Some of Martin Vargas-Vega’s earliest memories are of waking up in the strawberry and raspberry fields around Watsonville.
His immigrant parents picked berries, and when Vargas-Vega was young, the fields essentially served as daycare. His relatives worked nearby, as did the families of other children he knew.
At first, he remembers it being fun.
That changed when he became old enough to pick berries himself.
Vargas-Vega recalls early mornings working in the fields before heading to school, then returning afterward because his parents’ workdays had not ended.
“As I was picking these berries, I was like, there has to be something that I can do outside of this physical labor,” he said.
Today, Vargas-Vega is a senior software engineer whose journey from Watsonville’s agricultural fields to the technology industry is the subject of a new documentary, “Las Mismas Manos,” or “With These Same Hands.”
The film will premiere Sept. 16 at the New York Latino Film Festival before returning home for a screening at the 15th annual Watsonville Film Festival in March.
For Vargas-Vega, taking his family’s story to New York is difficult to comprehend.
“I barely could imagine going to my job as a software engineer, and going to New York for something like this is wild to me,” he said. “Absolutely wild.”
The film was co-directed and produced by Consuelo Alba, Brenda Avila-Hanna and Eugenia Rentería, who followed Vargas-Vega and his family for roughly a decade.
Watching the completed film for the first time was surreal, Vargas-Vega said, particularly because it contained footage of his family he had never seen, including scenes of his parents working in the fields.
More importantly, he said, the film made clear that his success was not his alone.
“This is a really collective journey, not an individual journey,” he said.
His parents, Vargas-Vega said, hope their participation can help other immigrant families trying to create opportunities for their children.
“They were proud, and their whole thing was if this could help make someone’s life just a little bit better,” he said.
Vargas-Vega graduated from Pajaro Valley High School in 2010 and attended Cabrillo College, where he studied multicultural studies.
But an opportunity through Watsonville-based Digital NEST would change the trajectory of his life.
Digital NEST founder Jacob Martinez knew Vargas-Vega before the organization even had a physical location.
In fact, Martinez said, footage of Vargas-Vega was filmed before Digital NEST opened as Martinez tried to visually demonstrate why Watsonville needed an organization connecting local young people to technology and other career opportunities. Vargas-Vega was one of two young people highlighted.
Martinez said he saw in Vargas-Vega something he continues to see in the young people who walk through Digital NEST’s doors.
“They all want to make their families proud, and they all want to make their communities proud,” he said.
Many, he said, are children of immigrants who came to the United States seeking better lives for their families.
“A lot of that pressure is put on our young people to make that vision a reality,” Martinez said.
Digital NEST, he added, surrounds those young people with community support while providing technical and professional skills and connecting them with a network of opportunities.
Through a Digital NEST partnership with Adobe, Vargas-Vega was offered the chance to apply for a technology boot camp. He was accepted and received roughly $20,000 worth of training.
“That’s really where my tech journey took off,” Vargas-Vega said. “Digital NEST helped me prepare for that opportunity.”
He later worked briefly at Adobe before joining a startup as its third software engineer. About two years after entering the technology field, he had established a career that he said would have taken considerably longer through a traditional university route.
The startup was eventually acquired for $200 million.
For Vargas-Vega, however, the lessons that prepared him for Silicon Valley began long before Digital NEST.
He calls his parents his “first engineers.”
He watched them confront difficult problems and find solutions while enduring long days of physical labor, he said. That same persistence helped him through hours of coding, training and job interviews.
When those challenges became difficult, Vargas-Vega thought about working in fields in 100-degree heat without easy access to such basics as a bathroom.
“My life has prepared me to be able to do this,” he said.
That career would ultimately allow him to repay his family’s sacrifices in a way he never anticipated.
Vargas-Vega’s father suffered kidney failure while the documentary was being made and required dialysis. Vargas-Vega was able to donate one of his kidneys to his father.
He said his technology career gave him health insurance, financial stability and the ability to take enough time away from work to undergo the procedure and recover.
“If it wasn’t for this job and the NEST and all these things, I probably wouldn’t have been able to save my dad,” he said.
Getting into Silicon Valley, however, came with another challenge.
Vargas-Vega said he rarely encountered software engineers who shared his background.
Many of the people he met had attended prestigious universities, had college-educated parents or had begun learning to code years before he did.
“I had no one to look up to,” he said. “So I had no one to compare myself to to say, am I on the right track or am I on the wrong track?”
He said that lack of representation sometimes left him uncertain whether he belonged.
“There isn’t that many Latinos,” he said. “And if there are, there’s even fewer of them in software engineering.”
That lack of visibility is precisely what Martinez hopes “Las Mismas Manos” can help change.
“Tech doesn’t see our young people,” Martinez said. “I’m hoping this documentary will shine light on the brilliance that exists in not only Watsonville, but other communities throughout that get overlooked.”
Martinez said the film also represents a chance to put a story about Watsonville’s farmworkers, families and young people before a national audience.
“The reason why I do the work in the NEST is to shine light on all the amazing talent that exists in these communities that often goes overlooked or underestimated,” he said.
Digital NEST has itself expanded significantly since Vargas-Vega first became involved.
The organization now operates in Watsonville, Salinas, Gilroy, Modesto and Stockton. Martinez said about 4,800 young people have come through its five centers.
Vargas-Vega has since helped raise more than $250,000 to support nonprofit technology-training programs such as Digital NEST, helping create opportunities for young people coming behind him.
His advice to young people entering spaces where they don’t see people who look like them is simple.
“Make a table,” he said. “Bring plenty of chairs so that other people can join and come around.”
He doesn’t merely want young people to follow the path he created. He wants them to go farther.
“I hope they blow me out of the water,” Vargas-Vega said. “I hope they become the founders that they want to be. Or I hope they become the directors of what they want to be wherever they go in the tech space.”
As long as those young people can look at him and see something they can build upon, he said, “then that’s a win for me.”
Martinez will join Vargas-Vega and others involved in the film in New York for the premiere.
For Martinez, it will be another opportunity to show an audience far beyond the Pajaro Valley what is happening in the community.
“We’re gonna go to New York and be good representatives of Watsonville,” he said, “and tell people about all the young people we have in Watsonville.”
“Las Mismas Manos” premieres Sept. 16 at the New York Latino Film Festival. It is scheduled for a homecoming screening at the 15th annual Watsonville Film Festival in March 2027.
For information, visit lasmismasmanos.com.
