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Veronica Zaragoza grew up in these coastal fields, picking berries and tomatoes and watching an industry being transformed.
She saw new greenhouses erected, irrigation lines spread through the fields, packing plants expanded and produce piled onto ever-larger trucks.
Everything in this fertile agricultural region 200 miles south of San Diego has changed, it seemed, except her wages. Zaragoza said she still earns 110 pesos per day, about $8 — a little more than when she started picking as a 13-year-old.
Zaragoza, now 26, joined thousands of pickers this week as they spilled onto the streets to protest low wages in a bold demonstration — the first strike by farmworkers here in decades.
Pickers not only stayed out of the fields, they stood shoulder to shoulder blocking the main highway, stalling traffic for hours and all but stopping the harvest at the height of the season.
The clash was shaping up as an early test of a newly formed alliance of produce industry groups dedicated to improving conditions for farmworkers in Mexico.
The group, the International Produce Alliance to Promote a Socially Responsible Industry, was established in February, after The Times documented widespread labor abuses at Mexican export farms in a series called "Product of Mexico."
Hundreds of police and army soldiers dispersed crowds with rubber bullets and tear gas in running skirmishes that have resulted in more than 200 arrests.
Zaragoza, a mother of three, was among those detained and corralled in a field surrounded by police for 17 hours before being released. By Thursday morning, she was back protesting outside a government building in San Quintin where dozens of others remained in custody.
"We haven't done anything wrong," she said. "We just want better lives."
The strike, which began Tuesday, has shut down schools and stores across the region and focused attention on alleged labor abuses at agribusinesses that export millions of tons of produce to the U.S. every year. Among those targeted are U.S.-based BerryMex, which grows strawberries and raspberries sold under the Driscoll label.
Farmworkers are seeking higher salaries, government benefits and overtime pay. They want agribusiness to stop sexual abuse of female pickers at the hands of field bosses.
Farmworker leaders and government and industry officials met Thursday at a nearby hotel but little progress was reported.
The arid land around San Quintin is one of Mexico's largest export regions, stretching along 50 miles of coastal plains and valleys and employing tens of thousands of pickers, most of them indigenous people originally from southern Mexico.