Ester Hernández grew up in California’s San Joaquin Valley,
where she unknowingly bathed in and drank polluted water and
worked in an environment contaminated by pesticides. The
Hernández family was actively involved in the struggle for farm
workers’ rights, an issue of great concern to César Chávez.
Questions about the effects of pesticides on agricultural
workers prompted her to create Sun Mad. Her posters have been
controversial. She recounts how Sun Mad began when she went
"home to visit my mother in 1979, reading the articles she saved
about water contamination in the barrio.” After thinking about
it for two years, and remembering her work as a farmhand, she
focused her anger on the dangers of growing grapes for the
raisin industry. "I focused on something personal, the Sun Maid
box," she said. "Slowly I began to realize,” she continued, “how
to transform the Sun Maid and unmask the truth behind the
wholesome figures of agribusiness. Sun Mad evolved out of my
anger and my fear of what would happen to my