Hoja Dorada

Hoja dorada, or “golden leaf”, tells the lives of tobacco workers who travel from the mountains of Jalisco, Nayarit, Durango and some of Zacatecas to the tobacco fields on the coast of Nayarit. Most families are indigenous Wixaritari, Wixarika forthe singular person. Entire families who make long trips to come to work in the area that was once called The Gold Coast due to the profits it left for the large tobacco companies, but not for the day laborers. Families often travel from far away on foot and stay throughout the tobacco cutting season, which lasts approximately 6 months. They live and sleep in the same tobacco fields under very poor conditions, they sleep in enchanted tents, they cook in stoves made of the same clay where they sleep, and they bathe in irrigation canal contaminated by chemical pesticides.