Del Monte and Migrant Workers

        Del Monte is one of the leading producers of bananas in the world, and the world has a staggering appetite for bananas. Del Monte does what it needs to fill that market, and it does that well: supermarkets across the globe receive a steady supply of bananas nearly every morning. And why not? Bananas are healthy, nourishing, and inexpensive. They come perfectly encased in an “easy-to-go” wrapper provided by nature herself: not even a zip-loc bag required by Mom. 

        Children, athletes, health-nuts, executives – most everyone grabs a banana even multiple times a day. And more-over, companies like Del Monte offer employment to thousands of workers, and especially workers that may not have employment in their own country. They offer many of these families a chance out of poverty, food scarcity, and homelessness. It seems like a no-brainer; it seems like there could be no reasonable down-side to these magical offerings to the world. 

        But what about these migrant workers: do the consumers of Del Monte’s bananas know the whole story? And if they did know the whole story, would they still be so happily eating up their bananas? There is startling evidence that these migrant workers are not treated fairly, they are exploited, and there are few organizations in place to protect them.

        Jan Luis is a migrant worker from Haiti working for the banana industry in the Dominican Republic. Workers like Jan make up nearly 90 percent of the work force producing bananas across the globe (Levitt). After 30 years of working in the industry, however, he is still classified as an “illegal” worker. By not legalizing workers like Jan, large corporations like Del Monte do not need to offer them benefits, a minimum wage, guaranteed hours, vacation, vacation-pay, or even notice of termination (Levitt). 

       In an interview with Jan, The Guardian learned that “with his daily wage he cannot afford to live in anything more than a corrugated iron hut, with no water, toilet facilities or electricity. Lying hidden off a main road, around 1,000 Haitian migrants live crowded together…” (Levitt). Their working contract is for eight hours a day, but they mostly work more than ten or twelve hours. There are no rest-breaks and no overtime paid. They earn approximately 250 pesos a day, which is barely enough to even feed a family (Levitt). It may seem like Del Monte is offering their workers a way out of poverty, but the truth is that they are perpetuating the cycle.

        Exploitation of workers is a serious concern because it makes them feel helpless, vulnerable, and powerless, which perpetuates the cycle of mistreatment. Padre Regino, director of the Solidarity Association of Migrant Workers, says that the big companies of the banana industry “don't want to know about workers or bother themselves with how much they earn, where they live or what they eat” (Levitt). 

       The Sustainable Food Trust conducted an interview with Carlos, another migrant worker in the banana industry. Carlos has no job security, and he has no voice: he states that if a worker complains, they will find themselves without a job, and they are not protected by any employment laws (Smith). Women are dismissed when they become pregnant, and verbal abuse by employers is common (Smith).        Carlos says directly: “My boss is a tyrant,” and his coworker has “had a gun pointed at his head” (Smith). Lucia was also interviewed by the Food Trust and relates that she has never had a day off, and when she complained to her boss she was told that “…if she didn’t want to work, she knew where the door was” (Smith). By perpetuating the hiring of employees without legal documents, the big corporations like Del Monte save incalculable amounts of money, allowing them to continue turning a profit in an industry famous for its low-profit margins.

        Exploitation and mistreatment of employees would not be as serious of a threat if there were organizations in place to protect the workers. The Human Rights Watch investigated the banana industry, including Del Monte, and found an emerging classification of workers: “permanent temporary” (66-67). This classification allows for strings of “temporary” contracts to be created back to back, thereby working around any form of labor laws that have been created to protect workers. There is nowhere and no one to fight: they are not “true” employees. 

       In fact, temporary works are hired specifically so that the big corporations will not have problems with unions; the moment a temporary worker tries to unionize, they are fired (70). The Human Rights Watch found, however, that these workers should be receiving the same benefits and security as other workers, and ultimately concluded that the banana producers, including Del Monte, have “failed to ensure respect for workers’ rights … these corporations have therefore benefited from…and are complicit in labor rights abuses…” (80). There are laws in place to protect the workers, but it is up to the corporations like Del Monte to ensure the laws are kept. Unfortunately, this is not currently happening.

        Bananas are nourishing, nutritious, tasty and sweet. They are a quick pick-me-up and an instantaneous energy boost. They are cheap and convenient. The problem is that there is a dark side to the banana industry that the world knows little about: who is growing, picking, and packing up all these bananas? It has been proven in multiple investigations that most of these workers are migrant, and they are being pushed to work too many hours, without adequate shelter or provisions, and without an adequate rate of pay. 

        Worse than all of that, there is nobody to fight for the workers' rights, and if they do try to fight for themselves, they are fired. The world needs to understand that when they bite into their banana, they are biting into an industry that has pulled the wool over their eyes: just because the sticker on the banana says “fair-trade” does not mean the migrant workers were actually treated “fairly.

Works Cited

Levitt, Tom.  “How Fairtrade Bananas Are Failing Migrant Workers.”  The Guardian, 28 May 2012,  www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/may/28/fair-trade-food.  Accessed 1 June 2019. 

Pier, Carol.  “Tainted Harvest: Child Labor and Obstacles to Organizing on Ecuador’s Banana Plantations.”  Human Rights Watch, April 2002, www.hrw.org/reports/2002/ecuador/2002ecuador.pdf.  Accessed on 31 May 2019.

Smith, Rachel.  “How Ethical Are Your Bananas?”  Sustainable Food Trust, 24 April 2015, sustainablefoodtrust.org/articles/how-ethical-are-your-bananas/.  Accessed 1 June 2019. 

the road back home.....

it's merely
an unraveling then
isn't it
of everything

a seemingly
devolution
in consciousness
what was once thought
to have been raised so high
plummets
spirals
with the weight
of all that conviction
all those ideas
shattering into a million pieces
onto the rich
rich soil of life

it's an unraveling then
isn't it
of everything
we once held true
and I don't mean
most things
as I once
naively
thought
but actually
an unraveling
of every
single
thing

not just the things
we're finally certain
are not true
not just the things
we finally see
were in no one's
greatest good

but more importantly
much more urgently
is the letting go
of the things
we were certain
infallibly certain
to be
the truth

this space
of no truth
I believe
I humbly offer
as the field
where Rumi
patiently
silently
now awaits our return

I used to think
my road there
was urgent
I used to try
to quicken my pace
I now view it
as more of a ramble
a wandering of sorts
I suppose
back home

where the roots
I trip on
the raging rivers
I swim through
the desert heat
that scalds my skin
the numbing cold
of the northern winters
the scorpions sting
the vast and utter
at times
sheer barrenness
of the land

are all
equally as important
as the warm fire
the open arms
that await
my daring return

it's like
there is this door
in another realm
a hidden door
a secret portal
some might say
and one day
God opens it
and says
it's time for you to go
go out
go find yourself
your pure beauty
in the swath
and decay
of the human life

it's half adventure
and half
a doctorate's degree
to our very own soul

and we fly through the sky
for days, weeks, years
sometimes a whole
human lifetime
and yes
it's an adventure
and yes
some of us
actually do
get to discover our very soul
but underneath all of that
there is this yearning
isn't there
for some it's conscious
and for others
a vague feeling
of misplacement

but always
it sits there
doesn't it.....
this constant yearning
for our road
back home

Rising Epidemic of Obesity: What We Can Do

Mexico and the Epidemic of Obesity    

      At one time, Mexico was one of the healthiest countries in the world, mainly because the food they ate was nearly all hand-made and home-grown, and most of the population was physically active on their family land each day.  In modern Mexico, however, times are changing rapidly, and obesity and its related diseases are dramatically on the rise. Prevention has been found to be key, and simply treating the disease and its symptoms ineffective. 

    Furthermore, multiple studies have concluded that obesity has less to do with the individual, and more to do with the very environment each person finds themselves in, namely poverty, unemployment, and a food-system now entrenched with commercialized and processed foods.  Programs to combat poverty and socioeconomic problems, providing education and knowledge on how to make healthy-food choices, and more physical daily movement are appearing to offer more viable and long-term solutions to overcome this current health crisis in Mexico. 

    Poverty has been shown to be a direct link to obesity, and poverty is wide-spread throughout Mexico.  Much of this poverty is due to the commercialization of farming, not only driving the once-prevalent small family farms to sell their home-grown products at a severely discounted rate, but also forcing many farms to completely close, unable to compete with the industrialized-farming giants and their much-less-expensive commercialized products being sold in the big-chain grocery stores (Wilhelm 18-20).  Wilhelm writes that “peasants in the rural areas outside of Mexico City are essentially forced into migration as a result of limited economic opportunity in the rural areas” (20).  

    The Mexican government has implemented many programs in an attempt to combat obesity, including installing exercise machines in urban centres, a sales tax on soda, and even fining schools for serving soft drinks, but obesity is still on the rise (Wilhelm, 4,6,10).  Wilhelm has found that the public health crisis of obesity is not as simple as prescribing more gym-time and less soda; instead, it is a result of underlying political economy issues (4). These issues include "poverty, unemployment, migration, and in particular, the loss of farmers’ jobs in Mexico. Public policy functions to treat the symptoms of the public health crisis do not fully acknowledging the root causes of the crisis” (4). 

    Levasseur has conducted research on the “Conditional Cash Transfers” (CTT) program currently offered in Mexico, which offers cash incentives to combat hunger along with extreme and chronic poverty (145).  This program has been proven to be one of the most “successful and ambitious around the world” regarding capital and poverty indicators and has more recently been studied by Levasseur for the possibility of simultaneously reducing obesity through the same incentive system (144).  The conclusions of this study directly support Levasseur’s belief that poverty and obesity are directly and irrevocably related (152). Socioeconomic programs such as the CTT program in Mexico offer strong evidence to support more time, money and effort should be placed on refining and expanding these types of programs that offer a real solution to poverty and therefore obesity.

    Home-grown food is naturally healthier, but it was not something a person had to “learn” or “know” about in the past.  Food was simply grown or raised and then eaten. As that aspect of life changed for Mexico, and people moved to urban settings, they started eating fast food, commercial food, and processed food (Marron-Ponce et al). Significant over-consumption of soft drinks, potato chips, candy, and sweets have markedly impacted the health of Mexicans and their quality of life (Wilhelm 2).  

    There is evidence that many Mexicans have little knowledge or information about what constitutes “healthy” eating, and there appears to be a strong link between a lack of whole-foods education and the rising obesity rates (Levasseur 146). To highlight how grave of a situation Mexico currently has regarding their fight against obesity, one can look at their soda consumption: “Mexico is the greatest consumer of soda in the world with an average of 46 gallons per person per year—86% more than the average American” (Wilhelm 6).  

    The success of the (aforementioned) CTT program, that offers training on healthy-food choices as one of their cash incentives, is an example of how education directly impacts obesity in Mexico: as people learn to make new eating choices, their weight correspondingly drops.

    As the rural farming communities of Mexico started moving to urban centres, their way of life changed dramatically: most people now spend their days virtually sedentary.  Their physical output has decreased substantially, yet the calories consumed are not always altered.  Life in the urban centres of Mexico come at a high cost for many Mexicans: economic and employment opportunities in the cities cannot support the levels of migration from the rural areas, and Mexicans are left in worse poverty than they had in the countryside (Wilhelm 20).  

    Wilhelm has found that industrialized farming has caused job losses for millions of Mexicans, leaving already extremely-poor areas with no infrastructure, and skyrocketing agricultural unemployment (20). Now ensconced in the urban settings, Mexicans are no longer eating their natural foods and have started consuming the very commercialized products that has forced them off their family farms.  Wilhelm writes that obesity is a direct result of these nutritional changes in the past few generations, including increased consumption of sugar, refined carbohydrates, processed foods, and sodas (2). They cite the Public Health Nutrition of Mexico: “Access to inexpensive but high energy-dense food is rising and physical activity is decreasing, since large numbers of people now live in urban areas and are engaged in less physical activity” (2).  

    Marron-Ponce et al confirms this link between urbanization and obesity: as the cities are flooded with new residents, demand for inexpensive food rises, and supermarkets, convenience stores and fast-food restaurants snatch up their share of the market. It appears that obesity is a health crisis with the clear potential for prevention and reversal, yet it seems little is being done on a socioeconomic or political level to deal with the negative results of mass urbanization in Mexico. With the shift from rural life to urban life, Mexico and its citizens must find new ways to combat a sedentary lifestyle and resist the commercialized and processed foods they now find at their immediate disposal.    

    Despite Mexico making a wide variety of changes to its public policies to combat obesity, such as the tax on soft drinks, obesity continues to rise instead of lower. The fact is that obesity has been proven to be a socioeconomic problem resulting as a direct link to the high poverty rates in Mexico. With the high poverty rates comes a correlation to a lack of current education on what constitutes “healthy” food choices.  The influx of inexpensive commercialized products into their country has left the cash-poor citizens of Mexico nearly forced to purchase these lower-priced commercial products.  

    Forced from their family farms, a high percentage of the citizens of Mexico have become sedentary and without employment or direction. Attempting to combat obesity or its symptoms in and of itself is not dealing with the root or causal issues that plague Mexico. Studies have continually proven that attempting to convince people to eat less or exercise more is not a sustainable or effective way to deal with obesity.  

    Mexico must find new ways to address their current health crisis: they must look outside of the traditional models of the past that have offered neither solutions nor success. Evidence shows that Mexico must expand their socioeconomic programs to combat poverty and reduce consumption of processed foods, while supporting a healthier and more sustainable local-farm movement back into existence.

Works Cited

Levasseur, Pierre. “Can social programs break the vicious cycle between poverty and obesity? Evidence from urban Mexico.” Science Direct – World Development, Vol. 113, Jan 2019, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X18303279?via%3Dihub.  Accessed 3 June 2019.

Marrón-Ponce, Joaquín Alejandro et al. “Trends in Ultra-Processed Food Purchases from 1984 to 2016 in Mexican Households.” Nutrients, vol. 11 (1), no. 45, 26 Dec. 2018, doi:10.3390/nu11010045.  Accessed 3 June 2019.

Wilhelm, Haley M. “Tipping the Scales: The Public Health Crisis in Mexico.” Scripps Senior Theses, Paper 733, 2016, scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1826&context=scripps_theses.  Accessed 5 June 2019. 

"Dare I?" my love.......

dare i?
my love
dare i wait
this entire life
for you?
would it still be deemed
a life
"well-lived"?

dare i?
my love
wait even one more day
this body aging
this mind slowing
my steps becoming
ever more languid
my love
i had thought
i had thought
i would run to you....

dare i?
my love
dream
even one more night
of you
awaken
even one more morning
to the visions and thoughts
of you
poems and songs
journals and notebooks
filled to the brim
stuffed to the overflowing
thousands of discarded pens
millions of shed tears
fallen on smeared sheets
of you

dare i?
my love
spend this entire lifetime alone
a few days here
and a few weeks there
once or twice for a month
and a few times some years....
in the arms of another man
impossibly trying
to keep your memory
safe
in the carefully partitioned quarters
of this such
a limited mind

dare i?
my love
to never bare our child
she waits for us
but the wait has been
too long
for now
in mere months
or days, possibly weeks
at the very most a year
her time
my love
will have passed us by
this body
will no longer bare to us
our child

dare i?
my love
to see you in the flesh?
just once
or would i not survive
would the fire inside this body
ignite
explode
and would i dare
to die
for you

dare i?
my love
to try to contain
the Us
of our Love
in such a tiny space
as this
this Earth
this seedling of a planet
in the forest
of our love