Photos of Jennifer Rocha College graduate in farm fields take her back to her roots: NPR

Jennifer Rocha wanted to hear the rustle of her black graduation gown in front of the pepper bushes in the California farm fields. She wanted to see the ledge perched over the dirt aisles that she and her parents had spent years walking as a family while picking heavy gallons of perfectly ripe fruits and vegetables that ended up in American grocery stores.

That’s why she decided to take her college graduation photos in the same hot vegetable fields in Coachella, California, where she’s worked with her parents since she was in high school.

“I’m proud to be here,” says Rocha, who graduated from UCSD on Saturday. “It’s a big part of who I am.”

“The whole reason I wanted to go back to the fields with my parents is because I wouldn’t have gotten my degree and diploma without them. They sacrificed their backs, their sweats, their early mornings and late afternoons working cold winters and hot summers just to teach me and my sisters.”

The stunning photos, in which she wears high heels in her full graduation outfit as she picks greens alongside her parents in her “regular field work clothes”, has struck a chord across social media, and has gone viral over the past two days. But Rocha says the reactions from other immigrant children who have reaped the rewards of their parents doing hard work so they can succeed is what she cherishes most.

“I really think that’s why people like them so much,” she said after a short pause.

Her parents had to put their dreams aside

Rocha started working in the fields when she was young in high school. Her mother and father, Angelica Maria and Jose Juan Rocha, worked in the fields of Michoacan, Mexico, when they were young children, before immigrating to the United States, and when they arrived, they put aside their dreams of becoming doctors or taking on other professional jobs, Rocha recalls. “They didn’t have these options,” she says. Instead, they found jobs doing the only thing that brought them back to the fields.

“And when we were older, they started taking us so we could learn a lesson about the value of higher education,” she says.

The message was simple: “If you’re not pursuing a higher education, that’s where you’ll end up. The only way to learn is for us to take you to experience it.”

This means cross-country sports with night shifts, Rocha says.

Rocha combined work and school

“I would get out of cross-country training at about 2 p.m. and then my dad would pick me up and I would go home, change, eat something, and then go straight to work all night because during that time we were growing strawberries overnight,” she said. Entirely would be home sometime between 2 or 3 a.m., giving her enough time to “shower and nap and then wake up like around 5:30 a.m. to get ready for school because I had to catch the city bus or else I would have missed it.”

I continued to work through college even when I got a job in campus security. During winter, spring, and summer breaks, she would join her parents, rolling over various crops, and lifting as many barrels as possible on her shoulders from the field to the sorting table for eight hours a day.

“And then once I got the other job as a military cadet [with the Beverly Hills Police Department]I was doing three jobs at the same time,” she says with a laugh.

The photos, she says, show the world that she is just one of the smartest, hard-working people like her parents who are often invisible but dependable every day doing the most menial and low-paid jobs in the country.

“So I want you to get to know not only them, but all the other migrant workers we tend to forget about.”

Rocha says she hopes anyone affected by the photos will have a fresh perspective the next time they shop for food.

“When people go to the grocery store, [they] Just eating veggies and food without really thinking about it,” she said, sounding frustrated. They don’t think, there are people out there who work hard and in dangerous conditions just to make sure we have these foods on hand. “

She is so proud of her parents

Her favorite picture of the series is pictured flanked by her parents walking down a dirt road.

At the time, she says, she couldn’t see exactly what her parents were doing when the photographer took pictures. But when she glanced at their smiling faces, she said, “It is with great pleasure and pride that they now feel that they have three girls with degrees.”

“It made me feel, Wow, you guys are so proud.”

Rocha, who majored in Sociology with a focus in Law and Society, is already pursuing her dream career in law enforcement. She hopes to become president one day.

She says she would take this moment in the spotlight to encourage other young Latinos to hustle and set clear goals for themselves no matter the circumstances.

“It’s not impossible,” she says. “Just because your parents work at home jobs doesn’t mean you won’t succeed. It will be difficult, but anything is possible. And never forget where you come from.”