El Ciudadano
Original article: Cuerpos para la exportación: Cerezas de sangre
By Ignacia Borgeaud 1, Carolina Amaral 2 and Magdalena Ceballos 3
In contemporary Chile, the anti-migrant discourse has gained traction under promises of order and security, masking the reality that various sectors of the economy, particularly agro-exportation, structurally rely on the precarious work of thousands of migrant individuals, especially women, whose bodies are reduced to disposable cogs in a system that celebrates macroeconomic figures while creating dire conditions for a significant percentage of its population.
The labor informality and violence faced by these workers reflect a systematic pattern of rights violations, supported by a scapegoat logic that blames migrants for structural crises, stifling discussions that could challenge the underlying conditions exacerbating the current crises in the country.
This critical analysis presents and discusses key findings from research conducted in the O’Higgins Region of Chile, aimed at documenting the labor conditions of migrant workers in the agricultural sector, particularly in the export fruit industry.
Throughout the study, the systematic precarization of migrant work is evident, along with the low awareness among civil society regarding the labor conditions in this sector. This article offers a critical reading from a human rights, gender, and intercultural perspective, questioning the economic, political, and cultural structures that enable the precarization of migrant labor and the narratives that legitimize the exclusion and silencing of those who, from marginalized positions, sustain the Chilean agro-export model.
It is essential to contextualize that Chilean fields have historically been spaces of value extraction and reproduction of inequalities. Particularly in recent decades, the agro-export model has deepened this logic, relying on temporary and migrant labor, instrumentalizing irregularity as a status that enables an even more precarized labor structure, lacking even the minimal guarantees of labor rights.
It is particularly cruel to recognize that, despite their centrality to the prosperity of the national economy, the conditions in which labor in this sector is carried out remain invisible in public debate and even more neglected in the sphere of state governance.
The findings of this research are categorical and reveal a reality that cannot be ignored. Migrant agricultural work in Chile occurs under conditions of structural precariousness that indicate an intentional violation of rights. The absence of formal contracts during peak demand seasons, unpaid overtime, irregular receipt systems replacing work shifts, and overcrowding in accommodations lacking minimal living conditions, where there are no designated areas to eat, rest, or secure belongings, paint a bleak picture.
Additionally, there is a lack of effective oversight by labor institutions, discrimination and violence against migrant women, as well as prolonged exposure to agrochemicals without basic safety protocols.
Far from being isolated exceptions, these practices reflect a widespread pattern within the Chilean agricultural production model, whose extractive logic is almost structurally sustained by the legal and social disempowerment of the migrant population. Therefore, a profound critique of the system and concrete actions that guarantee dignity and justice in the Chilean countryside are urgent.
This phenomenon is replicated across various countries and continents, closely tied to the rise of far-right political projects exploiting anti-migrant rhetoric, where migrants are seen as a threat to security, employment, and national identity.
Thus, we see the covering up of abusive practices and an unequal distribution of precariousness and risks within certain employment sectors, with discursive justifications creating an acceptable threshold for these conditions among a population that becomes a scapegoat for the crises within the capitalist model.
This is unsettlingly similar to what occurred during colonization, with the creation of race and the simultaneous enslavement of certain people who are discursively constructed as prone to extreme working conditions.
In contemporary practice, what was imposed during colonization perpetuates through globalization, creating a cycle of forced displacement due to land expropriation for resource exploitation by northern transnational companies, while also generating migrants embarking on a migratory project driven by desperation amidst impoverished conditions that create the perfect breeding ground for coercion to accept poor labor conditions, compensated by rates extremely low compared to the national standards of the arriving countries.
In the United States, this phenomenon gained enormous visibility during the Trump administration, and its logics find disturbing parallels in the Chilean context. The narrative of the border wall, massive raids, accelerated deportations, and the separation of migrant families doubles down on old restrictive migration policies, situating the idea of a common enemy within both developed and developing economies more globally.
Under this narrative, migrants become symbols of insecurity, crime, and social disorder, channeling economic and structural frustrations, such as inequality, labor precarization, or wealth concentration, towards a vulnerable group, thereby diverting attention from the true causes of social discontent.
The paradox is that both the U.S. and Chilean economies continue to deeply depend on migrant labor, as agriculture, construction, services, and domestic work rely on millions of migrant workers, many of whom operate under precarious conditions, making irregular migration indispensable for the current economic system.
Consequently, this contradiction is not accidental, as it constitutes a central key for neoliberal countries to continue their accumulation and profit focus at the expense of subaltern individuals who bear the brunt of this production rhythm.
On the other hand, the security-oriented approach emanating from authoritarian government projects strengthens their political legitimacy through the persecution and dehumanization of these individuals. In this sense, the work of those who investigate or highlight these issues is to expose these perverse mechanisms, advocating for a migration policy based on rights and dignity.
In recent years, the public debate on migration has increasingly been captured by discourses directly linking it with rising crime rates and the worsening social crisis. The complexity of the migratory phenomenon has been replaced by oversimplified narratives that present migrants as responsible for problems that have much deeper and historical roots.
The current government represents the institutional consolidation of this political shift, through the implementation of expulsion policies, the –supposed– strengthening of border controls, increased migration operations, and a narrative focused on ‘restoring order,’ forming part of a strategy aiming to respond to the demands of conservative sectors that have made migration one of their primary mobilization issues.
These policies generate an effect that rarely appears in public debate: the increased vulnerability of those working in the most precarized sectors of the economy.
Irregularity, produced by restrictive migration policies, complex bureaucratic processes, challenging requirements, and legal frameworks limiting access to regularization, is placed at the service of the global economy, while simultaneously strengthening the justification for social control over the entire working class in the country.
However, due to their position in the nationalist hierarchy, migrants face greater difficulties in reporting labor abuse, accessing public services, organizing collectively, or demanding better working conditions.
In other words, the loss of migratory rights swiftly transforms into a loss of labor rights, and it is precisely here that the case of migrant temporary workers, particularly in the agro-industry, gains more relevance.
The research documented how women from Haiti, Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, and other Global South countries work in the agro-industry under conditions of extreme vulnerability, characterized by informality, long hours, and a lack of labor protection.
Moreover, when expulsion becomes an omnipresent fear, the possibilities for resistance diminish, making deportation a disciplining threat that permeates daily life.
It is worth mentioning that anti-migrant discourses grow in contexts of economic uncertainty. When inflation, unemployment, or social insecurity rise, the far-right offers an exceedingly simplistic explanation: blame those who arrived from outside. Historically, this scapegoating mechanism has been repeatedly used in various contexts to shift responsibilities from economic elites to socially vulnerable groups.
Thus, the housing access crisis transforms, thanks to the power of narratives, into a migrant problem; as does the saturation of public services or insecurity. In this way, the structural causes associated with decades of privatization, inequality, and the weakening of social rights remain obscured.
Xenophobia thus functions as a deeply effective political tool that fragments the working class, pitting Chileans against migrants who, in fact, share increasingly precarious and similar working conditions. However, rather than questioning the structures that produce this precarization, far-right discourses promote competition among workers, thereby diverting any potential collective struggle.
In light of this, a critical stance must insist that the true conflict is not between nationals and foreigners, but between those who sustain the system with their labor and those who benefit from their division.
Furthermore, due to the intersection of various categories of subalternization, the consequences of these policies do not affect everyone equally, producing a system of domination where migrant women occupy a particularly vulnerable position by facing, simultaneously and cumulatively, inequalities based on gender, class, race, and migratory status.
In the Chilean agro-industry, this intersection of oppression manifests in lower wages, higher levels of informality, constant exposure to labor and sexual violence, and an enormous, unrecognized burden of caregiving work, which in turn exposes the children of these workers to extremely precarious living conditions.
Shifting to another aspect of the phenomenon, particularly in relation to the global rise of the far-right, it must be considered that the object of domination is always expansive, and that what initially seems prominently directed towards foreign individuals quickly begins to affect the national population as well.
The same sectors promoting anti-migrant policies also question the rights of women, labor rights, social movements, unions, and human rights organizations. The construction of the migrant enemy is not an end in itself, but part of a broader logic of democratic reduction.
Thus, the fundamental question behind the advance of these policies is not how many migrants enter or leave a country. The truly relevant question is what kind of society we want to build. Do we aspire to live in a society that normalizes exploitation when it affects racialized and foreign bodies, or in a society that transforms fear into a political program?
This paper aims to contribute to building a collective project capable of recognizing that human rights do not depend on nationality, that labor dignity cannot be conditioned by a migration permit, and that migrants do not constitute a threat, but rather a fundamental part of the economic, social, and cultural life of our territories.
The migrant women who harvest export cherries reflect how contemporary economies continue to depend on forms of labor whose precarization remains invisible for ensuring its unchecked reproduction. Thus, what is at stake today is not only migration policy but the very essence of democracy, equality, and rights.
Unregulated agricultural work, especially for the migrant population, constitutes one of the most persistent and silenced forms of exclusion in contemporary Chile. However, what is truly alarming is the deep social and institutional normalization of these conditions, establishing the idea that systematic rights violations are a natural and inevitable cost of the agro-export model.
In the face of this structural indifference, it is imperative to advance towards a profound transformation agenda. Public policies centered around genuine human rights and social justice that prioritize the dignity of those working the land are required. Furthermore, it is crucial to acknowledge the fundamental role that migrants have historically played in the Chilean economy, which has been systematically rendered invisible by xenophobic discourses.
Additionally, there must be critical education about the agro-export model and its social, environmental, and labor impacts, dismantling the false neutrality of an industry that boasts of its export figures while sustaining its profitability on precarious backs.
Ultimately, transformation is only possible from the ground up, fostering community, union, and territorial networks that organize, support, and dignify agricultural work, restoring protagonism to those who have been reduced to mere instruments of production.
The Chilean cherry serves as a metaphor for an economy that shines outward while hiding its roots in disempowerment. It glitters in international supermarkets, fuels export numbers, and upholds the narrative of a modern, competitive country open to the global market. However, behind that image lie invisible bodies: migrant women, temporary workers, and racialized individuals, who often work without contracts, without social protection, and are exposed to exhausting hours in the fields.
Under José Antonio Kast’s government, this reality becomes even more severe. His administration has pushed for stricter immigration policies, including expulsion flights, tighter border control, and measures aimed at increasing the departure of migrants in irregular situations. The government itself reported, in April 2026, the formal start of a permanent expulsion policy through aerial and land operations.
The National Migration Service indicated in May 2026 that 630 expulsions had already been carried out during the year, highlighting the increase in operations compared to the previous period. This is compounded by the so-called «Return Plan,» presented as a mechanism for voluntary departure for undocumented migrants.
However, the root problem is political, as the state tightens migration control while the market continues to need that same workforce to sustain agricultural production. Individuals crossing borders are criminalized, yet working without contracts is tolerated. There is talk of order, yet companies that benefit from informality are not monitored with equal intensity. The migrant individual is pursued, not the employer who exploits.
In the fields of O’Higgins, the research identified that more than 90% of the surveyed workers lacked formal contracts, excluding them from labor rights, social security, and effective reporting mechanisms. This situation of disempowerment deepens for Haitian women, for whom language barriers limit access to information about rights, contracts, and reporting channels, generating greater dependence on contractors and intermediaries.
Anti-migrant policies do not resolve precariousness; rather, they systematically deepen it. By increasing fear, the threat of deportation, and legal insecurity, they push migrants into even more informal, clandestine, and abusive labor circuits. Instead of ensuring rights, they produce higher levels of vulnerability and, instead of confronting the agricultural employers who sustain their profitability through labor disempowerment, they place the entire burden on those who are already the weakest link in the productive chain.
The contradiction is evident and morally unsustainable, as the same country that expels migrants needs their hands to harvest, select, and package the fruit it exports to the world. The border closes to rights, yet opens wide for exploitation. Thus, discussing migration in Chile cannot be reduced to security rhetoric or the demagoguery of order. It is necessary to hold onto the question of who the primary beneficiaries of the production of migratory irregularity are.
The Chilean cherry, as a symbol of export success, thus becomes a brutal metaphor of the present. It shines, succeeds, and profits outward, but its existence rests on precarized, racialized, and disposable bodies within.
In the face of institutional racism and advancing migratory authoritarianism under order discourses, it is urgent to clearly raise a working-class, feminist, and anti-racist policy that unequivocally defends mass migratory regularization, effective and punitive oversight of employers, the right to decent work, and the autonomous organization of migrant workers.
No sovereignty is possible on the basis of expellable bodies. Nor is there social justice while the Chilean export success continues to rest upon irregular migrant women, reduced to mere bodies for export.
Ignacia Borgeaud 1, Carolina Amaral 2 and Magdalena Ceballos 3
1 Member of the Research and Study Center La Grieta.
2 Member of Kilombo Blackcentricxs.
3 Member of the Research and Study Center La Grieta.
El Ciudadano
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