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Photo: STITCH via Labor Is Not a Commodity (laborrightsblog.typepad.com)
Cross-posted from In These Times.
The term “banana republic” has become a cliche to describe economic imperialism throughout history, but the legacy of colonialism persists in Latin America today. The tradition of predatory capitalism echoed in the recent death of Miguel Angel González Ramírez, a member of the Izabal banana workers’ union SITRABI in Guatemala.
According to the International Trade Union Confederation, the unionist was “shot several times whilst carrying his young child in his arms.” This seems to be another casualty in a labor battle between labor and corporateers who would rather see workers shed blood than be paid fair wages.
The ITUC has demanded an official investigation, noting that in the past year several unionists have been killed or targeted with threats. Last October, SITRABI member Pablino Yaque Cervantes was shot by an unidentified attacker, according to U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project (US LEAP).
Manuela Chávez of the ITUC’s Department of Human and Trade Union Rights told In these Times, “Freedom of association and the right to organize and bargain collectively have been endangered by a very high anti-union repression for years,” adding that the threats to unionists are aggravated by government inaction.
But it’s not just the cruelty of the killing–nor the connection to the infamous banana crop–that evokes a history of enslavement and dehumanization of indigenous, African and migrant peoples. The company in question, BANDEGUA, is a Del Monte subsidiary that has come under fire for refusing to comply with the Guatemalan government’s minimum wage standards.
The incident reflects business as usual in the banana industry, well known for oppressive working conditions. Labor advocates have long protested unfair wages and other violations in Latin American agriculture, especially under international giants like Dole.
The crisis has reached a boiling point under the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), a NAFTA-style trade regime that expanded multinationals’ power over the region’s industrial and agricultural sectors. Evidence of systemic abuses prompted SITRABI and other Guatemalan unions, along with the AFL-CIO, to initiate a worker rights complaint in 2008. As documented by US LEAP, the campaign cites violations of union rights as well as outright brutality, “including the 2007 murder of the brother of the General Secretary of the union.”
It remains to be seen whether there will be any consequences for the latest killing, but if past is prologue, Del Monte will likely remain comfortably insulated from labor troubles in the recesses of its global empire. After all, that’s what trade systems like CAFTA have been designed to do, with their notoriously flimsy labor provisions. SITRABI’s activists are veterans of this war of attrition, having led global efforts to raise awareness of the rampant human rights abuses in the industry, from terrorizing violence to illegal firings to lack of collective bargaining protections.
Noting that the CAFTA complaint still drags on as the body count ticks up, Lupita Aguila Arteaga, executive director of the advocacy group STITCH, told In These Times:
This prolonged process shows how ineffective CAFTA is at protecting the rights of workers. The U.S. needs to continue to pressure the Guatemalan government to obey its own labor laws and uphold its labor rights obligations as mandated in the Central America Free Trade Agreement.
STITCH points out that labor violations in the banana industry are deeply entwined in global trade networks that send cheap fruit to hungry U.S. consumer markets. Since even so-called “fair trade certified” bananas may come from nonunion plantations, Arteaga says, American appetites are driving a hemispheric race to the bottom:
The banana industry in Latin America is facing a decline in unionization rates and wages. Companies like Wal-Mart are now buying directly from Latin American producers where unions do not exist and therefore labor and prices are cheaper. Banana companies are trying to stay afloat of this game by moving their production to other areas that can allow them to make a bigger profit by paying workers less and not providing any benefits.
Perhaps the best hope challenging Latin America’s labor injustices won’t come from government or consumer campaigns, but from within–a surge in progressive unionism led by women. In a report on women banana workers (informed by a documentary project on feminist labor struggles), Arteaga describes how the fight for gender equity has become a wellspring of self-empowerment:
Bananeras, as they are dearly called, have achieved victories we can only dream of in the U.S., including clauses in their union contract that allows them to take a paid day off for a mammogram and/or a pap smear, union-wide campaigns with workshops against domestic violence, as well as union-led campaigns against HIV/AIDS with a focus on reproductive justice and accessibility to healthcare for all women in their communities. Not to mention the fact that ALL local banana unions have a women’s committee.
Today’s banana republic is still rife with neocolonial horrors, but if you unpeel the layers of bitter struggle surrounding these communities, you might find some surprisingly sweet triumphs.
16 Comments
Good research, thanks. The increasing power of native populations has definitely had a good effect on government in the southern continent. Just a note: we make our neighbors cringe when we refer to this country as “America” – which is two continental bodies, not just ours.
This article is frankly stupid.
Extrapolating from a tiny Central America country to Latin America as a whole is as short-sighted and ignorant of history, sociopolitics as you can get.
Let me guess, a spoilt American student spent some months away from home in an ‘exotic country’.
She also didn’t take the trouble to learn that this sorry state of affairs in Guatemala was largely perpetuated by the US, more specifically the CIA, helping to thwart any possibility of socialism or at least less sociopathic practices in Guatemala.
She apparently also doesn’t have access to Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala#1944_to_present_day
She probably also ignores that Guatemala, along with other Central American countries have been forced to sign unfavourable treaties which perpetuate this state of affairs.
You know, just in case of the evil commies of the south get anywhere near Uncle Sam!
You need to take a good look around and learn that there’s a military industrial complex in the US, and more than 45 million people living in poverty in the US.
45 million people in poverty in the US.
Probably not people you pal around with, dear author of this lame
article.
Then you might check that the entire population of Guatemala is just about 13 million.
Being horrified by military juntas of the Latin American past was a lovely cliche in 1960s books by Garcia Marquez, but now, it reeks of ignorance and stupidity.
Dear author of this lame article, you’re not part of the left, or the solution, you’re part of the ignorant majority of the US public.
Learn to disengage from traditional imperialist views then we’ll talk.
We’re just fine in many countries of Latin America without your ‘help’, thank you.
AG Eric Holder is an expert in the area of employer/employee relationships. Obtuse-minded (Shawshank Redemption) workers often neither understand nor appreciate that they are slaves.
Holder represented Chiquita Banana against uppity workers who didn’t appreciate being shot and poisoned.
Del Monte should consult with him.
In case your hostile and dismissive tone makes you feel smart, this is about a stupid a comment as I’ve seen in awhile. In case you think Wikipedia is the font of all wisdom, do note that its source is from its readers, not students or teachers of the subject. The juntas governing the southern continent are not out from under control of the conquistadores yet, but they are beginning to emerge.
You’re not reading right?
My dismissive tone is in response to the broad generalisation of the author, which of course, you have missed.
I live in Latin America, I don’t have to read it from Wikipedia.
I am only helping a group of ignorant people to learn from their own history, even if only in such limited form to get started with.
So I see you just registered this morning so you could jump right in and start insulting people.
How not to win friends and influence people in operation.
The author gave specific references to a situation in which working conditions are improving, which you chose to ignore in your wish to refer to specific U.S. policies which are not in the interest of southern continent governments, as if some one had said that they were. Ignorance is not disspelled by making rude comments about the intelligence of authors who have actually done research and present facts. You are the one who promoted her using Wikipedia. And many of my family also live in countries to the south of the U.S,, and it is quite likely so do Ms. Chen and hers but you assume that nothing of the sort could possibly be the case. That is extreme ignorance.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/12/mystery-disease-central-america_n_1272286.html
Interesting and alarming story.
Chronically overworked in hot environments. Translation: poverty and fear of it.
Yes, remarkably suggesting a slow motion heat stroke.
The colonial system is working just the way it was meant to grinding up the lives of the conquered and hoovering up their resources. I also recommend the documentary “Life and Debt” (2001) which centers on Jamaica but touches on Latin American and which features excellent interviews with Former Prime Minister Michael Manley.
It’s worth noting that Fresh Del Monte is not some faceless multinational corporation. It’s a US company, with many US-citizen officers, and relies on millions of US consumers for the profits that keep it going.
FYI – http://investorrelations.freshdelmonte.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=108461&p=irol-govboard
Some background:
An excerpt from an excellent investigative report by the Interhemispheric Resource Center:
Banana Pickers Fight to Survive
In the 1990s the U.S.-owned Del Monte Fresh Fruit and Produce and its Guatemalan Subsidiary, BANDEGUA, began restructuring their banana production operations. Instead of directly controlling production, as it had for the past 50 years, they began to outsource production to independent producers who rent the companies’ land, plantations, and facilities. Such was the case in a number of plantations in Guatemala’s Izabal Province, where Del Monte/BANDEGUA now subcontracts land and banana production to multiple small, local subcontractors.
According to Annie Bird, codirector of Rights Action, a development and human rights organization, “this makes production a lot cheaper, because it makes union organizing virtually impossible.”
For more than 50 years the Sindicato de Trabajadores Bananeros de Izabal (SITRABI), the only successful agricultural union in Guatemala, has bargained for banana workers’ rights. One of the union’s successes was a contract that won banana workers on Del Monte/BANDEGUA plantations decent wages, some benefits, and the right to live on small plots of company-owned land and cultivate staple food crops there for their own consumption.
Then, in 1998, Hurricane Mitch hit. According to worker advocates, what was a disaster for the families in Izabal province was an opportunity for Del Monte. “In the specific case of Del Monte in Guatemala, they used Hurricane Mitch as an excuse, and had workers break dykes to flood and kill banana plantations,” Bird says. “They then claimed that losses from natural disasters forced them to lay off workers. Almost all the fired workers were then hired by the independent producers–with much lower wages and lesser benefits.”
Soon after the hurricane, over 900 workers were fired from four of the Del Monte/BANDEGUA’s eleven Izabal plantations, and packaging and production facilities were then leased to several local producers who currently hold production contracts with the multinational company.
With the SITRABI union crippled, most of the fired workers were forced to take jobs with the smaller, independent producers at far lower wages. Banana workers who had previously earned an average of $5 a day with modest benefits now earn about $3.25 daily for a 10-to-12-hour shift.
However, approximately 400 former Del Monte/BANDEGUA workers are asserting their rights to live on land on the Lanquin II plantation–around 200 hundred are actually physically occupying plots on the site, citing the SITRABI’s contract with Del Monte/BANDEGUA that previously let them do so, says Rights Action.
In October last year Del Monte/BANDEGUA filed charges in Guatemalan courts against the land activists at Lanquin II for the criminal offense of land usurpation, and asked for their eviction. A court decision is expected in the coming weeks.
The Guatemalan government’s commission responsible for negotiating land conflicts, CONTIERRA, held meetings with Lanquin II land activists, delegates of the Campesino Unity Committee, which advocates on behalf of the former workers, and BANDEGUA management in September. But efforts to resolve the dispute were thwarted when BANDEGUA officials broke off the talks. Since then Del Monte/BANDEGUA has sold most of the disputed plantation lands to neighboring cattle ranchers. Activists say these ranchers, sometimes with the collusion of the police, are subjecting the former workers and their families to violent intimidation.
“[BANDEGUA] is attempting a simple legal escape from their responsibility in the numerous land conflicts, human rights abuses (including assassinations), and the constant state of tension between BANDEGUA-hired gunmen who now claim to be simple cattle ranchers in Izabal,” wrote Rights Action in an October 2002 report on the situation.
http://www.progress.org/fpif27.htm
If anyone is interested in reading about our meddling in Latin America, almost any book by Eduardo Galeano is adequate for understanding the perspective of the victims, as opposed to the victors, of US imperialism. “Open Veins of Latin America” is a good start, followed by the “Memory of Fire” trilogy, along with Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine”, and John Perkins’ “Confessions of An Economic Hit Man”.
Prepare to be thoroughly disgusted by the knowledge revealed in these books.
Willful ignorance is the rule in the USA. A recent survey of US idiots revealed that 70% of the public believes that Iran has a nuclear weapon. Enough said.
And see this story from the Philadephia Daily Record for some Del Monte union busting closer to home:
http://www.phillyrecord.com/2010/09/holts-lie-behind-del-montes-union-busting-at-port/
Well described.