For my Independent Project, I chose to go back to the banana workers union in Sixaola that we visited in week 2 of Block 2. I was very much drawn to all the social issues present in such an intense work environment with what seemed like very little benefits to those living there. According to the union's secretary general and head of the negotiating team (by the way, the union at this farm is the only banana workers' union in Costa Rica, which is a little scary), there is an intense and bitter rivalry between the union (the "syndicalists") and the company-sponsored solidarity association (the "solidaristas"), which is supposed to provide workers with the same protection and benefits as a union, but doesn't really do squat.
My host family was very welcoming and were very eager for me to experience every detail of their everyday lives. Twenty minutes after I got off the bus, they dragged me to the grocery store with them--in Panama.
My host sister and I standing on the bridge that connects Sixaola, Costa Rica with Guabito, Panama.
The next day we rode the "rola" (the cable system that runs through the banana plantation) to the river to swim.
I tried to conduct my interviews with the workers, but on the third day (after I'd made some really great progress: 11 interviews in 2 days), a Chiquita official walked into the fonda that my host mom owns and asked to meet with me. He told me that I was not allowed to interview Chiquita banana workers without Chiquita's permission. He gave me a lawyer's number and bid me adieu. I was shocked and angry that a corporation was trying to first of all limit the freedoms of these people to talk to me and second of all limit my freedom to talk to them! My initial backlash, naturally, turned into a video slam of Chiquita:
My first instinct was to continue interviewing workers despite Chiquita's demands (the lawyer sent me the paperwork which of course takes 5 weeks to process while I'm only on the plantation for 4 weeks, and even then no guarantees on permission), but I was worried that trying to get workers to talk to me anyway would put their jobs and livelihoods in danger. My host family assured me that they would find people and places safe to interview at and with. My sisters and their kids were great and I don't know what I would have done without them.
My host family's house (the duplex right half). It has two bedrooms--I took one, 4 people slept in the other bedroom, 1 person slept on the couch, and 1 on the bed under the stairs.
For those of you who don't know, bananas do not grow on trees--they grow on plants. Why does that matter? Because plants are high maintenance and have to be replanted multiple times in a year as opposed to being part of a long-term infrastructure like, say, an apple tree that can live and produce apples for years and years. For this reason--along with the fact that bananas are produced year round not just in one season--banana plantations are very labor-intensive.
One of my host sisters and my host mom and I.
No comments:
Post a Comment