Immigrants in rural areas of the U.S. are as hardworking and as committed to their new country as their urban counterparts. But they are less likely to come together with efforts to improve their immediate circumstances and shape their futures. Physical isolation and the resulting absence of community are deterrents to collective action; and many new Americans have back-breaking, time-consuming rural jobs, making it difficult to find time to stand up for their rights and interests. 

Nonetheless, in tandem with the country’s general demographic transformation, American traditions of labor and community organizing are taking hold in the countryside as well as in the cities. Farmworkers are demanding unions to protect them and social welfare organizations are helping immigrant families find solutions to school problems, language barriers and legal needs. (Check out Farmworker Justice, PCUN (Oregon), and RAICES.)

Some immigrant children grow up to be adults fully incorporated into American society but also deeply connected to their original communities. Gladys Godinez is one of them. Although she was born in Guatemala and spent her early childhood in California, she considers Lexington, Nebraska (population 10,000), where her family moved when she was twelve, to be her hometown.

Lexington is a food-processing center where more than sixty percent of residents are Hispanic and more than a third are foreign-born. Gladys’s parents, who worked in meatpacking plants for more than twenty years, exemplify the essential workers who sustain the economy. Despite their lack of education—neither had finished elementary school—they gave their five children, all of whom have university educations and professional careers, access to rich Hispanic culture and the joys of reading. Gladys’s life is a testament to the tenacity of immigrant families that endure harsh working and living conditions as the price for their children’s American successes.  

Committed to what she calls “the diverse rural story,” Gladys works as a community organizer and director of a small media outfit with her husband Chris Cox. “I went to organizing school,” she says, “but I have been an advocate for marginalized people since I was a child.” She has rallied for protection for meatpacking workers during Covid, hosted a webcast to provide information about the pandemic in Spanish, and started a podcast to empower women in her community to tell their stories. Her focus now is primarily on using her organization, United by Culture Media, to instill self-esteem in younger generations of Latinos/Latinas, to remind them that they and their families have made contributions that are worthy of respect and do not need justification to native-born Americans o. “We are not trying to prove our worth,” she says. “We are bringing value to any community.”

Recent press attention to Gladys’s work suggests that she may have hit upon a model that other communities can emulate. At its core is pride in her language and culture, which she is eager to share.