Jennifer Rocha celebrated her bachelor’s degree in Sociology from UC San Diego, but instead of a regular graduation photo shoot, she decided to honor her parents and the sacrifices they made for her.
That’s why on a sunny May afternoon, 21-year-old Rocha donned a graduation gown and a Mexican stole, and had her parents at her side in her graduation photos, which were shot in a vegetable field in Riverside County.
The three held her hands, walked together, and smiled in the pictures. Weeks later, when the images were ed to the internet, the pictures went viral with thousands of likes on Facebook and Instagram. She also has told her story on Good Morning America and the Today Show.
The Palm Springs-based photographer, Branden Rodriguez, said he and Rocha have been following each other online for a while. He said she ed him earlier this year for a graduation photo shoot and asked for it to be done in the fields where her parents and she have worked extensively.
“When she told me she had a different idea, I thought it was very original,” Rodriguez said. “I also researched around what has been made, to make it our own. She is with her parents collecting bell peppers, and her parents are watching her on her graduation gown working in the fields, so it’s her graduation, but she wanted to make it about them”.
Rocha said she decided to take the pictures with her parents in the fields because she re with pride the moment when her dad took her and her two older sisters to work there. She said she and her sisters were in high school. She was in her junior year, and she was also running cross-country track.
“I would get off practice around 2 or 3 p.m., and then my dad would pick me up,” she recalled. “I would go home, change, eat, and then go to work planting strawberries overnight. And then I would get off around 2 or 3 in the morning and wake up, like, at 5:30 or 6 to get ready for school or else I would miss the city bus.”
She said she wanted to recognize her parents, who are low-wage farmworkers who nevertheless were able to give a career-oriented education to their three eldest daughters.
“It’s really impressive,” she said. “Through blood, sweat, and tears they are out there, working hard during hazardous conditions, especially right now that it’s like 120 degrees. And I just want to recognize them because, without them, I wouldn’t have this degree.”
After completing her major, Rocha said she wants to take a year off from school and start to experience her career field. Afterward she wants to pursue a master’s and a doctorate degree. Her dream, she said, is to work in law enforcement, where she sees a lack of Latina professionals.
“My parents feel extremely proud,” she said. “It’s crazy because I would be the first one to be an officer within my family, and for them it’s pride and honor”.
Rocha said her parents, José Juan and Angélica María Rocha, have been farmworkers their entire life and emigrated from Michoacán, Mexico to California as teenagers.
They have been together for over 30 years and have five children.
At least one other local grad had a similar idea to honor her farm working parents.
In 2019, San Diego State graduate Erica Alfaro was photographed in cap and gown with her parents, Claudio and Teresa Alfaro at the edge of a strawberry field in Carlsbad.
Rocha said she hopes this can be considered a new tradition among farmworkers’ children in California and beyond.
“Hopefully students and Latinos start taking pride in their roots, and start to recognize all the sacrifices that their parents made,” she said, “especially when they work in domestically tough labor that doesn’t pay enough.”
Rocha said she is also sending a message to young Latinos and Latinas: “It’s possible to make your dream come true and to make your parents proud, but never forget where you come from.”
