El Campo

El Campo dramatizes the lives of farm workers and their families, using two art forms with roots in folk tradition: Lyrical poems (in English) that narrate moving stories about the sorrows, joys, and native beliefs of hardworking people; and images rendered in bold colors of these people, painted in an heroic style reminiscent of the great muralist Diego Rivera.

The book focuses on the family and its Mexican heritage, with several poems and paintings being testaments to the love parents have for their children. Yet, it is also about broken families, disrupted by the necessity to migrate north in search of work. Several poems describe the loneliness fathers face when they must leave their families in Mexico; other poems deal with children and women wanting to escape the tyranny of their parents, or husbands, and the lives they're bonded to. El Campo deals with the complex issues that strengthen families in spite of hardship, as well as those that weaken and destroy them. Both Delgado and Silva value the importance of family love, and reveal through their art how hardships test the character of an individual as well as a family.