{"id":47091,"date":"2025-05-23T14:49:45","date_gmt":"2025-05-23T21:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newmexicopbs.org\/productions\/newmexicoinfocus\/?p=47091"},"modified":"2025-05-23T14:49:47","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T21:49:47","slug":"the-boots-on-buck-jackson-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newmexicopbs.org\/productions\/newmexicoinfocus\/the-boots-on-buck-jackson-road\/","title":{"rendered":"The boots on Buck Jackson Road"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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New Mexico is the second-largest oil producer in the U.S., behind Texas. Drawing immense wealth from the Permian Basin, the state relies on a workforce \u2014 often Latino men \u2014 who are subjected to harrowing conditions that lead to death, injury, disease and terrible tolls on mental health and family life.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This story<\/a> was originally published at Searchlight New Mexico<\/a>, a NMPBS partner.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
The boot fence, which runs through Eddy County. David Cox\/Searchlight New Mexico<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

By Molly Montgomery, Searchlight New Mexico<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first, in the haze, they look like birds, perched on fence posts along the road. But they don\u2019t shift or take flight, and there\u2019s one on every post for as far as I can see. They are upside-down boots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The road, Buck Jackson, cuts south through southeastern New Mexico, across the fields where companies are drilling for oil. I drive for almost three miles before I stop seeing boots above the sparse grasses and the thorned mesquite and the trash. A Chevron sign marks a plot of land beside them, and the heavy silhouettes of pump jacks and processing plants hover behind them. Bootheels point up to the sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The oil workers wore them. Then they retired and hung them up, or traveled to oil fields elsewhere and hung them up, or died, and their relatives and friends placed them there. On a black rubber boot, in white marker, someone wrote \u201c6\/13\/20, R.I.P.\u201d and a name that has worn away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
\u201c6\/13\/20, R.I.P.\u201d David Cox\/Searchlight New Mexico<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey leave their memories there,\u201d a former oil worker, who asks to go by the pseudonym Diego Garc\u00eda, tells me. Garc\u00eda, 36, is undergoing chemotherapy treatments for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), which he developed while cleaning sites contaminated with drilling waste. He\u2019s worried that employers won\u2019t hire him again if they learn he spoke to a journalist. \u201cSome people leave pants, too.\u201d He laughs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think about what the workers stood on when they wore the boots \u2014 rigs, spilled oil, tanks, truckbeds, caliche \u2014 and how many hours they wore them, during shifts that could span five straight days and nights, no sleep. These were hours of absence, when the workers were away from home, and the people who loved them couldn\u2019t see them. And the fence becomes a fence between the fields and home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Separating from the world<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA good day,\u201d says Marcos Carranza, \u201cis a day without danger.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s 6:30 p.m. or so, November, at a house in the city of Hobbs, about an hour northeast through the fields from Buck Jackson. Two highways that lead to the worksites cross through town: State Road 18, north to south, and U.S. Route 62, west to east. Billboards for injury attorneys mark city boundaries. At night, the neon signs and floodlights of hotels and motels illuminate the highways. The parking lots are full of work trucks. The hotels are interspersed with smoke shops and restaurants and stores that advertise workboots and beer. Rows of houses, mostly brick with pitched roofs, line the quiet streets that stem from the highways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A smoke shop in Hobbs. David Cox\/Searchlight New Mexico<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Carranza family\u2019s front door is wide open, a rectangle glowing bright on the dark row of houses. The children and grandchildren of Carranza and his wife, Mar\u00eda Elena, sit together on big couches beneath family photographs. The rich smells of rice and chicken with mole rise out of pots and pans on a table in the back of the room. Carranza is at the table, exhausted. He got home maybe 20 minutes ago from his job constructing pipelines for an oil company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA bad day is an excess of hours working and a lot of danger, because you can fall asleep driving, or on-site, and a machine hits you, and you can lose your life,\u201d he says. (We\u2019re talking in Spanish, which I use when interviewing most of the workers I meet.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On previous jobs, Carranza says, he\u2019s had to enter tanks where oil and natural gas are stored, to clean them. The containers are metal and round. They usually range in size from 10 feet tall and 12 feet wide to 30 feet tall and 15 feet wide. Even in bigger ones, it\u2019s difficult not to feel claustrophobic inside. They contain hydrogen sulfide, a gas found in natural gas deposits. Exposure to low levels can cause nausea, headaches and insomnia. Exposure to high levels can cause memory loss and death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSometimes when you wash the tanks, hydrogen sulfide is released, and when that happens, you can pass out,\u201d Carranza says. \u201cThat would be a very bad day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though he\u2019s never passed out himself, he\u2019s seen fellow workers collapse many times. Sometimes they survive falling into the liquid at the bottom of the tank. Sometimes they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the chatter of television news, Carranza\u2019s children and grandchildren are teasing each other and arguing about politics. His voice mixes with theirs as he tells me about a slower, quieter toll the industry has exacted on him over the past 17 years. He\u2019s 67 and technically retired, but he receives no employer-sponsored benefits, and the meager Social Security payment he gets \u2014 around $1,000 a month \u2014 isn\u2019t enough to sustain his family. He\u2019s continued to work for the oil and gas industry, at $16 an hour, 50 or 60 hours a week, because it\u2019s \u201cthe economic activity of New Mexico,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The companies that have employed him haven\u2019t consistently provided proper safety training or equipment, and the exposure to dangerous chemicals and loud machinery is gradually separating him from the world. He can\u2019t smell the dinner Mar\u00eda Elena prepared. He thinks it\u2019s because he\u2019s inhaled so much hydrogen sulfide, which can cause olfactory paralysis. He\u2019s losing his vision, hearing and memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because he\u2019s losing his memory, he loses hours on the road. He\u2019ll be driving somewhere and suddenly can\u2019t remember why he\u2019s there or where he\u2019s going. He can\u2019t drive Mar\u00eda Elena to medical appointments because he has to work during the day. He turns his head to show me a golf ball\u2013sized lump in his neck and says he\u2019s not sure whether he\u2019ll be fired when he asks for a day off to go to the doctor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe money that one earns, one pays a very steep price for,\u201d he says. \u201cThere are times when I\u2019ve felt depressed. You work so much, but it\u2019s not worth it, because health can\u2019t be bought. And there are irreversible effects, and you can\u2019t be the same as before. As much as I want to think well, see well, I can\u2019t now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of his disabilities, he can\u2019t find other work. He\u2019s so experienced at building pipelines that he can keep doing it despite the challenges he faces. No one else will hire him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no alternative,\u201d he says. \u201cMy back is against the wall.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThank you, Chevron\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When I look out my car window at the gas flares leaping into the sky, I imagine the roar and snap of flames. According to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 60 percent of all workers in the \u201cmining and oil and gas extraction\u201d industry have been exposed to hazardous noise, and a quarter have difficulty hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Natural
A gas flare in the oil fields between Hobbs and Carlsbad. David Cox\/Searchlight New Mexico<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But on the dirt roads beside the flare stacks \u2014 the tall metal chimneys where gas is being burned off the crude oil so that it doesn\u2019t explode \u2014 all I hear of the flames is a rush of heat through metal pipes. It\u2019s hard to distinguish it from the whoosh of moving trucks, which you could pretend is the sound of the ocean that filled the Permian Basin hundreds of millions of years ago, were it not for the clank and rattle of equipment and the constant machine buzz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sea creatures and algae in the ancient ocean decomposed into the oil that a water-well driller found south of Carlsbad in 1901. Speculators began drilling throughout southeastern New Mexico. Nearly three decades later, in 1928 \u2014 with crews working 12-hour shifts and sleeping in bunkhouses full of rattlesnakes, and wooden rigs catching fire and burning to ash \u2014 they struck enough oil to start a boom. Within two years, 20,000 people flocked to Hobbs, according to the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Mexico\u2019s dependence on oil and gas revenue is historically high: Roughly 40 percent of the state\u2019s general fund comes from fossil fuel production in the Permian Basin, in the state\u2019s southeast corner, and in the San Juan Basin, in the northwest corner. Drilling in the San Juan has been slowing down, but the Permian, which covers roughly 86,000 square miles in eastern New Mexico and west Texas, is booming. It\u2019s the most productive oil field in the United States. Almost half of all U.S. oil comes from the basin, and about a third of that comes from New Mexico. As a producer, the state is second only to Texas, which has a larger share of the resource.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the counties of Lea, Eddy, Chaves, Otero and Roosevelt, New Mexico\u2019s Permian covers around 13,000 square miles. When people fly over the region, they see a flat, mottled landscape with various small cities \u2014 Hobbs, Artesia, Carlsbad, Lovington \u2014 clumped around highways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout these communities, you can smell the hydrogen sulfide. People suffer from cancers, respiratory illnesses, chronic nosebleeds, headaches and thyroid problems \u2014 all conditions that have been associated with industry air pollution. Creosote and mesquite choke out native grasses. Among the creosote and the mesquite are old tires and beer bottles and Red Bull cans and broken pipes. Birds ingest toxins and have been seen falling dead out of trees and sky, and the noise and the floodlights interfere with animals\u2019 circadian rhythms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey can\u2019t sleep, they can\u2019t eat properly, they can\u2019t properly forage for food and they can\u2019t reproduce,\u201d says Charlie Barrett, a field ecologist and thermographer with Oilfield Witness, a nonprofit that uses infrared cameras to expose emission levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Several
Pump jacks near Hobbs. David Cox\/Searchlight New Mexico<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In Hobbs, there are pump jacks on signs and murals around town. In Carlsbad, Jozee Zu\u00f1iga, an environmental activist, tells me that representatives of the oil companies give children coloring books and tell them about how they protect animals in the fields. \u201cThe school I went to my last two years of high school has a \u2018Thank you, Chevron\u2019 on its sign because Chevron donated to fix the school\u2019s labs,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She tells me that support for the industry drowns out any talk of workers\u2019 conditions. At local boutiques, she sees hats that say \u201cRig Daddy\u201d and shirts that say \u201cPermian Proud.\u201d She went to a feed store to pick up dog food and heard a man at the register shout at the cashier, \u201cDrill, baby, drill!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not only their livelihoods, but it\u2019s the culture that they participate in,\u201d she tells me. \u201cIf you speak out, or you go against the grain, you are considered a threat. And not just a threat to a company or a specific procedure or operation. People consider you a genuine threat to their personhood, their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zu\u00f1iga\u2019s father was a supervisor in the oil fields before he passed away in 2016. She still has his work number in her phone, and his work clothes and boots are in a closet. She describes herself as privileged, because his hours were somewhat regular, but he was always on call, even during vacations, and he woke up at three every morning to head for the job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI remember hearing him walk down the stairs,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I remember being so excited some days coming home from school, because, from the road, I could see that his truck was already there, and he had come home early. But that was not all the time.\u201d Some days, coming home, she still looks for his truck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m so grateful to the people who get up every day and do the work in the grueling and the awful conditions,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I want people to know that, yes, we depend on it. Yes, we need it. But that doesn\u2019t mean we have to surrender.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two million barrels a day<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On the roads and at gas stations, there are workers everywhere. Trustworthy data on the size of the workforce is hard to find, however. Fossil fuel employees account for less than three percent of New Mexico\u2019s total labor working population, according to the state\u2019s Department of Workforce Solutions (NMDWS), but other estimates are much higher \u2014 closer to 10 percent. A study done by the University of New Mexico found that around half of oil and gas workers are Latino, but advocates in the Permian say that the number is probably much higher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jorge Estrada, a public relations coordinator at the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED), told me it would be \u201cextremely difficult\u201d to provide a complete list of oil and gas companies operating in New Mexico\u2019s Permian, a claim reflected in state documents. Driving around the region, I pass dozens of company names on buildings and vehicles. In 2024, almost 400 fossil fuel companies were operating across the state, including Chevron, ConocoPhillips, EOG, Coterra and ExxonMobil, according to an annual production report from the New Mexico Oil Conservation Division. Together, these companies ramped up production from around 800,000 barrels of oil per day in 2019 to a little over 2 million barrels per day in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Industrial
Pump jacks near Hobbs. David Cox\/Searchlight New Mexico<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Just how much oil money funds the state is in dispute. According to the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, in 2024, oil and gas brought in $13 billion in state and local revenue, $7.4 billion of which went to the general fund. Ismael Torres, chief economist of the New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee, says that at least $4.7 billion from the industry went to the general fund, though he noted that the figure could be higher. Either way, the money is used for public education and health and human services, among other state programs. But politicians and state officials, who receive large donations from fossil fuel companies, rarely acknowledge the toll the industry takes on workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scanning thousands of pages of state legislation from the past 30 years, I found few mentions of the workers. I saw no bill that has as its sole aim bettering their workplace conditions, and no memorial acknowledging the costs of what they do \u2014 though I did find memorials honoring uranium workers and promoting safety in the mining industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some bills contained sections intended to help fossil fuel workers transition to other industries, or to direct agencies to implement rules for their safety. Those didn\u2019t pass. In the 2025 session of New Mexico\u2019s legislature, the House signed a memorial recognizing \u201cthe oil and gas industry \u2026 for its vital contributions to the state\u201d with no substantive mention of the workers. The office of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham declined my request for an interview. Grisham, alongside state lawmakers and political action committees, received roughly $800,000 from fossil fuel companies in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

State agencies seem to be taking little action to protect workers. Estrada wrote that the NMED\u2019s \u201cprimary attention is on maintaining the well-being and safeguarding of all employees or workers,\u201d noting that New Mexico established a safety program in 2005 to \u201creduce fatalities and catastrophic events\u201d and to enforce the New Mexico Occupational Safety and Health Act (NMOSHA) industry-wide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe potential for serious accidents, catastrophic accidents, and worksite fatalities has been recognized for the Oil and Gas Well Drilling and Servicing Industry,\u201d says an official state notice announcing the program. \u201cStatistical data shows this industry accounted for a far greater percentage of workplace fatalities and serious accidents in New Mexico than would be expected for such a relatively small workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The program aims to conduct 25 random, unannounced inspections per year, though they only did 23 last year. In a landscape of close to 400 companies, that number is hardly comprehensive. \u201cIt is not possible to keep an accurate or current universal listing of employers or their equipment,\u201d the notice states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Federal labor law has not been consistently enforced in the state \u2014 standards for overtime pay have not guaranteed that oil and gas workers will be justly compensated for working more than 40 hours per week. A federal investigation in 2014 found that companies owed upwards of 1,300 fossil fuel workers in New Mexico and west Texas at least $1.3 million in overtime. And the law sets no limits on how many hours employees may work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez, who serves southern New Mexico, is trying to pass a bill that would require oil companies to compensate workers for respiratory and heat-related illnesses. \u201cI\u2019ve personally sat down at the dinner table with folks that have been working in the industry for 16 years and lost their job and were offered a $200 check with no medical care or compensation,\u201d Vasquez tells me. \u201cThat is just outrageous to me, considering the record profits that oil and gas companies are making.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pushers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Fossil fuel companies in the Permian are private operations that lease drilling rights on both public and private land. \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d signs are posted everywhere to mark off worksites, and environmentalists documenting pollution told me stories about workers chasing them away from well pads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My attempts to visit worksites and \u201cman camps\u201d \u2014 rows of mobile homes where companies house employees, with as many as 20 people reportedly crammed into a single trailer \u2014 got nowhere. Using state documents, I contacted 40 companies listed as producing large amounts of oil in the region. Three smaller companies politely declined what one secretary described as \u201cthe opportunity.\u201d The others didn\u2019t respond. So I learned about the labor conditions by talking to workers off-site, in parks, restaurants, homes and over the phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During one call, a former oil field worker named F\u00e9lix Rodr\u00edguez tells me that many workers receive no safety training and have to provide their own safety equipment. He began building tank batteries \u2014 collections of tanks that store crude oil before it gets processed \u2014 when he was 19. But he quit a year in, after witnessing an explosion. He\u2019s now an organizer at the Roswell chapter of Somos un Pueblo Unido, a statewide workers\u2019 rights organization headquartered in Santa Fe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Small companies are \u201ctrying to cut costs at all times,\u201d he says, while big companies will often contract with small ones, going for the \u201ccheapest bidder\u201d and not \u201cbatting an eye at the working conditions.\u201d The small business Rodr\u00edguez worked for \u2014 which built both tank batteries and flare stacks \u2014 provided him with a hard hat. He and his fellow workers had to buy all other safety gear, including glasses and monitors that record hydrogen sulfide levels. The company appointed him safety manager, he says, because he speaks Spanish and English, but he had no training. \u201cIf I didn\u2019t have any training, and I\u2019m training these people to be safe, how safe is it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Workers
Workers at dusk. David Cox\/Searchlight New Mexico<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The state does not appear to have a reliable method for tracking worker deaths. The NMED told me that five workers died in oil and gas extraction and support industries in 2022. The count is less than half of what the New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH) reported: 11 deaths that year. The agencies are consulting different databases \u2014 the NMED count is based on reporting by employers, while the NMDOH count comes from the data an occupational health surveillance team compiled using the department\u2019s vital records. Neither includes deaths that were caused by labor conditions and occurred after workers left the fields: fatalities connected to the long hours, grueling effort and diseases developed from exposure to toxic chemicals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if it were possible to resolve the discrepancy between the different counts, the numbers would probably still be incomplete. \u201cSometimes, companies cover these things up because it saves them a lot of money,\u201d Marcos Carranza says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even so, by sifting through 20 years of investigations conducted by the New Mexico Occupational Safety and Health Bureau, I found disproportionately high numbers of accidents in the oil and gas industry, compared to other industries in New Mexico. In 2022, for instance, slightly less than half the accidents described in the bureau\u2019s investigations for that year involved activities in the oil fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The summaries listed at the top of the investigations were blunt descriptions of workplace accidents: \u201cemployee is killed when struck by pressurized air and sand\u201d; \u201cemployee is killed when struck by falling support beams\u201d; \u201cemployee is burned when hydrogen sulfide gas ignites\u201d; \u201cemployee thrown from oil well rig platform and is killed\u201d; \u201cemployee is killed by explosion while gauging levels of crude oil\u201d; \u201cthree employees are killed when oil tank explodes\u201d; \u201cemployee sustains burns when sprayed with sodium hydroxide\u201d; \u201cemployee dies from a 90 foot fall\u201d; \u201cdrill field worker is crushed and killed under truck\u201d; and \u201cemployee is struck and killed by flying material.\u201d There were dozens more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One man I interview, who asks to go by the pseudonym Juan Campos for fear of retaliation, shows me one of his hands, which he can\u2019t close into a fist. He injured it on a shift in the 1980s while facing pressure from supervisors. He and other workers call the supervisors \u201cpushers.\u201d He says one pusher forced him to approach a tire that was filling up with air while he was carrying a lighter, and the flame ignited the air. The explosion knocked him to the ground. \u201cIf the pusher didn\u2019t pressure you,\u201d he says, \u201cthere would never be accidents.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe experience disillusionment, impotence and anger\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The harm the industry inflicts on workers goes beyond violent accidents. \u201cIf it\u2019s not a full-on explosion, it\u2019s rarely talked about,\u201d Rodr\u00edguez says. \u201cThis is an industry where you have to be a macho man and have to work hard to succeed. Mental health is downplayed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Workers and their loved ones suffer from depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress. According to a 2023 CDC report on 2021 suicide rates by industry and occupation, workers in \u201coil and gas extraction and support activities for mining\u201d experience one of the highest rates of suicide of any labor force in the country: 73.9 per 100,000, which is more than double the overall rate in the civilian non-instutionalized working population. Daniel Radabaugh, a chief operations officer at a national pipeline company called Xccelerated Construction Unlimited, has estimated that workers\u2019 mental health challenges cost the oil and gas industry $200 billion a year due to high turnover and reduced productivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent survey of 126 workers in the New Mexico Permian \u2014 conducted by political scientists at the University of New Mexico Center for Social Policy \u2014 found that they often struggle with substance use disorder and mental health issues. The study reports that workers experience loneliness and exhaustion, often having to sleep through their days off. One woman described her husband becoming \u201creally skinny\u201d and \u201cdrying up\u201d because of exposure to the chemicals required for extraction. \u201cThose tanks are like death,\u201d she told the researchers. \u201cWe experience disillusionment, impotence and anger because we are completely hopeless.\u201d Close to 80 percent of the oil field employees surveyed didn\u2019t want their children to work in oil and gas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maria Romano, a lead organizer at the Hobbs chapter of Somos un Pueblo Unido, says she\u2019s observed workers turning to drugs and alcohol for relief. Campos lost several friends \u2014 fellow oil workers \u2014 to cirrhosis, and he suspects it\u2019s because they drank so much. While building flare stacks, F\u00e9lix Rodr\u00edguez once found himself 50 feet in the air with a coworker who wasn\u2019t safely hooked to any part of the structure, and who was high on cocaine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Maria Romano. David Cox\/Searchlight New Mexico<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Romano also describes \u201ca lot of disintegration of the family, many divorces.\u201d She says that her ex-husband \u2014 who she divorced 20 years ago \u2014 worked in the oil fields when they were married, putting in such long hours that her daughter asked whether he lived in the same house with them. \u201cWhen he got home, she was already asleep,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd when he left for work, she was asleep.\u201d The girl\u2019s teachers assumed Romano was a single mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another organizer, Gladys Resendes, who\u2019s currently married to an oil worker, says, \u201cWhen my children have a problem, they go to me, because he\u2019s never there.\u201d Rodr\u00edguez says that most of his coworkers were divorced \u201cat least once.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Workers often say they choose the industry for the money. Annual mean wages range from around $50,000 to $77,000, according to 2023 estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These wages are significantly higher than New Mexicans\u2019 per capita median income between 2019 and 2023, which was $34,823. According to the UNM survey, though, 20 percent of workers who responded were making less than $25,000 a year. More than half didn\u2019t have health insurance, and nearly half reported experiencing accidents on the job. Eighty five percent of those who experienced an accident said they felt it could have been prevented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Workers I talked to laughed when I asked whether companies provide access to mental health professionals. Community organizers told me that workers tend to be closed off to conversations about the emotional challenges they endure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many belong to a population statistically less likely to receive treatment for mental health, for reasons of stigma, racial and anti-immigrant discrimination and poverty. The majority of those who work in the fields are male, and research has shown that men in the U.S. are less likely to seek mental healthcare and more likely to struggle to express emotion. The rate of suicide among men is four times that of women. Studies indicate that Latinos in the U.S. \u2014 a significant portion of the state fossil fuel workforce \u2014 receive mental health treatment at roughly a 25 percent lower rate than the average population. Several of the workers are undocumented, which makes them vulnerable to exploitation by their employers and less likely to have reliable access to any medical care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo one else is going to do the work they do,\u201d Romano says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Usually workers are too afraid of being deported or losing their jobs to consider approaching attorneys, advocates or therapists if they experience abuse. \u201cA lot of people feel very uncomfortable even reporting an accident,\u201d Rodr\u00edguez says. One worker he knew ended up in a coma for two weeks, with fourth-degree burns, after an oil tank he was cleaning exploded. The company paid the hospital bill and gave him $35 in compensation. He stayed on because he couldn\u2019t find work elsewhere. \u201cHe\u2019s undocumented,\u201d says Rodr\u00edguez. \u201cHe can\u2019t really fight it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make matters more precarious, the future of the industry is not stable, even with President Trump\u2019s promise to boost production. Economists predict that drilling won\u2019t increase dramatically in New Mexico in the years ahead. And the president\u2019s stances aren\u2019t consistent \u2014 he promises to expand drilling, and he also promises to deport the undocumented people who do most of the work. \u201cDonald Trump wants to \u2018drill, baby, drill,\u2019\u201d Rodr\u00edguez says, but \u201cyou\u2019re not going to be able to without the immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The threats of deportation and state violence are likely to intensify the pain workers already endure: studies demonstrate that anti-immigrant policies lead to higher rates of depression, anxiety and PTSD among undocumented immigrants. ICE has reportedly been arresting and disappearing people from around New Mexico, including the Permian, but their identities and whereabouts are unknown. Advocates predict that undocumented oil field workers will not be safe from ICE raids, despite the industry\u2019s power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uncertainty stems from the positions of New Mexico\u2019s state government, too, as officials discuss a possible turn to green energy and to a new reliance on permanent fund investments. Workers fear they\u2019ll be left without jobs. \u201cWhenever the time does come that oil and gas is shut down \u2014 the boom is no longer booming \u2014 we need to be able to have an education to be able to transfer to new jobs,\u201d Rodr\u00edguez says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A worker near the town of Monument. David Cox\/Searchlight New Mexico<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A pain too severe<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

U.S. 285, one of the highways that runs through the Permian \u2014 Roswell to Artesia to Carlsbad, all the way down to Sanderson, Texas \u2014 is known as the \u201chighway of death.\u201d In the heavy traffic of oil industry vehicles, exhausted drivers lose their grip on the wheel, drift across the road and crash. \u201cThere was an accident almost every single day that we drove there,\u201d Rodr\u00edguez says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there are the state and county roads that lead to the drilling sites \u2014 NM 128, for instance \u2014 and have only two lanes. Workers often get stuck behind long lines of trucks they can\u2019t safely pass, so even when a workday is over, they have to spend hours waiting to get home \u2014 to their houses in Hobbs or Carlsbad, or to the man camps throughout the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The man calling himself Diego Garc\u00eda tells me that he worked such long hours that he lived on the oil fields in his truck for two and a half years. For $23 an hour, he hauled soil \u2014 contaminated by chemicals from fracking and drilling \u2014 away from work sites to waste sites off 285 and 128, replacing it with new soil and a cleaning agent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know the names of the chemicals, but they\u2019re chemicals so strong that you don\u2019t need to inhale them close-up for them to contaminate you,\u201d he says. \u201cWe worked hard to get rid of the contamination quickly because we knew the wind carries it and spreads sickness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The soil he cleaned probably contained radionuclides \u2014 radioactive forms of elements, found deep inside rock, which are dredged up during the drilling process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For months, Garc\u00eda and his team worked 10-hour days, waking at 4 a.m. His body adapted to the schedule so that he\u2019d wake at 4 even on days off. But the hours could \u201cgrow longer.\u201d There would be a site that required immediate remediation, and the supervisors would push workers to go five days and nights straight, without sleep, \u201cworking, working, working.\u201d They agreed to the jobs, no matter the schedule, out of fear that companies would fire them if they said no or set limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accidents occurred regularly. Sometimes workers were burned by chemicals or gas, or they lost limbs to heavy machinery. \u201cOne slip-up and there goes an arm or a leg,\u201d Garc\u00eda says. Sometimes the machinery blew up. \u201cI watched machines catch fire,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The men had to eat on the job, often canned soup they\u2019d packed in their trucks. The wind blew chemicals into their food and ruined it. Many downed Red Bulls or Monsters to stay awake. Garc\u00eda preferred coffee or cold water. When the weather was bitter, they heated drinking water by turning on their trucks and placing bottles beside the engines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Two
Industry trucks pulling off U.S. Route 62. David Cox\/Searchlight New Mexico<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Garc\u00eda endured the long hours by listening to music \u2014 Vicente Fern\u00e1ndez, Los Temerarios, sometimes Christian songs \u2014 and by taking care of his team members, just as they took care of him. The hardest times were in the middle of the night, when their bodies bent toward sleep, or the middle of the day, when the sun burned over them. \u201cWe\u2019d say to each other, \u2018I can\u2019t bear it now, I need to sleep a little while,\u2019\u201d he says. Then, as one man slept for an hour or so, the others would look out for supervisors, who docked pay for sleeping. \u201cWe always covered each other\u2019s backs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the road to a job, Garc\u00eda sometimes passed workers who\u2019d parked in the desert to get drunk. He laughs when I ask whether the men talked about their feelings. That kind of talk, he says, would be \u201crare.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe chatted about the funny things, so we wouldn\u2019t cry at the wheel,\u201d he says. \u201cYes, one carries one\u2019s things from work, but one buries them in the truck cab.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day at dawn on a worksite in the desert, after years of these irregular schedules, Garc\u00eda felt a pain in his stomach so sharp he had to lie down in his truck. He woke up at two or three the next morning and got back to work, but the pain returned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was a pain too severe,\u201d he says. It brought him to his knees. He couldn\u2019t stand. His friends drove him to a hospital, where doctors diagnosed him with ALL. Around two-thirds of ALL cases occur in children. When it shows up in adults, it tends to affect people over 50. Garc\u00eda is 36. Patients are known to develop ALL after being exposed to high levels of radiation. Garc\u00eda was responsible for clearing waste that was probably full of radionuclides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two other men Garc\u00eda worked with got sick, though he doesn\u2019t know the names of their illnesses. Much of the money they earned had to be spent on treatments. Garc\u00eda did not ask his company for compensation, nor did they offer any. His family and friends have supported him through chemotherapy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People choose to do the work \u201cto get ahead,\u201d he says. \u201cBut it brought me equal consequence, because with so many chemicals \u2014 well, look.\u201d He motions to himself. During chemo, he lost his eyebrows, hair and beard. He says he recently passed good friends in a grocery store aisle, and they didn\u2019t recognize him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I ask whether he\u2019d hung his boot on a fence post along Buck Jackson Road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo,\u201d he laughs, \u201cbecause I want to return to work!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA price that\u2019s too high\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It was late January 2022, cold enough that ice glazed the roads. C\u00e9sar G\u00f3mez, who was in his mid-thirties, had worked every night, maintaining wells and rigs from sundown to sunrise \u2014 sometimes past sunrise \u2014 for two and a half months. One sunrise, he was riding toward rest in a truck cab. But the driver hit ice, and the truck skidded across the road and rolled. G\u00f3mez was thrown through the windshield, shattering his spine and his foot. He woke up from a coma two weeks later in a hospital in El Paso.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2018Work,\u2019 \u2018company,\u2019 \u2018accident,\u2019 \u2018lawyer\u2019 and \u2018money\u2019: These are the five words that most people think about in this field,\u201d G\u00f3mez tells me. With each word, he waves a finger. When I ask if he received compensation from the company, he issues a dry and hollow laugh. Then he nods. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter the quantity of money I receive,\u201d he says. \u201cIt won\u2019t give me back my normal life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s wearing a T-shirt that says \u201cFatherhood.\u201d We\u2019re talking in a back office of Somos un Pueblo Unido. Sitting in a little swiveling office chair beside gray filing cabinets and newspaper clippings and succulents, he tells me about the other workplace, \u201cel campo petrolero,\u201d which feels distant but is all around us. He started working on rigs 12 years ago, when he was 24, for \u201cmore money, a better life \u2014 something like that.\u201d There were no regular hours and no guaranteed holidays. He made $16 or $17 per hour. His day shifts, including driving time, could run from 3:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. His night shifts, including driving time, could go from 5:30 p.m. to 7 a.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWorking at night is super, super tiring, stressful,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a sensation that I don\u2019t know how to describe. But it\u2019s ugly. Because, first of all, you\u2019re not in your five senses. You\u2019re sleepy, you\u2019re cold.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supervisors blamed workers for accidents. \u201cAt work, they\u2019d mention that someone had an accident, someone died, someone crashed,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not indispensable to anyone. We\u2019re only a machine to make money for the boss.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Cesar G\u00f3mez cutting hair in his studio. David Cox\/Searchlight New Mexico<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As we talk, he rubs his legs to ease the pain in his back. He shows me an X-ray of his spine, which is full of metal pegs, and he looks at a photograph of his face, bruised and swollen and full of tubes, from when he was in a coma. \u201cI\u2019m talking without crying because I\u2019m trying to hide it. But, obviously, I\u2019m unwell, physically and mentally,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t like talking about this subject. It sends me back in time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

G\u00f3mez says his personality has changed. He can\u2019t lift more than five pounds and isn\u2019t sure if he\u2019ll ever be able to work full-time again. He\u2019s afraid of driving, especially in rain or snow, and he\u2019s in so much pain all the time, in any position, that it\u2019s nearly impossible to sleep. When he does sleep, he has nightmares. He forgets information and events from one day to the next. \u201cFor example, today, in this moment, I\u2019m talking to you,\u201d he says. \u201cTomorrow I won\u2019t be able to remember parts of our conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His marriage is falling apart. He blames the accident and his resulting despair. As part of the compensation he received from the company, he meets weekly with a psychologist, and he\u2019s been trying to talk about his marriage, but the psychologist says that he\u2019s not interested in talking about relationships. He\u2019s not a couples therapist, he tells him, he\u2019s a psychologist of accidents and violent trauma. G\u00f3mez\u2019s claims adjuster won\u2019t respond to his messages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe accident damaged my mind most,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To help himself think less about his stress and his pain, he cuts other oil workers\u2019 hair, listening to their problems and advising them. The week before we talked, he gave a haircut to a man who has to work Monday through Sunday with no days off. The man\u2019s wife is struggling with his absence and has threatened to leave if he can\u2019t spend more time with their family. He asked his supervisor for a weekend. His supervisor said no. \u201cI\u2019m at the point of losing my family, my wife, because I\u2019m working so much,\u201d he told G\u00f3mez. G\u00f3mez told him to look for another job, one with a set schedule, Monday to Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would give everything \u2014 everything, everything, everything \u2014 to be well,\u201d G\u00f3mez says. \u201cIf I could turn back time \u2014 obviously, I can\u2019t \u2014 but if I could, I think I\u2019d like a job in a shop. I don\u2019t know. But I would never return to the oil fields.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He imagines walking through the fields, telling the workers to be careful, to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not worth it,\u201d he says. \u201cYou pay a price that\u2019s too high.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Buck Jackson Road. David Cox\/Searchlight New Mexico<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Searchlight New Mexico is part of the Mental Health Parity Collaborative<\/a>, a group of newsrooms that are covering stories on mental health care access and inequities in the U.S. The partners on this project include The Carter Center and newsrooms in select states across the country.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story was originally published at Searchlight New Mexico<\/a>, a NMPBS partner.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Mexico is the second-largest oil producer in the U.S., behind Texas. Drawing immense wealth from the Permian Basin, the state relies on a workforce \u2014 often Latino men \u2014 who are subjected to harrowing conditions that lead to death, injury, disease and terrible tolls on mental health and family life. This story was originally…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":47094,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10906],"tags":[10907],"class_list":["post-47091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-partner-stories","tag-partner-stories"],"yoast_head":"\nThe boots on Buck Jackson Road - New Mexico In Focus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.newmexicopbs.org\/productions\/newmexicoinfocus\/the-boots-on-buck-jackson-road\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The boots on Buck Jackson Road - New Mexico In Focus\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"New Mexico is the second-largest oil producer in the U.S., behind Texas. Drawing immense wealth from the Permian Basin, the state relies on a workforce \u2014 often Latino men \u2014 who are subjected to harrowing conditions that lead to death, injury, disease and terrible tolls on mental health and family life. 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