BY RONNIE GREENE

  The fear is still fresh for farmworker Antonio Martinez. After he was held as a slave in a squalid hovel, his case helped send his abusive crew boss to prison.

  Today -- four years later -- Martinez is back in the fields, back in the Florida heat, plucking precious oranges. It is not an easy task.

  A heavy orange-colored sack around his waist, Martinez navigates a ladder like a gymnast, leaning into the thick grove to snatch orange after orange. The ladder has two legs, not four. Martinez dangles from its top rungs, sometimes balancing on just one ladder leg.

  He wears thick wool socks under his shirt, a rare sight in the Sunshine State. The socks protect workers from pesticides and bruises.

  It takes 12 large orange sacks, each weighing about 90 pounds when full, to fill a nearby bin. For each bin he fills, Martinez pockets one ficha, or token, which brings $8. On this day, his first in this grove, Martinez goes easy.

  Easy, for him, means filling the tub five times, which takes 60 sacks. That's 5,400 pounds of fruit for $40 of pay in a day.

  This is the grind of farmworkers, whether they reach for oranges or tomatoes, stoop for cabbage or stand assembly-line to sort potatoes.

  ''When we say the tomatoes that leave Immokalee have sweat, have blood, we're not exaggerating,'' said Lucas Benitez, co-founder of the Coalition of Immokalee
  Workers, a nonprofit group that rallies for farmworker rights and has helped bring crimes like the Abel Cuello Jr. case to the attention of authorities.

  Cuello pleaded guilty to involuntary servitude against Martinez and other workers, and went away to prison for 33 months.

  But Cuello is out now. Martinez has not forgotten. Although he continues to work the fields to make a living, he asked that his work site not be disclosed.

  ''Thankfully,'' Martinez said, ``I was able to escape.''