Cristobal sometimes even squeezes in a soccer game, riding three miles on a bicycle to a neighboring ranch. Schneider's survey, released a year ago, was conducted with 40 workers in the absence of ranchers and is a sharply critical look at how the sheepherders are allegedly treated on some ranches. Central to the survey is a claim that isolated conditions keep the workers largely out of view and government attention. If you use the toilet, you have to clean it. All seven of the Indarts' sheepherders live in separate trailers, which measure roughly 12 by 20 feet.
All trailers have some means of heating, cooking and refrigeration.
Although the Indarts' trailers already comply with inspection standards, they are upgrading them so that ultimately all will have toilets, solar showers and means for cooling. So far, they have replaced four of the seven. At a commission hearing in September, the older Leon testified that the Indarts treated him well. But another herder, Lorenzo Mosquera, who worked for a different rancher, said he was insulted by his employer, left at a motel and deprived of his passport. Of the pay given herders, he said it amounts to una miseria, a misery.