López, Ann Aurelia
Ann Aurelia López
Dr. Ann López is a biologist turned farmworker advocate. Her career began as a professor of biology, environmental science, ecology, and botany courses in the San José City College biology department. She then founded the Center for Farmworker Families, a nonprofit promoting awareness about the challenges of farmworker families while proactively inspiring improvement in binational family life both in the United States and Mexico. She is the Center for Farmworker Families Executive Director. She turned from biologist to sociologist and human rights advocate, supporting undocumented farmworkers, mostly from indigenous groups in Oaxaca and Guerrero. She is the author of The Farmworkers’ Journey, a book exploring farmworkers working in the binational region from the west-central Mexican countryside to central California.
López, Ann A. Bovember 29, 2022. Our farmworkers are being sexually assaulted and poisoned on the job. Why aren’t we helping them? Lookout Santa Cruz. https://lookout.co/our-farmworkers-are-being-sexually-assaulted-and-pois…
López, Ann A., 2011. New Questions in the Immigration Debate. Anthropology Now 3(1) pp. 47–53
López, Ann A. 2011. NAFTA and the Campesinas Left Behind. Anthropology Now, 3(2), 35-40.
López, Ann A. 2007. The farmworkers’ journey. Unive of California Press.
López, Ann A. 2002. From the farms of west central Mexico to California’s corporate agribusiness: The social transformation of two binational farming regions. University of California, Santa Cruz.
Dr. Ann Aurelia López was born into an interracial, working-class family. As a Mexican-American and Anglo-American, she struggled with racial discrimination growing up. Despite these challenges, she was fortunate to be surrounded by a family of educators. She excelled in class at an all-white school, specifically in the sciences. Although Dr. López was discouraged from higher academic pursuits, she still applied to college. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from the University of California, Riverside.
Dr. López attended graduate school at the University of California, Santa Barbara, earning a Master of Arts in environmental biology in 1969. Dr. López worked for several years before beginning her doctorate at 49. In the early 1990s, she started her Ph.D studying agroecology and sustainable food systems at UC Santa Cruz. However, she eventually switched to social science and human rights issues, studying the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on farms and farmers in Mexico and California. She completed her Ph.D. in environmental studies in 2002.
After earning her master’s degree, Dr. López taught at the biology department at San Jose City College for over twenty years. Dr. Ann López enjoyed a successful career teaching biology, environmental science, ecology, and botany at San Jose City College. After reading a series of news articles documenting the plight of migrant farm workers from Mexico and the consequences of unfair trade agricultural policies, she decided to pursue a doctorate in environmental studies.
Her doctoral studies and firsthand account of traveling and living with vulnerable yet resilient migrant farmworkers led to her publication of the book The Farmworkers Journey in 2007. The book explores the farmworkers’ binational circuit spanning west-central Mexico and central California. It also presents her research on workers’ exploitation by corporate agribusiness employers. It argues the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 ended dreams for those who traded their agrarian existence in Mexico for life in the U.S. Dr. Lopez’s research includes interviews with central California farmworkers and their families and Mexico. The interviews were disturbing and life-transforming for Dr. López.
After completing her Ph.D., Dr. Ann López was a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley from 2004 to 2006. In 2012, she founded the Center for Farmworker Families to advocate for policies supporting migrant workers and to expose their harsh living and working conditions.
As founder and executive director of the Center for Farmerwork Families, she focuses on the bigger picture of how to change the narrative via state and federal legislation. Dr. López is frustrated with the farmworkers’ condition, saying, “If I ever get the time, I’m going to write the book ‘Slavery in your own backyard’… This is modern-day slavery. I don’t know what else to call how we treat these humans. What would we do without these people?” (Conley, 2022).
Dr. López traveled to Sacramento, California’s state capitol, multiple times to speak about the academic and emotional harm caused by forcing families with children to leave their homes and schools because of the 50-mile rule. In 2018, her and partner organizations’ advocacy fueled the policy change that led to the extension of stay and allowance of an exemption to the 50-mile rule so that school-aged children could finish their schooling without interruption.
The Center has supported the unionization of farm workers and urged people to attend a public hearing at the Watsonville City Council in California to protest the use of pesticides. The Center also sponsors tours for the media to expose the harsh working and living conditions migrant workers experience.
Dr. López has been recognized for her work by The U.S. Congress and many other organizations. The National Association of Professional Women named the Dr. López Woman of the Year for 2013 and 2014. In March 2018, she received the 16th Annual Cesar E. Chavez Community Award in Watsonville. In 2019, she was awarded Woman of the Year by Mark Stone’s 29th Assembly District of California.
Ann Aurelia López. 2023, January 2. In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Aurelia_L%C3%B3pez
Center for Farmworker Families. 2014. Board of Directors: Ann López, Ph.D. Retrieved August 11, 2023 from https://farmworkerfamily.org/board-of-directors.
Conley, Mark. 2022, August 1. ‘What would we do without these people?’ A Q&A with ‘furious’ farmworker advocate Ann Lopez. https://lookout.co/santacruz/coast-life/story/2022-08-01/farmworkers-san….
Stone, Mark. 2019, March 22. 2019 Woman of the Year: Dr. Ann Lopez. https://farmworkerfamily.org/news-articles/2019/3/22/2019-woman-of-the-y….
Survey and interviews conducted by Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Sustainability Initiative staff. 2022-2023. Yale University-School of the Environment. New Haven, Connecticut.