2008 Woodie Awards
The price of sugar costs lives in Haiti
Timothy Spath
Issue date: 4/10/08 Section: A & E
It is everywhere. In front of you on the table at a restaurant, at home inside the cupboard in a small bowl or jar, or on the counter next to the coffee and tea station in FLIK, sugar is used without question or concern.
It is an invisible comfort that we do not see as it dissolves in our latte or on top of our cereal. It is read on the nutrition label, noted, and then forgotten. But this sweet addition to our daily coffee rituals or ingredients in baking a birthday cake may be causing some more than just the hassle of lifting a spoon or opening a packet.
In the recent documentary, "The Price of Sugar" the maltreatment and enslavement of the people of Haiti working on the sugar plantations in the bordering, prosperous Dominican Republic, is exploited as one priest dives deep down into the root of the sugarcane industry.
Every day on the almost nonexistent border of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, hundreds of Haitians are smuggled into the Dominican Republic, stripped of their papers and identities, and sent to work in the "bateyes," small villages located on the sugarcane plantations in the countryside. Promised better jobs and living conditions, Haitians flock to the borders, eager to find work in the city of Santo Domingo. In reality, 95 percent of them end up in these plantations.
"When the movie finished, my mind and my heart were devastated and I immediately wanted to help these tortured people," said senior Betty Laguna.
The vicious cycle, in which these people are twisted, makes for an almost impossible escape or opportunity for a better life. With armed guards watching over them as they work and barbed wire fences above their housing, trying to leave the plantation is futile. Once out of a bateye, a Haitian in the Dominican Republic will be picked up almost immediately, imprisoned and then deported back to Haiti.
Father Christopher Hartley has worked on these bateyes for almost 15 years, preaching for better living conditions, forming strikes in order to gain privileges for the workers, as well as seeking outside support to feed families' starvation.
It is an invisible comfort that we do not see as it dissolves in our latte or on top of our cereal. It is read on the nutrition label, noted, and then forgotten. But this sweet addition to our daily coffee rituals or ingredients in baking a birthday cake may be causing some more than just the hassle of lifting a spoon or opening a packet.
In the recent documentary, "The Price of Sugar" the maltreatment and enslavement of the people of Haiti working on the sugar plantations in the bordering, prosperous Dominican Republic, is exploited as one priest dives deep down into the root of the sugarcane industry.
Every day on the almost nonexistent border of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, hundreds of Haitians are smuggled into the Dominican Republic, stripped of their papers and identities, and sent to work in the "bateyes," small villages located on the sugarcane plantations in the countryside. Promised better jobs and living conditions, Haitians flock to the borders, eager to find work in the city of Santo Domingo. In reality, 95 percent of them end up in these plantations.
"When the movie finished, my mind and my heart were devastated and I immediately wanted to help these tortured people," said senior Betty Laguna.
The vicious cycle, in which these people are twisted, makes for an almost impossible escape or opportunity for a better life. With armed guards watching over them as they work and barbed wire fences above their housing, trying to leave the plantation is futile. Once out of a bateye, a Haitian in the Dominican Republic will be picked up almost immediately, imprisoned and then deported back to Haiti.
Father Christopher Hartley has worked on these bateyes for almost 15 years, preaching for better living conditions, forming strikes in order to gain privileges for the workers, as well as seeking outside support to feed families' starvation.
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