Coalition of Immokalee Workers co-founder to receive medal for human rights achievements
Lucas Benitez, co-founder of the Florida-based human rights organization Coalition of Immokalee Workers, has been selected to receive the University of Michigan's Wallenberg Medal by his extraordinary achievements in human rights, according to a news release.
Previous recipients include Nobel laureates Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel and the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, as well as Miep Gies, Rep. John Lewis, Paul Rusesabagina, Masha Gessen and Denis Mukwege, the release said.
“I am immeasurably honored and humbled to receive the Wallenberg Medal in recognition of our efforts to forge a new paradigm for the protection of fundamental human rights from the fields to factories around the globe,” Benitez said in the release. “I also want to recognize the efforts of my entire community, the decades of labor of countless women and men in Immokalee in the fields that have brought us to where we are today. We stand on the shoulders of past Wallenberg recipients like the late representative John Lewis and Desmond Tutu, who embodied courage and commitment.”
And the work is still far from over, Benitez continued.
“We recognize the urgent need to continue expanding the protections we won first for farmworkers in the U.S. to new fields and new industries across the country and the world,” he said.
A lifetime of human rights advocacy in agriculture
Over the course of his career, Benitez has received other awards, such as the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award along with the “Ohtli” Award, the highest honor conferred by the Mexican government on citizens living outside of the country.
In recent years CIW and its Fair Food Program have been recognized with the Presidential Medal for Extraordinary Efforts in Combating Modern-Day Slavery, a MacArthur “Genius” Award and The American Bar Association’s 2022 Frances Perkins Public Service Award.
Benitez was born in the highlands of southern Mexico into a family of rural farmers. He was among six children living in a rural house with dirt floors. At 17, he joined his older brother and traveled to the U.S. to work in the fields to help support his family.
Related news: Farming under a big red sun: Worker advocates push for heat-stress protections
The conditions Benitez experienced in the fields of Florida and Alabama moved him, even at a young age, to stand up against abuse. Benitez joined a small group of like-minded workers in an Immokalee, Fla., that gathered at a local Catholic church. The group questioned why conditions were so brutal for people who traveled to work on farms. Benitez not only participated in the meetings, he took the lead and hasn’t looked back since, the release said.
Decades later, those early gatherings have grown into what is now the CIW’s Fair Food Program, which was established in the Florida tomato fields in which Benitez once worked. Today, the Fair Food Program is a thriving global endeavor that includes over a dozen crops in 10 states and three countries, including Chile and South Africa.
Related news: Fair Food Program, Chilean delegation take step in international expansion
In addition to being one of the earliest farmworker leaders in the Fair Food movement, Benitez played a critical role in the investigation of several slavery cases, helping to free over 700 workers in one case alone, according to the release.
Today he also works with consumer allies to organize national actions designed to bring pressure on the large retail purchasers of Florida produce to join the Fair Food Program. Currently, Benitez is one of the primary ambassadors in U.S. and international expansion of the Fair Food Program.
Honoring human rights champions with the Wallenberg Medal
“Lucas Benitez’s work with the CIW reflects the ongoing need for frontline advocates for vulnerable people in our society. This movement harnesses the economic influence of consumers to improve working conditions, labor practices and pay for farmworkers through its worker-led, market-enforced approach to the protection of human rights underlying corporate supply chains,” Sioban Harlow said in the release. Harlow serves as the chair of the Wallenberg Medal Selection Committee and is professor emerita of Epidemiology and Global Public Health at the University of Michigan.
The Wallenberg Medal honors the achievements of Raoul Wallenberg, who saved the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II. Wallenberg issued thousands of protective passports and placed tens of thousands of Jews in safe houses while confronting Hungarian and German forces to secure the release of Jews, whom he claimed were under Swedish protection. He ultimately saved more than 80,000 lives, according to the release.
Benitez will receive the 2023 Wallenberg Medal and deliver a lecture on CIW's 30 years of achievements and the future of human rights for farmworkers on Oct. 10 at 7:30 p.m. in Rackham Auditorium at the University of Michigan.
