1) Access to health services:

Access to health services among the day laborer population is mainly through SSA Health Centers, for those who do not have social security, as documented by ^{Andrade (2022)}, who makes a recount of some findings in Tamaulipas, Sonora and other states, in which he notes the precarious health coverage. It was found that some day laborers have the possibility of going to private medical consultations, however, covering this service and medicines affects their economy. In addition to these care strategies, participants referred to the use of traditional medicine to prevent COVID-19, as part of their self-care practices and as evidence of alternatives to the hegemonic medical model, centered on biomedical knowledge (^{Menéndez, 2020}). The migratory processes, and the exchange with the communities of origin, allowed the sharing of knowledge to face the pandemic. The use of teas was documented as an expression of therapeutic resources shared collectively and familiarly. The use of teas (eucalyptus and lemon, for example), the temazcal bath, preparations with honey and other infusions, remedies and home recipes were repeatedly mentioned as traditional medicine practices:

We go with what we find, here where we live there are many herbs, which we can only use in our towns and here it is very difficult to get them, and when they arrive, they are dry, so they lose the extract they should have, so it does help, but it is not the same as a medicinal herb that is still fresh (Amalia, San Quintín, B.C.).

According to the “Guide for the care of indigenous and Afro-Mexican peoples and communities in the context of the health emergency generated by COVID-19”, traditional medicine is an adjuvant in terms of mitigating the symptoms derived from the infection (^{National Institute of Indigenous Peoples, 2020}).

Regarding allopathic medicine resources, in the PMA and EP, in Sonora, there are three Health Centers, an IMSS-Bienestar hospital and some private care units (including specialized ones). In San Quintin, B.C., the IMSS-Bienestar Rural Hospital No. 69 and the SSA Health Centers provide medical consultations, thus 65% of those interviewed in B.C. reported having public health services. A large proportion of agricultural workers do not have access to social security or social benefits, since the lack of formal contracts means that they are not incorporated into the IMSS regime as employees. This is evidence of the flexible and precarious labor relations that systematically and structurally violate the labor rights of this population. It is worth noting that two of the informants indicated that they could turn to either the public or private sector, but it will depend on whether or not they have economic resources at that moment, as narrated in the following testimonies:

Right now, I don’t have insurance other than at work, the truth is I don’t even know if I have insurance because I haven’t registered, they say that you have to go and register [...] (Abigail, San Quintín, B.C.).

Because we don’t have insurance and many times we don’t go to the hospital and we have to pay a private doctor [...] because if we don’t have savings, then that’s where our savings stay with them [...] (Rambo, EP, Sonora).

In both localities, access to medical consultations in generic pharmacies covers part of the need for health care, either because there is no access to social security. The absence of an IMSS clinic and the precariousness due to lack of materials and/or medicines in EP, makes the situation more complicated, according to Rambo.

As documented by ^{Velasco, Zlolniski and Coubés (2018)}, in the process of human settlement in San Quintín, not only population growth was experienced, but also the increase in public and private health services. Although several localities have basic health services, the quality and equipment do not meet the requirements and needs of users in this region. Coverage is limited in terms of health services, meager medical attention and lack of specialized medical personnel. The health centers set their hours of operation without taking into account the time of day laborer women. Also, there is no staff to act as translators when there are people who are not fluent in Spanish. In the first case, this is a reflection of the absence of an intercultural health policy.

Along with the lack of medicines and healing materials, as Rambo mentioned. This situation is complex and long-standing among the day laborer population, despite the fact that some of them have been working for more than two decades, as Emilio related:

All my life, I came here to La Costa in ‘99, I have been here for like 21 years, and all the time I have worked as a casual laborer, I have been working for about 12 years in these trucks, taking agricultural workers to different fields (Emilio, PMA, Sonora).

As ^{Flores (2021)} refers, when there is “access to public medical services, provided by local authorities, these are usually retired, they do not provide medicines and healing materials, and poor care or medical negligence is common” (p. 39).

Some women had access to Social Security in Poblado Miguel Alemán or in the city of Hermosillo, Sonora, but often because they are enrolled or affiliated thanks to their spouses; even though they are also salaried workers, they are hired through informal means with reduced time, which makes access to this right difficult or nullifies it, since it is usually more complicated to be placed in a permanent position called “planta”. However, it is women who take care of family welfare, especially health care, which reflects the unequal distribution of the domestic burden compared to men and the reproduction of gender norms that make them responsible for care as a female task. Several studies have documented that this was exacerbated during the health crisis (^{Amilpas, 2020}; ^{Gómez, Morales and Martínez, 2021}; ^{Llanes and Pacheco, 2021}).

Only one of the cases of older adults had access to IMSS through one of their children who were salaried and affiliated to this service. However, the process of care for their chronic conditions, such as diabetes, was interrupted during the pandemic, and private medicine, in this case that offered by pharmacies, was the most affordable option:

We are diabetic, we have had an appointment that time and we canceled and so far we haven’t gone to the Health Center because we still can’t go, we haven’t made an appointment, we are taking medicine, every day, but now we have to buy our medication (Venustiano, EP, Sonora).

This was also found among B.C. respondents, who trusted the private sector more to attend to any health condition than the public sector. For example, a resident of San Quintín, B.C. (Julián) stated that whenever he has a health problem, he goes to a pharmacy chain that has doctors who provide consultations, whose main characteristic is that they only handle similar medications, which makes the service cheaper (Dr. Simi).

The exclusion of social security among the day laborer population has resulted from a systematic process of violation of labor rights, despite the fact that there have been some legal changes that require the accounting of weeks worked per season and with each employer.

In addition to the difficulties of going to public spaces, the decision to attend or not to attend the public health service was also related to the social representation of COVID19; that is, associated with fear and uncertainty among the population of the localities. The emotional dimension is fundamental for the analysis of the social relations that developed during the pandemic, and the agricultural communities were no exception.

Thus, an obstacle to going to the IMSS and/or Health Center was precisely the fear of receiving a positive diagnosis of the disease, the possibility of being hospitalized and potentially dying during care. The fatalistic representations of the disease and, therefore, of the hospitals or Health Centers themselves, contributed to animosity towards health personnel. In fact, in a fragment of the field diary, testimonies were recorded:

In our visit to the region of Pesqueira as of Miguel Alemán people express the low availability of the Health Center, not only because care has been restricted but also because of the fear of using them [...] (Field Diary, June, 2020).

This situation was also experienced in San Quintín, Baja California, as some workers in the region stated that, among some people belonging to indigenous peoples and day laborers, there is fear of going to the Health Center when they have any symptoms. This was a frequent situation among the general population, both in urban and rural areas:

[People]... have, as well as a bad way of looking at hospitals and doctors and those who work [...] I say, I prefer to die at home, I don’t know, it sounds illogical that having information you think that way, but I don’t know, as an indigenous person, as a person I don’t know; yes, I would be afraid that they would take me by force (Amalia, San Quintín, B.C.).

On the other hand, given that the agro-export industry is increasingly characterized by meeting optimal standards of certification of its products, this includes the quality of its products and certain types of training for day laborers, as well as having first aid personnel in case of accidents (^{Zlolniski, 2016}). For this reason, some certified agricultural fields provide health services to workers; however, this benefit is only valid for the duration of the employment contract, which allows workers to include their immediate family members in the coverage. Nevertheless, there were also cases of self-medication, when some people used pills popularly known by the commercial name of “paracetamol” and “throat pills”.

2) Spaces for care: housing and public services:

Housing and its characteristics have an important impact when addressing the needs of care in the face of the pandemic, since the size and distribution of living spaces can make a difference in the probability of infection, along with public services such as drinking water and drainage.

In this sense, the place where the day laborers interviewed were housed was made of different construction materials. In the case of Sonora (PMA and EP), the walls were usually made of cement block and sand (handmade or factory-made), galvanized sheet metal, oily black cardboard and adobe. The use of these different materials could be recorded in the same dwelling. The roofs were made of concrete with joists and coffer, solid concrete, galvanized sheeting or oily cardboard sheeting.

In B.C., 13 agricultural day laborers were contacted in the town of San Quintín, of whom 54% were women and 46% men (see Table 1). Due to mobility restrictions, interviews were conducted through telephone or video calls. Based on the testimonies, 100% of the interviewed persons stated that they owned the home or that they were the owner of a family member who lived there. In terms of housing materials, 80% of the floors were made of concrete and 20% of dirt; 60% of the walls were made of block and 40% of wood; 90% of the roofs were made of wood and 10% of concrete.

In the case of the 22 informants in Sonora (see Table 2), the housing conditions reported were as follows: 45.5% owned their homes, while 18.2% lived in sheds; 86.4% of the houses had concrete floors and walls of block, brick or concrete; the roofs were of galvanized sheet metal in 54.5% of the houses, and half of the houses had only one bedroom. Although all the houses had potable water and access to electricity (95.5% were supplied by the electricity company), only 72.7% had access to the public sewage system.

Regarding services, most of those that were interviewed stated that they had potable water through pipes or hoses inside their homes (80%), although the service was continually interrupted, and sometimes they only had it once a week. Similarly, another group mentioned that water was supplied by pipes (20%).

Electricity was the most frequent service in the homes, although there were two cases where they did not have it. On the other hand, sewage service was the most absent, since 80% of the people reported using latrines connected to a septic pit.

In this context, two of the main recommendations, such as social distancing and hand washing, were difficult to comply with given the conditions of the spaces and access to clean water. When there was the possibility to do so, for example, hand washing, it was reflected differentially between men and women, “(men) do not take it seriously, not really. Yes, because we used to say to many of them: ‘hey, put on your mask, hey, wash your hands’” (Yurenia, EP, Sonora).

It was also recorded, through observations in the field and narratives in the interviews, that the reduced spaces of the private and rented rooms became places of risk, since a large number of family members interacted in these spaces. When one of the members of the group manifested any symptom related to COVID, the problem of confinement appeared:

[...] there are hospitals that are used only for that [...] To isolate and well, maybe if get infected, I would prefer to go and be hospitalized, because how can I allow everyone to get sick in my house, because one person can infect the whole family (Aleida, PMA, Sonora).

The story of our informant shows part of the contradictions that were experienced during the pandemic, because despite the fears and stigmas of the health services, there was also the idea that given the danger of infection of the whole family, it was preferable to take them to the hospital. The spaces are small because they live with five people, in which there is only one room and a kitchen. This situation of overcrowding was common in the communities studied, so that the generalized measure of staying at home and keeping a social distancing inside the homes could not be applied to the conditions of the domestic units of the day laborer population.

The informant explained that the house is their own; however, there are cases where they rent to live for short periods of time. In the latter cases, i.e., rentals, the house consists of a single room or a group of rooms, and can be occupied by a family on a rental basis. Sometimes the owner builds several rooms, whose “contracts” of lease are usually informal. These rooms are almost always lacking in quality of construction and space, as well as in services inside the rooms, such as bathrooms, yards, and laundry rooms. Concerning this, Yurenia commented:

There are a lot of people in these facilities, they live next to each other, what social distancing, or masks? The owner or the facility do not give it to them, they also use water, here in the community, during the hottest weather of the year, we only have water during the night, during the day there is none, whatever you collect at night is what you are going to use during the day, just imagine, there are many people who do the washing, who take a bath, the water runs out very fast [.... ...] yes, in the facilities, it is difficult, there are many as they say in the municipality “wash your hands every day, use hand sanitizer” but if many people do not have water, they can’t wash their hands, or how are they going to use hand sanitizer, if they don’t even have enough money to buy one, especially when the sanitizer is very expensive as well (Yurenia, EP, Sonora).

Yurenia, who lives in the town of EP and is 25 years old and works as a day laborer, expressed these problems that complicated her care in regarding COVID-19. She also mentioned the extreme temperatures, particularly in Sonora’s summer, which can be higher than 150°F, which increases the consumption of water for vital needs.

In this regard, public services, and although Aleida and Yurenia, and other informants, had sewage, electricity and drinking water, there were cases, especially in the peripheral areas of the localities, where they lacked regular piped drinking water services, and in the best of cases the service was irregular. Yurenia emphasized it in the following comment:

Many people do not have the possibility of doing all that, because, for example, here many people do not have clean water. For example, we are going to talk about the community of Nueva Esperanza, which is called El Basurón, they do not have water, the water is very poor, the water is for bathing, washing dishes, washing clothes, they do not have enough water. So they don’t have the possibility of washing their hands all the time, why, because if they waste that water, they run out of water, and they don’t go every day to bring them water with the pipe, they go once a week, [there are] people who don’t have a water storage tank, they don’t have those barrels, they have to take good care of their water so that they can get enough (Yurenia, EP, Sonora).

In San Quintín, B.C., it was found that, inside the house, most of them had one or two bedrooms, spaces that are occupied by three or six people: grandparents, father, mother and children. Also, most of the interviewees stated that they own their home, and only one informant said that he had borrowed the house. One of the recommendations of the health authorities when a family member becomes infected was to keep him or her in isolation, however, the dimensions of the house in San Quintín represented a challenge, as it is a small space where family members live together, and also there is no sanitary sewage inside the house and water is usually limited. However, according to one of the interviewees, there was some confidence in dealing with the disease:

Interviewer: if someone gets infected, do you have the appropriate place to take care of them?

José: Yes, in one of the rooms (José, San Quintín, B.C.).

On the other hand, Julián, who lives in San Quintín, when asked if in the event that a family member got infected by COVID-19, his home would have space for the isolation of the person, answered yes, in addition to providing care options such as buying hand sanitizer gel and looking for other strategies.

The reproduction of the domestic group in the spaces of their homes highlighted the condition of care and gender. Men, in the opinion of women in the community, minimized the danger, especially when they became ill from COVID-19; while women were more attentive to the well-being of the domestic group because if something happened to them, it would imply lack of protection or an eventual orphanhood in case of death, Yurenia said:

[...] the women in the community would get scared and say “we are going to take care of ourselves, we shouldn’t go out too much either because it’s really dangerous. Then the children will get infected, oh God, how terrible”, they say. Yes, obviously as women we think a lot about our children, if something were to happens to them. Especially those of us who have little ones (laugh) (Yurenia, EP, Sonora).

This perception of different risk between men and women is related to gender stereotypes, which make it possible for men to expose themselves to higher exposure to health risks and to a delayed search for care. These social constructions of gender interferes with COVID-19 prevention measures, in addition to the conditions of the community environment, as discussed below.

3) Community environment and prevention measures:

The social context of the study regions in Sonora is composed not only by precarious housing conditions and deficient public services, but also by environmental issues: strong heat, extreme wind, loose dirt and air pollution from the combustion of waste material such as tires to mitigate eventual crop damage due to low temperatures. In San Quintín, the semi-urban context is also characterized by adverse environmental conditions for health, for example, in some settlements there are no paved streets, which generates affections related to the respiratory system (aside from COVID-19). Similarly, in addition to the contexts of marginalization described above (lack of sewage and reduced availability of water inside the home), there is also the problem of the use of pesticides and fertilizers in the agricultural fields near the communities, which puts both day laborers and other residents of San Quintín at risk. In 2020, San Quintín was decreed as a new municipality, the sixth in B.C., which may represent better conditions for its social, economic and territorial development.

In Sonora, as in B.C., the lack of pavement and environmental contamination due to lack of or poor sewage service, produce an unhealthy context. In winter, with the arrival of cold weather and the consequent damage to crops near the PMA, different producers have burned tires, causing black smoke trails that produce harmful community spaces. Both EP and PMA are dependent localities of the municipalities and therefore, responses to health problems, associated with social factors, are the responsibility of the central authorities of each municipality, San Miguel de Horcasitas and Hermosillo, respectively. With the arrival of the pandemic, some community actors of the PMA tried to organize themselves in terms of resources and planning to face it, however, one of the first diagnoses derived from such efforts was negative, that is, there were not enough material, financial or human resources.

On the other hand, some of the changes visualized in the immediate environment are related to the restriction of mobility in the first months; the disposition of some local authorities to inhibit people from leaving their homes at certain times produced a series of changes that for some can be read as a loss of “coexistence”, as well as changes in the ways of accessing public spaces such as establishments to buy food, as Franco, a field driver, related:

[...] coexistence is no longer the same, because of fear, you no longer coexist the same, yes you can talk on the phone, but it’s no longer the same, everything has changed, when shopping, going to the supermarket, everything is becoming different (Franco, PMA, Sonora).

Regarding public spaces in Sonora, such as local stores, banks and ATMs, they were places where crowds of people were inevitable and, above all, these stores were not fully adapted to ensure a social distancing and good ventilation.

According to field observations in San Quintín, as well as in the PMA and EP, the use of face masks was irregular, with a tendency not to use them. This situation was influenced by local authorities’ restrictions on the use of face masks in public places, especially in those that did not have or do not have ventilation or were outdoors. During the first observations, in June 2020, there were people walking along the avenues, in the PMA and EP, without face masks. In subsequent weeks, in which the referred localities were visited, there was a visible increase in the use of face masks, mainly in outdoor areas, but without becoming a generalized practice. However, in October, for example, in the PMA, one of the informants noted that “people do notice, we walk around without face masks, without a way to protect ourselves, as they say” (Alfonsina, PMA, Sonora). In Alfonsina’s case, her mother also told her that she was “ridiculous” because she did not use them, but she did put them on her son, because she commented that she could get sick, but her son could not; in this case, the maternal notion of care is highlighted.

For Sonora, in addition to the socio-environmental circumstances, there was also another serious social situation, as Aleida mentioned: crime:

[...] they break into the houses, since sometimes you have to go outside, they take advantage of that, and that’s when they break in and take what you worked so hard for [...] a lot of drugs, a lot of crime, I think that’s the most serious problem here (Aleida, PMA, Sonora).

In addition, she points out that the use of face masks facilitated anonymousness, which was taken advantage of by people engaged in robbery. Paradoxically, a preventive public health provision was also identified with the possibility of using it in a harmful way, for purposes of anonymity when committing a crime such as assault or robbery. The fear of being infected of COVID-19 was combined with the fear of crime, which further affected the lives of the population.