By NADIA MARIA SMITH
CS&T Staff Writer
When asked how many scoops of sugar you take with your coffee, it’s not likely that you’re thinking about where that sugar came from. But a new documentary set to be released September 23 on DVD by Uncommon Productions is forcing Americans to take a closer look.
“The Price of Sugar,” an award-winning documentary by Bill Haney and narrated by actor Paul Newman, tells the story of thousands of dispossessed Haitians who are trafficked into the Dominican Republic and forced to work under inhumane conditions harvesting sugarcane for the sweet additive that mostly ends up in U.S. kitchens.
“I am sure most American families would be very embarrassed to know at what price they put sugar in their coffee every morning,” said Father Christopher Hartley, the Spanish missionary priest who ministered to the Haitians in the sugarcane fields for nearly 10 years before he was forced out of the country.
The United States sugar markets are protected, with sugar prices historically set well-above world prices — from 40 percent higher in 2006 to more than double world prices in recent years. In order to maintain this system, foreign sugar imports are severely restricted, but quotas are handed out to a small group of favored countries that are permitted to sell into the U.S. market at the inflated U.S. prices.
The Dominican Republic is at the top of the list, receiving the largest share of the U.S. import quotas, therefore 100 percent of Dominican sugar exports end up in the American market.
So the question is: What is happening in the sugarcane fields of the Dominican Republic?
The documentary explains just that. It tells the story of Father Hartley, who after spending years working with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, moves to the Dominican Republic. He works passionately to improve the living and working conditions of his poorest parishioners despite great risk to his own life. According to the documentary, the sugarcane fields, located just a few miles inland from the beautiful, tourist-filled beaches of Dominican Republic, are a haven of illegal immigration and virtual slavery.
Every year more than 30,000 Haitians are recruited by the second largest sugar company in the country, the Vicini Group, that operates within the Diocese of San Pedro de Macoris, where Father Hartley worked. They promise a good paying job in the sugarcane fields of the Dominican Republic, which shares the border with Haiti. Although the Dominican Republic is a poor country, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere — 80 percent of the population lives under the poverty line and 54 percent in abject poverty.
The filmmaker said that plantation recruiters take advantage of this desperation and illegally bring Haitians over the border for a fee, while the government border troops turn a blind eye. Then, they strip the Haitians of their identity cards once in the Dominican Republic. The documentary shows them waiting at the border to be loaded on buses in the middle of the night and then taken to the plantation, where they live in subhuman conditions.
Until Father Hartley began to petition for real changes, the workers were kept in the plantation under armed guard and threatened or beaten if they tried to leave. Those who did escape would be picked up by authorities and put in jail for a time before being deported back to Haiti without papers.
Once they entered the plantations, the Haitian workers, which include men, women and children, became invisible, not belonging to Haiti or the Dominican Republic. Even children born in the plantations are not recognized as Dominican citizens despite the fact that the country’s constitution calls for such recognition.
The workers are given shanty housing with no running water or plumbing, and are paid the equivalent of 90 cents per day. On pay day, instead of receiving cash, workers are given vouchers that are only redeemable at the sugar company’s stores. These conditions permit malnutrition, injuries and disease to run rampant among the workers and their families.
When Father Hartley arrived he was told not to go into the sugarcane fields. It took him three months to build up enough courage to do it, and when he did he said, “I had no idea of the magnitude of all that I would confront.”
He began by documenting the abuses. Then he attended to the spiritual needs of the workers by celebrating Mass and administering the sacraments. Next, with aid from the Church, and the governments of Spain, the U.S. and Dominican Republic, he helped build homes, childcare centers, and senior homes for senior workers, most of whom had ailments resulting from their work in the sugarcane fields. He also brought U.S. doctors to work in mobile clinics. Lastly, he taught workers about the Church’s principles on worker’s rights and organized their first strike while petitioning the sugar company on their behalf.
Because of Father Hartley’s efforts, the Haitians no longer worked under armed guard and had more freedom to move between the shanty villages or go to town at their own risk.
But the more he did, he said, the more death threats he received from the sugar company. The hostility spilled over to Dominicans within his parish boundaries who were paid off by the company to start protests and riots according to those interviewed in the documentary. As tensions mounted, Father Christopher was eventually forced to leave under order of his Bishop, but the work he started and the spirit for change he inspired in the workers continues today.
“The audiences we have screened ‘The Price of Sugar’ for have been extraordinarily generous with our film,” said director Bill Haney. “It won the Audience Award at its first festival, South by Southwest, and has provoked penetrating questions on both macro-scale issues of morality, human rights, international trade and U.S. subsidy policy, and on more human-scale issues involving the lives of the film’s characters.”
One of the most pressing questions has been, “What can we do?” Haney suggests supporting the work of Infante Sano, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing health care to Dominican and Haitian mothers and infants; writing to your congressman to ask him or her to make sure that the full civil and labor rights of the cane workers are respected and guaranteed in exchange for the opportunity to export Dominican sugar to the U.S. market; and buying Fair Trade Certified sugar and sweets made with Fair Trade sugar because it ensures that cooperatives of small-scale sugarcane growers receive a fair price for their crops and that critical protections are provided to any laborers they employ. He also suggests that churches, schools and universities host screenings of the film with question and answer sessions and that people preorder the DVD and share it with family and friends.
For more information, to schedule a screening or to preorder a copy of the DVD, visit www.thepriceofsugar.com or call Uncommon Productions at (781) 647-4470.
CS&T staff writer Nadia Maria Smith may be reached at npozo@adphila.org or (215) 965-4614.
Local director of Catholic Relief Services:
Documentary ‘very powerful’
Anne Ayella, the archdiocesan director of Catholic Relief Services and the assistant director of the archdiocesan Nutritional Development Services (NDS), is recommending “The Price of Sugar,” the award-winning documentary by Uncommon Productions to be released Sept. 23.
She called the film “very powerful” and hopes to organize screenings within the Archdiocese before the release date.
“I think the issues tackled in the film are all intertwined with the dignity of the person so they are extremely important to Catholics,” Ayella said. “Father Hartley is the voice of the voiceless. The fact that the Haitian workers are lured in by empty promises and are treated so poorly is such a travesty.”
Ayella is familiar with poverty. Within the Archdiocese’s five county area, NDS runs 550 feeding programs in the summer alone and through CRS, she promotes fair trade foods and crafts because “it helps to build right relationships between those who grow our food and we, as consumers,” she said. “Fair trade is a way to empower poor farmers and laborers by giving them a fair price, as well as fair working conditions.”
When she screened the film, she was shocked at what she learned: “I couldn’t believe so many on the batey, or shanty towns, had no access to clean water and health care. The fact that they were paid in vouchers instead of cash is also so unfair.”
It is those injustices that degrade the human dignity of the worker and increase global poverty that fair trade organizations try to correct by fairly dealing with international trade. And it’s one way that the producers of the film are encouraging people to do something to help combat the injustice highlighted in the film.
“I think the Fair Trade movement will continue to grow as we consumers realize what a difference it makes to the farmers, growers, crafters and the environment, as well,” Ayella said.
Lizanne Hagedorn, the assistant director of Finance and Administration for Nutritional Development Services, who also screened the film with her 17-year-old daughter, noted that “it is important for Catholics to see this,” she said. “It is a wake up call for us to be people of action and agents of change.”
To learn more about CRS Fair Trade, visit www.crsfairtrade.org