Tomás Rivera

"I wanted to document, somehow, the strength of those people that I had known . . . when the migrant worker was living without any kind of protection."

"When people asked what I wanted to be, I'd tell them a writer. They were surprised or indifferent. If people don't read, what is a writer?"

"…And I was only concerned about the migrant worker, the people I had known best. I had been a migrant worker. So I began to see that my role—if I want to call it that—would be to document that period of time, but giving it some kind of spiritual strength or spiritual history."