Migrants as Infrastructure: A Thousand Pines
by Mael Vizcarra (University of Barcelona), Alesandra Tatić (University of Barcelona), Seth M. Holmes (University of Barcelona, Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies - ICREA, University of California, Berkeley)
Shovel after shovel pierces soggy mud as hunched over workers plant pine seedlings while struggling to keep their rubber boots from sinking into the earth (Osband & Díaz 2023, 22:18). Two workers talk behind a truck. One describes how in digging a hole, his shovel hit a root and ricocheted, landing on his left foot. The shovel cut through his boot, he explains, removing a torn sock to reveal his injured foot. The work is “very painful,” another worker, Rodolfo Morales, says earlier in the film, “but the dollars are real nice, aren’t they?” (10:43).
A Thousand Pines (USA, 2023, 74 min), directed by Noam Osband and Sebastián Díaz, follows a group of Oaxacan tree planters who travel from Mexico to work in the U.S., world’s largest producer and consumer of wood and wood-based products As the backbone of the global wood supply, this industry is essential to the built environment and other material infrastructures, including much of the global supply chain, as almost everything travels in a box, carton, or other paper-based packaging—most of which are derived from monoculture tree plantations. But infrastructure is as relational as it is ecological (Star 1999). It should not be understood only in formal terms (cables, pipes, etc.), scholars have argued, as it is facilitated, sustained, and organized by people’s everyday movements and practices. In this way, people themselves are infrastructure (Simone 2004, Silver 2014). Commercial forestry includes “reforestation,” or the planting of more than a billion trees annually to ensure future wood supply. Like many industries in the U.S., reforestation relies almost exclusively on migrants – in this case, hired through the H2-B visa program. And like other migrant-sustained industries, workers here also face low pay, substandard working conditions, and increased injury risks. In the context of racial capitalism, where vulnerable groups are funneled into arduous occupations like forestry, it is crucial to examine infrastructure not only through social processes but through the body—how certain bodies come to be treated as infrastructure (Graeter 2020; Andueza et al. 2021). One of the characteristics of infrastructure is that it only becomes visible when it breaks down (Star 1999). However, in a context where migrants are treated as infrastructure, the injured and broken migrant body might remain invisible if not for works like this film.
Figure 1 A forestry crew prepares saplings for planting on recently clear-cut land. Courtesy of the filmmakers.
The film explores these issues through the experiences of foreman Raymundo Morales, who has spent over 20 years planting trees for Superior Forestry Service, and his 12-man crew, including his nephew Rodolfo in his first year on the job. During the 9-month season, the crew navigates the physical and psychological demands of this strenuous and isolating work, planting 2,000-5,000 pines per day, six to seven days per week, riding long hours in a cramped van, cooking and sleeping in crowded motel rooms, wiring most of their $250-$600 weekly earnings to cover debts and expenses back home, and trying to stay connected to the families from whom they are separated most of the year.
Figure 2 A worker carries laden bags of saplings across the field. Courtesy of the filmmakers.
The film’s structure and editing mimic the cyclical rhythms of migration and reforestation work. It is organized around two overlapping seasons, the four seasons of the year and the reforestation season for H2-B workers counted in days—237. We move with the crew back-and-forth across time and space from tree farm to free farm, from Oaxaca to the U.S., from past to present. Montages portray the repetitive and injurious nature of their labor as workers carry heavy loads, dig holes, and bend to plant saplings. These scenes, combined with sit-down interviews and archival footage, sourced from Raymundo’s family archive, offer a retrospective timeline of migration. We see Raymundo as a young man alongside his brother Manuel, who was the first to gain a foothold with Superior Forestry. Decades of work in the U.S. are reflected in his family’s house and other material possessions in Oaxaca, which differ in quality and quantity from others who are new to migrant labor. Yet we also learn Raymundo’s time away meant missing his father’s sudden death and most of his children’s births, as well as ongoing heartache as he continues to leave his wife, children, and ailing mother, to work abroad. By foregrounding the temporal and embodied dimensions of workers’ experiences, the film offers an intimate portrayal that avoids dramatic over-aestheticization. The stylistic and narrative choices reflect deep engagement and ethical representation; without resorting to voice-over or didactic exposition, the directors let the workers “speak for themselves.” By making visible not only the hardships of migrant labor but the ways men care for each other by removing splinters and massaging injuries, the film exposes the human infrastructure underpinning commercial forestry – itself underpinning many broad infrastructures - in the U.S.
An unexpected intermission halfway through the film ties the experiences of the workers to the larger political economic context, through another type of archival footage—videos of primarily white Americans planting trees in the 1970s. This footage is edited alongside interviews with former reforestation CEOs who tell the story of the birth of the industry and their companies. These self-described hippies turned capitalists describe escaping urban life to plant trees as part of the 1970s Back-to-the-Land movement, earning over $59,000 in today’s dollars for a few months’ work. As the industry boomed and reforestation wages plummeted, some founded companies like Superior, which are now multi-million-dollar businesses—largely built on the cheapened labor (Moore 2015) of migrants like the Morales family.
In telling the little-known story of H2-B workers in one of the largest U.S. industries, A Thousand Pines is both timely and important. Beyond its general human-interest appeal, it serves as an excellent pedagogical tool in social science, environmental studies, and other classrooms addressing labor, migration, the environment, social reproduction and beyond. Crucially, the film draws attention to the paradox of migrants as infrastructure—while indispensable to society and its other broad infrastructures, their bodies are treated as disposable. This contradiction means migrants are made available for injury and separation (Puar 2017, Frydenlund & Dunn 2022), not only from their family, homes, and societies, but from their own health and bodies. In a country that continues to label migrants as criminals to justify their incarceration and removal, A Thousand Pines reveals the multiple, if hidden, ways migrants are in fact a critical part of society as a whole.
Acknowledgements: This work was supported by grants funded by the European Research Council (FOODCIRCUITS: Hidden Connections Between Migrants and Societies, Nº GA 10104542), as well as Spain's State Research Agency (AIE), the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU), and NextGenerationEU/Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan- PRTR (AGRIHEAT: The Hidden Nexus of Heat and Social Inequality in Industrial Agriculture, CNS2023-144290)
References
Andueza, A., L. Visser, and M. Wiering. 2021. “Embodied Borders: Practices of Migration and the Politics of Bodily Movement.” Journal of Borderlands Studies 36(1): 47–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2019.1700034.
Frydenlund, I., and E. Dunn. 2022. “Disposable Labor: Migrants, Infrastructures, and the Racial Politics of Essential Work.” Cultural Anthropology 37(1): 49–75. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca37.1.04.
Graeter, S. 2020. Toxic: The Poisonous Politics of Environmental Struggle in Peru. Oakland: University of California Press.
Moore, J. W. 2015. Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso Books.
Osband, N., and S. Díaz, dirs. 2023. A Thousand Pines. United States: [Production Company, if known].
Puar, J. K. 2017. The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Silver, J. 2014. “Incremental Infrastructures: Material Improvisation and Social Collaboration across Post-Colonial Accra.” Urban Geography 35(6): 788–804. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2014.933605.
Simone, A. 2004. “People as Infrastructure: Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg.” Public Culture 16(3): 407–429. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-16-3-407.
Star, S. L. 1999. “The Ethnography of Infrastructure.” American Behavioral Scientist 43(3): 377–391. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027649921955326.