz Gallegos parked her SUV on the side of a dirt road. She had just learned that her aunt died of covid-19 — the third family member to succumb to the disease in only two weeks.
She stepped out of her car at about 11:30 a.m. onto a bell pepper farm in this agricultural community in the Coachella Valley, a little northwest of the Salton Sea.
Gallegos, a daughter of farmworkers who had worked in the fields herself, had only 15 minutes to make what she considered a life-or-death pitch to roughly 20 workers who had just finished a break.
The farm had already seen two workers fall ill to covid.
“We’re losing people in our community each day,” she said.
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