Blood, sweat and tears

Men expect to work at a sugar plantation. (Walter Astrada)

The sugar industry: Film Review

Vanity Fair's February 2001 article past Marie Brenner, "In the Kingdom of Big Carbohydrate," was an exposé on the business and labor practices of the Fanjul Family'due south Florida sugar industries (that includes Domino Sugar). Brenner's article generated several documentaries revealing the disturbing hidden reality of human rights violations that include trafficking in persons, the slave trade, kid labor, impecuniousness of citizenship and other illegal piece of work practices. The sugar triangle, where these practices continue with piddling reform since slavery was introduced to the Americas, includes Florida, Jamaica and the Dominican Democracy. Two documentaries in detail, "The Sugar Babies" and "The Toll of Sugar," both released in 2007, brand it clear that it is the blood, sweat and tears of cane workers that put the sugar on our tables, and into almost every processed nutrient product in the United States.

Director/writer William Haney'south flick, "The Toll of Saccharide," features Fr. Christopher Hartley, a Spanish priest working in the Dominican Commonwealth. The film was produced by Tim Disney, bang-up-nephew of Roy, and released in 2007 past Haney's company, Uncommon Productions. The picture show enjoyed a brief theatrical run and made the festival circuit, winning a Gabriel Award, every bit well as being short-listed for an University Award nomination. In 2007, the Dominican Republic's major carbohydrate baron family, the Vicini Group, cited in the moving picture, filed an anti-defamation lawsuit and halted the pic's commercial release on DVD.

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Read the pb story Moving picture marks new circular in battle of over sugar

Read almost Fr. Christopher Hartley

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"The Toll of Sugar," narrated by the belatedly Paul Newman, follows the life of Hartley betwixt 2004 and 2006 as he ministers to his parishioners, the plantation workers in San José de los Llanos.

Hartley'due south parishioners are mostly Haitians who accept been smuggled across the border under the comprehend of night with a hope of piece of work, pay and schooling. They are relieved of their documents on the border, if they have them. Most of these 30,000 workers would harvest carbohydrate cane by manus and then be dumped back over the border. They were not paid in greenbacks, only in vouchers that could be redeemed at the company store. Health care was non-existent. Others have been built-in and raised in the bateys and thousands more are smuggled illegally each year beyond the Haitian/Dominican border, where they harvest carbohydrate cane for a lifetime under appalling conditions.

Over the years Hartley and others effected some changes through education, feeding stations for the children, medical assistance from Doctors Without Borders, a strike and legal activeness. Some changes have endured, some have not, and the class action accommodate filed past the workers after Hartley'due south departure, asking for a simple piece of work contract, is in process. Guards no longer patrol the workers with weapons. Illegal trafficking of workers has diminished to a large extent, though in May, Hartley told attendees at the Catholic Media Convention in Anaheim, Calif., that it has resumed. Workers are paid in greenbacks and can leave the plantation (although they are subject area to abort if plant without identity cards).

According to the filmmakers, 100 percentage of Dominican sugar exports end up in U.S. markets and American taxpayers subsidize the toll paid to Dominican companies. In 2006, the Us paid 43 percent more for Dominican sugar than the price of sugar on the earth market.

Hartley'southward personal story is compelling. He is the eldest son of the heir to the British Hartley Jelly Visitor and a Castilian blueblood. His family unit speaks of how surprised they were when at the historic period of fifteen Hartley felt chosen to the priesthood. Subsequently ordination he worked among the poor in Calcutta with Mother Teresa and then equally vocation director of the New York archdiocese.

Hartley states in the moving-picture show that the only reason he could carry out his ministry among the plantation workers was the assurance that he was correct. In a phone interview, Hartley explained that equally a seminarian he hadn't understood the significant of the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes ("Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World"), but that information technology became clear during his ministry in the Dominican Democracy. At present having been asked by Dominican Republic church building authorities to get out his parish, he serves in a remote parish in Federal democratic republic of ethiopia.

Hartley also appears in Amy Serrano's 2007 moving-picture show "The Carbohydrate Babies" to introduce the children of the bateys and their multilayered misery and poverty. In "The Price of Sugar," Hartley, nonetheless, is front end and heart. He insists that his reason for collaborating with manager Haney was to bring attention to the exploitation of his parishioners, and he achieves this. "My aim, my goal ever, is to draw attention to the people who are suffering such misery."

Hartley says that the well-nigh difficult task was organizing the workers to strike considering he first had to teach them that they had rights. Aside from the outraged Dominicans that the movie says were paid to carry out street demonstrations, only one voice, an American Peace Corps worker, sounds a negative view, simply she after ends up admiring the priest anyway.

Movie critics chosen the moving picture on its release baking and inspiring, and I concord. Its images and narration make for a severe indictment of the sugar industry from grower to market to consumer.

The filmmakers say they tried to interview the Vicinis simply were refused. Is in that location some aspect the filmmakers left out? Did they massage facts or photographic camera perspectives to bear witness a point unfairly? Peradventure we will know more of the story when the lawsuit against Uncommon Productions is settled.

Regardless, many forms of human trafficking and slavery keep more than than at any fourth dimension in the history of the world. "The Toll of Carbohydrate" implores the viewer to consider the ethics of the sugar manufacture and the moral dimensions of greed. The moving-picture show is a call to action.

"The Toll of Sugar" is available on DVD to churches and universities at www.thepriceofsugar.com; "The Sugar Babies" tin be ordered online at world wide web.sugarbabiesfilm.com.

Sr. Rose Pacatte, a Daughter of St. Paul, is the director of the Pauline Heart for Media Studies, an award-winning writer on film and scripture, and a media literacy education specialist.

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