"THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPHYXIATION OF THE WORKERS:
TRAPPED WITHOUT EXIT?"
By Marlene Castillo Jiménez
Banana exports in Costa Rica
gene-rate juicy profits and better living conditions to a very reduced group of
people, most of whom are foreigners. Meanwhile the mass of men and women
workers who contribute their labor in work days, that at times surpass 14 hours
a day, live in subhuman and demeaning conditions.
The duties of planting,
gathering, and packaging bananas occupy a mostly peasant or migrant population
who have been pummeled by government policies that destimulate small scale
agriculture, and who have been forced to sell their lands, and seek stable
salaries because their income no longer is sufficient for the subsistence of
their families.
All these people are pushed
to work in the banana plantations by conditions of extreme poverty, by personal
and collective histories of violence, abandonment, discrimination and, above
all, by a lack of opportunities. These conditions have marked their lives and
they face a profound process of the loss of a peasant identity, and the absence
of a viable life project to call their own.
Once the duties begin on the
banana plantation, these occur together with long and extenuating work days;
subhuman personal relations of exploitation and degradation; insufficient
salaries to satisfy the basic needs for the subsistence of the family; the loss
of spaces of workers to call their own; and the intensive use of agrochemicals
that damage the environment and human health. This conjunction of situations
and characteristics make these people feel evermore diminished, exploited,
trapped, demeaned, frustrated, guilty and impotent, both at an individual and
at a collective level.
Long extenuating work days
The duties of planting, gathering,
and packaging bananas require the direct participation of human beings. These
duties are planned by taking into consideration the number of boxes the company
needs to dispatch daily or weekly, which is variable; this depends on the
contracts made with the buying countries. It does not matter that the legal
working day is eight hours, nor that the physical limitation of the human body
required to carry out the duties are surpassed. If the contract stipulates a
quantity of boxes that require work days of 14 hours or more, men and women
workers must continue working until the stipulated amount is completed, without
receiving compensation for overtime, since salaries are paid according to boxes
packed per day.
Nobody must complain of
physical hardships nor solicit not to carry out a duty because of illness or
exhaustion. Whosoever does, receives demeaning answers and threats of being
laid off by the foremen, which often carry through. No one dares refuse to
carry out a duty nor to express the hardships a duty has on the worker. The
company has created a particular "socialization", an organizational
culture in which the selfsame fellow workers are the ones who humiliate those
who show their tiredness or physical ailments caused by the long work days.
The law of silence rules, as
well as the law of who can withstand the most. The bodies must comply with the
assigned duties at the greatest speed possible, without it mattering what the
person feels. The workers allow their bodies to be exploited and their rights
be denied, as long as they are not demeaned or their valor questioned by fellow
workers or foremen. This type of exploitation directed at the body is the key
to obtain the submission and silence of the workers.
Insufficient Salaries
Much is said about the
salaries on the banana plantations being greater than those earned in other
jobs; the companies pride themselves of this. This has also made the banana
plantations become the centers of attraction of a labor force, in which often
the supply surpasses the demand. This situation serves as a constant threat to
those who need a job and fear that any complaint will bring on their
disemployment, since many others are waiting in line and willing to work
unconditionally.
Never the less, the high
salaries in the banana plantations, more than a reality, are a myth. If it may
be true that they often surpass the salaries in other rural employment, it must
also be considered that the work days are practically double of what is legally
stipulated. Moreover, the work in the banana plantations is not ruled by the
minimum regular work day, but rather the contract is done for hours worked.
This goes in detriment of the men and women workers because even though they
may work more than the legal workday, all the hours are paid the same.
Despite the fact that the
workers dedicate all their energies, physical and mental, to their work on the
plantation, the economic retribution they receive is not sufficient to satisfy
the basic needs of food and housing for their families.
Living in precarious
conditions, the people work long days in order to achieve a capital they never
see, because the fruit of their work, their salary, is insufficient. This, of
course, generates a high level of tension, frustration, impotence and personal
lack of satisfaction, which often is expressed in violent treatment toward sons
and daughters, wives and husbands, hypersensitivity, low self esteem, and a
sensation of being trapped. Many women and men workers experience their
condition as a personal fault or incapacity to improve their life condition,
resulting evermore in a poor self image and falling into passivity. The person
does not realize that far from being guilty, he or she is the victim of a
social system that exploits, utilizes and impoverishes him or her more every
day. Thus is formed a strategy of survival that co-lors daily life with defeat
and senselessness. Many people take refuge in alcohol, drugs and other evasion
mechanisms, which far from resolving the problems, accentuate the situation of violence
and poverty in which they live.
This is complemented with a
series of strategies the company has in order to hoard the spaces in which men
and women workers might be protagonists, express their creative capacities and
their organizational possibilities. This, obviously, comes to sever the already
deteriorated identity of the working class.
The companies take over
spaces of the working class
The human and social scene of
men and women workers of the packing plants and of the banana plantations is a
world of interactions, group processes, support networks, strategies of
resistance, processes of identity creation and the seeking out of dreams and
illusions, all of which crash abruptly against the structures of exploitation
and dehumanization.
The company or management
group has well designed strategies that impede and neutralize the personal and
collective development of men and women workers. One of these strategies
consists in taking over the spaces and initiatives that have always been of the
working class. For this, the company employs three key pieces: physical
infrastructure and human resources, the presence of the Solidarista movement,
and long work days.
With the physical
infrastructure and human resources, the company takes charge of the social and
recreational activities, arranges them to the convenience of the management,
without considering the men and women workers for whom the activities are
supposedly organized. They are programmed at a time and place decided by the
management representatives. Often the men and women workers find out about
these events at the last minute, without having the opportunity to voice an
opinion or to participate in the organization of the event.
It is said that the workers
participate and have a say by means of the Solidarista Associations, but these,
if it is true that their structures include the presence of workers, look after
the interests of the management, and not that of the working class. This occurs
with the sporting activities, with the events of non formal education and many
other activities. The Solidarista Associations, that are made up of management
employees and laborers who represent the management class, offer a wide gamma
of possibilities set up to the convenience of the management. On the other hand,
the working class finds itself disarticulated and demobilized.
The management representation
steals the protagonist role of the working class, generating in the latter a
loss of a sense of belonging and identification with the activities that have
traditionally been their own. The men and women workers no longer own anything.
This sense of loss of
control, dependence and a false sense of protection, together with an absence
of expressions that give the working class an identity as a collectivity, are part
of the effects of this strategy. The company is the only protagonist in
everything, it is the only identity that exists, the only one that is
expressed. The men and women workers as individual or collective identities do
not exist, consequently they have nothing to express. They do not decide, do
not have opinions, do not chose, nor do they dispose of their time. They are
trapped, carrying out the will of the company, without possibilities of growing
as persons and having a life project.
Patriarchal relations
Generally, the interpersonal
relations on the banana plantations are mediated by power that is obviously not
distributed evenly. Thus, these relations are violent, exploitative, demeaning
and discriminating. They are the pillars which hold up a patriarchal ideology
that considers some people to be superior to, or more valuable than others.
The relations are vertical
and authoritarian, with their corresponding counterparts of submission and
alienation between administrators and foremen; between foremen and laborers;
between experienced workers and newcomers; between men and women; between
adults and children. The former subjugate and exploit the latter, who in turn
obey and comply with resignation what is demanded of them.
Contaminated environment
The banana industry is
characterized by an intensive use of agrochemicals highly effective in the
control of pests. The transnational companies seek out pesticides that are the
least expensive, readily available, and that are effective against pests. So they
access extremely toxic products, some of which are prohibited in the United
States and Europe.
Their toxicity affects not
only the flora and fauna of the banana regions, but also the health of workers
and of the surrounding communities. Pesticide application is done by aerial
fumigation as well as manual fumigation by workers, who are subject to
allergies, respiratory diseases, chronic cephalic ailments, sterility, organic
diseases, and even acute intoxications, some of which have claimed mortal
victims.
The intensive use of
agrochemicals is part and parcel of a relation of predation and aggression
against Nature, against human beings, and against life in general. This goes
against the relation which the peasant working class has with the land and all
life forms, a relation that is that of caretaker, of respect and mutual
protection. As laborers they live profound processes of alienation and loss of
identity. They are victims, and at the same time accomplices, of the
destruction, and with this they experience a sense of guilt and of
meaninglessness to life and their place in it.
To summarize, the companies
have achieved the demobilization of any possibility of solidarity among
workers, or of recognizing in their fellow workers the corporal ailments they
themselves suffer, or of experiencing relations of care and respect towards
Nature and towards their own bodies, or of being critical of, and
differentiated from, the company that exploits them. In a state of submission
and exploitation, these people behave ignorant of their own bodies and what
they feel, of their traditional values of solidarity, care for the earth and
for life in general. They recognize as real only what the company demands. It
does not matter if this contradicts their own wishes or their most profound
identity.
In this way individuals and
groups are formed who have no identity or project of their own, resulting in
easy prey for exploitation. Impotent as persons and collectivities, trapped in
the daily anguishing monotony of work, without possibilities of accessing their
own spaces of education, technical training, or possibilities of learning
trades other than those related to the banana plantation, and with consumer
needs created, and at the same time limited, by the company, and finally with the
destruction by the managerial class of possibilities of organizing, little by
little, these workers, men and women, begin to feel diminished as human beings,
not only in their work, but in their family life and own in macies.
SOME ASPECTS OF THE PROCESS
OF DEVALUATION
The following are some of the
traits with which men and women banana workers feel their self worth as human
beings diminished.
Demeaned, because they can
scarcely read and write, they do not dress in the latest fashions, and come
from peasant traditions, commonly associated with little intelligence,
simplicity and social inferiority.
Frustrated, because despite
their efforts to work arduously, their life conditions do not improve.
Infantilized, daily in their
interpersonal relations, both at work and at home, by bosses, fathers, spouses
and companions. Ignorant, because they know of no other reality than that of
the banana plantations, and they have always worked in labors considered
socially inferior, requiring only great physical labor.
Abandoned by the health and
social security institutions that are indifferent to the violation of human
rights on the banana plantations; by their families or spouse who have left
them or treat them with violence; by the government whose policies go against
the small independent farmers; by their own bodies that begin to falter and
weaken under the hard working conditions; by their original families who have
stayed behind, in other regions and in other activities; by the banana company
that gives them house and salary, but at the cost of an exploitation that
silences and annihilates them as people and as collectivities.
Dull, for not knowing the
rules of etiquette, ways and habits of city people and intellectuals.
Impotent, when confronted
with an aggressor with a name but without a face, infinitely superior in
economic and social power, and of whom they are dependent: the banana company.
Finished, because they feel
without the strength to fight or to resist their bosses, as well as the
national social and political reality.
Useless, because the body
with which they have always earned a living loses strength and begins to fail
because of the exposure to agrochemicals and long work days.
Trapped, because even though
they feel the anguish of the daily routine, they depend on a salary to clothe
and feed their family, they have no other sources of employment and they have
not learned any other skill, since from early ages they have only worked on the
banana plantations.
Disillusioned, because the
anguishing routine provokes a state of stagnation of which they are aware: they
remain there by inertia and because the social environment offers no other
opportunities.
Guilty, because they live in
poverty, ignorance and an absence of opportunities or possibilities of growth
as persons. They consider these circumstances as personal failures and not as
direct effects of a system and an exploitative and unjust company that has
impoverished them and has denied them the possibilities of development and of a
more dignified life.
"A PHENOMENON OF OUR TIMES: THE LIFE OF MIGRANTS"
By Jeanette Vargas Quesada of the Social Pastorate of the Diocese of
Limon
Men and women capable of
risking everything they own with the sole aim of offering a more dignified life
to their loved ones.
Pushed by the instinct of
survival, in search of better living conditions, humans are displaced to other
nations. Because of its condition as a border country with a relatively high
level of development with respect to the rest of Central America, Costa Rica is
one of the principal receptors of Nicaraguan migrations.
With 70 percent unemployment,
the highest in Latin America, Nicaragua faces the consequences of long periods
of war, laced with serious natural catastrophes which have buffeted this nation
since its independence.
In 1990, the peace process
diminished the armed conflict in Central America. In spite of this, the
condition of the people did not improve. On the contrary, today they are the
ones who have to pay the poor record of their governments.
The poorest populations are
forced to abandon their place of origin, using different methods of transport,
risking their life and that of their families. They migrate as a desperate
answer to the situation they live in.
In search of work
Like many other compatriots
of his, David left his home, left his land. His brothers, sisters and parents
stayed behind. With the address of an aunt who lived in some neighborhood of
San Jose, he began his long journey to Costa Rica full of hopes and dreams.
Even though Rivas, his home
town, was not that far from the border, he had not seen the border before. With
a passport, a tourist visa and 200 Cordobas, he approached the border post of
Peñas Blancas. Like him, hundreds of people were in line to exit Nicaragua.
At the entrance control to
Costa Rica, he changed his Cordobas, learning about a new currency: 4000
Colones to reach San Jose. He took out the telephone number of the house where
his aunt worked as a maid, and called her. When he arrived in San Jose, Rosa
waited for him at the park La Merced, to take him to the room she shared with
three of her sons and two more nephews.
The fifteen year old boy
spent one month looking for work in the Capital city, and he was only able to
work for one week washing cars at midnight.
"On the banana
plantations in Limon there is a lot of work, and you earn good money. Why don’t
you go there?" his aunt said. So David departed one Monday morning to
Cariari de Pocosi. He asked for work and they sent him to La Catalina, a banana
plantation. Because he no longer had any money to pay for transportation, he
spoke with the foreman, and on the following day he had work and a mattress on
which to sleep.
By that time his tourist visa
had expired, and his room mates began telling him about the risks of walking in
town without his documents. For fear of being caught and taken back to
Nicaragua, David spent five months without going to town.
When he did, he was lucky,
because two of his friends were asked to show their documents, and finally had
to pay all their salary in order to be let free.
In the afternoons he played
baseball with his friends, on Sundays, domino and beer at the bars of the
banana company. Weekends with a radio, a checker board, the bar and the
loneliness of the banana plantations.
The rule of arbitrary acts
"Emigration is a massive
phenomenon of our times, a permanent phenomenon that takes on new forms and
affects all the continents and almost every country, posing human and spiritual
problems." (John Paul II)
. In face of the situation of
forced migration, the Nicaraguans in Costa Rica are subject to multiple
arbitrary acts by the Costa Rican authorities, and subject to exploitation by
their bosses. They have no access to health, education or housing. They live
almost clandestinely, nor do they enjoy worker guarantees.
Angela had worked in Costa
Rica for eight years to support and raise her eight children. She first started
at a restaurant, where she worked from two in the afternoon to three in the
morning, suffering the screams of her female boss when Angela would complain
about not feeling well.
She then looked for work in
sales, but had no migratory documents. She went to the banana company and they
also asked her for her documents. So she worked packing yucca from six to six,
standing all day long with her hands in water washing the tubers. The day she
cut her finger while preparing the yucca, her boss fired her. He told her to
return in two weeks to collect the money of the last three days he owed her.
Migration control
"The immigration
policies of numerous nations are in crisis.
The last decade of the 20th
Century, like the first of the 21st, will be characterized as the era of
migrations." (Stephen Castles, The Migratory Age).
For several years, the
governments of Costa Rica have intensified the restrictive measures of their
migratory policies, with the aim of slowing down the enormous influx of
Nicaraguans, even though the Ministry of Labor recognizes that Costa Rica needs
the labor force and that Nicaragua has an over supply of labor due to the
economic crisis in that country.
In a presentation during the
Bilateral meeting carried out in San Jose, January 30th of 1995, Costa Rica
recognized the presence of a high percentage of "undocumented"
Nicaraguans in the national territory. It estimated a population of around
"300 thousand Nicaraguans who have not normalized their migratory
condition".
There are no statistics to
serve as reference in order to define precisely the number of undocumented or
"illegal" Nicaraguans there are in the country, but surely the number
offered by the government is extremely conservative. One could well say that
there are more than half a million Nicaraguans. An important reference point
regarding the influx is that approximately 600 persons enter the country daily
at only one of the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border control posts. A temporary or
permanent "residence" is one of the traditional mechanisms of
legalization, however, not everyone can gather the requisites or enough money
to obtain such a status. The condition of refugee is another means, but only
serves under situations of war.
In 1995 a seasonal work card
was created, but its processing depended on the willingness of the employer to
normalize the situation of the workers. Few were benefitted by this, since for
the companies this implied greater economic costs for having to pay minimum
wages and insure the workers.
Currently, the governments of
Costa Rica and Nicaragua are discussing the need to create a control mechanism
that would regulate, and at the same time facilitate the use of Nicaraguan
labor in Costa Rica. Nevertheless, despite the agreements and treaties between
the two countries, the great majority of undocumented Nicaraguans in the
country still have few possibilities of becoming documented.
A reality that cannot be
hidden
The participation of the
means of mass communication have contributed to strengthen an attitude of
rejection of Nicaraguans by the common Costa Rican citizen. If it is true that
some migrants have committed abuses, the description of these cases by the
press has generated xenophobic attitudes in the Costa Rican population.
The people in general are
uninformed about the magnitude of the problem and of the critical situation the
Nicaraguan people are currently suffering. At the same time that the influx of
Nicaraguans to Costa Rica grows, so do the measures of migratory control.
Despite the fact that there are migration control posts along the border, and a
strict vigilance is maintained, the influx of Nicaraguans to Costa Rican
territory continues.
The economic, political and
social crisis that our Nicaraguan brothers and sisters are living, is even more
severe if we consider that the demands of the international market force
governments to sacrifice their people in order to satisfy those demands. Given
the crude reality suffered by Nicaragua, the emigration of its sons and
daughters will not stop. They continue to arrive to Costa Rica, legal or
illegal, professional or illiterate, workers and those who are fleeing the law;
they all constitute a cheap labor force for construction, sugar cane harvests,
coffee picking, domestic work, and banana plantations.
"THE STRUGGLE OF THE WOMEN OF LIMON:
FROM SILENCE TO MOANING"
By Erlinda Quesada, Coordinator of the Commission for the Recognition
and Promotion of Women,Diocese of Limon
When does silence become a
moan? For many years the women of Limon have lived under precarious health
conditions. In her own home or at school, her sons and daughters are sexually
abused. She has to suffer the harassment of her superiors, for fear of losing
her employment.
She has no access to credit
for not owning anything that could back her up. In the meantime her sons and
daughters ask her for food, education and clothing. She has given the best of
her life to a transnational company that considers her as discardable matter
when her productive forces begin to wane.
The women of Limon today keep
a silence of mourning: because her right to organize in a labor union is denied
her; because in so many homes her work is not valued; because she has been
humiliated and her rights violated; because she cannot discover the world on
her own.
She is presented as an object
of pleasure, a source of profit in the so called beauty pageants and an
exhibition piece in commercial propaganda. She is seen as incapable of
occupying executive positions and of taking decisions. In politics she is used
to attract votes, receiving always the lowliest posts. She screams in silence
to be allowed to be simply a woman.
How is silence not to become
a moan when her voice is suffocated by physical and psychological aggression,
and when her load is grinding her ribs?
This moan is becoming louder
and louder, and many structures are beginning to creak with the need to silence
the soft voice of women that fight for their rights.
When the women demand respect
and equal opportunities in all fields, the hope of a new society is born where
there is true equality, where people are valued for being persons and not for
the power they wield or their social status. It is for this transformation of
mentality and structures that the Pastorate for the Recognition and Promotion
of Women of the Diocese of Limon fights for. Not for power, but for the
establishment of justice, to recover the dignity of the sons and daughters of
God, created in His image.
We find the continuation of
the woman Veronica who washed the face of Christ, in the woman who works all
day in a packing plant with her feet soaking and her hands stained, in the
youth who is forced to stop studying in order to work, in the multitude of
adolescent mothers who have to face the difficult task of being mothers and
fathers at the same time. Let us unite our voices of hope and security, because
if we fight for justice, we will always have a light that guides us and will
not let us lose our way.
These are the Good Tidings
announced by the Samaritan woman to the mothers that lamented next to the Holy
Sepulchre.
Let us show solidarity so
that together, like Miriam (who is mentioned in Exodus of the Holy Scriptures),
we can advance singing and dancing so that justice is implanted
."PRINCIPAL PROBLEMS OF WOMEN IN THE BANANA PLANTATIONS"
Extract from Foro Emaus (1997) "Bananas for the World and the
Damage for Costa Rica?"
It is important to highlight
the active role of women in banana production. The first problem that affects
women is that of poverty. As is well known, generally around the world, women
have less access to economic resources and to land. Costa Rica is no exception,
and particularly in the banana regions, female poverty is aggravated for
various reasons:
Work is poorly paid, and for
many women it is occasional, depending on the amount of the harvest.
The work requires heavy time
schedules, which must be combined with domestic work.
There are salary differences
between men and women on the banana plantations. Women tend to earn less for
the same work, as was denounced in the III Conference of Banana Unions in 1995.
In these regions there are no
other employment alternatives that permit women to earn their own keep and that
of their families.
Another problem that affects
women who work on the banana plantations is the difficulty they find in having
their labor rights respected, such as maternity leave and blood tests to
measure the amounts of pesticides in their blood. Especially women who wash the
clothes of banana workers who spray these pesticides, suffer grave
contamination. Women’s right to unionize is also disregarded. Those women who
are able to organize, suffer union persecution, expressed in the assignment of
heavier tasks or unexplained salary reductions that they must constantly
appeal. In some banana plantations, sexual abuse and harassment by fellow
workers and foremen have been denounced. In similar fashion, some women have problems
in being assigned housing.
Pesticide contamination is
suffered by women in the region even in their own homes and without being
workers on the plantations. This is due to two main causes: indiscriminate
aerial spraying which contaminates the vegetable gardens some women plant in
their houses for domestic use; relations with contaminated spouses or
companions who work on the plantations. This has lead to conditions of
sterility and congenital deformations of children born to them.
AGAINST SOCIAL AND WAGE
DISCRIMINATION
In a recent conference on the
social problems of the region of Limon, the following proposals were made:
"TRANSNATIONAL COMPANIES AND GOVERN-MENTS AGAINST THE PEOPLE: THE
STRUGGLE OF Sará de Batáan"
By Roy H. May, Professor at the Latin American Biblical University
The government promised
wealth to the small peasant farmers: all they had to do was mortgage their
lands and associate themselves with a banana company. Unfortunately, that
promise did not keep. When the banana company went bankrupt, it was the
peasants of Sara de Bataan who had to carry the load. They almost lost everything.
In the mid 1980s, the
government established the Atlantic Zone as a "Banana Zone". It
directed financial and technical resources to promote the production of bananas
for export, under the direction of private enterprise, both national and international.
Even though the region was
inhabited by peasant farmers whose banana production supplied the national
market, the success of the government plan depended on the exclusive production
of export bananas. In order for the peasants to enter the Banana Plan, the
government deemed it necessary to pressure them with promises of wealth or
threats to take away their land.
In March of 1989, the
majority of the peasants of Sara de Bataan decided to form part of the Banana
Plan by associating themselves with the transnational company Uniban (whose
place would later be assumed by the magnate Federico Gallegos). Only a dozen
peasants remained out side of the negotiations, suspecting the plan was too
risky and had few possibilities of benefitting them.
In earlier years, the
peasants had received their land from the then called Institute of Lands and
Colonization (ITCO), which today is called Institute of Agrarian Development
(IDA) and maintains administrative responsibility of the lands and agricultural
development of the zone. Since the 1960s, when the peasant farmers began to
arrive, the policy was directed at helping the small producers. It promoted a
peasant agriculture for self sufficiency and national markets.
The IDA would provide
technical advice and fomented peasant fruit and wood production, among other
forms of support. However, when the zone was designated for banana expansion,
the government wished to redirect peasant production toward commercial banana
production.
Forced Monoculture
In this context, an agreement
was reached among the banana company, the IDA and the peasant farmers for the
production and export of bananas. For their part, peasant farmers agreed to
dedicate their lands exclusively to banana production, sell the fruit only to
the banana company, and place their land in mortgage in order to finance the
project proportionately. The banana company agreed to buy the fruit from the
peasant farmers and take charge of selling the fruit, provide salaries to
participant peasant farmers and provide the necessary technical advice.
For its part, the IDA agreed
to supervise the organization of the peasant farmers in associations of
producers, offer technical follow-up and infrastructure planning, provide land
titles to the farmers who did not already have them, look for financing from
lending organizations, and oversee the compliance with the tripartite contract.
The twelve farmers who
decided not to participate were the only obstacle for the total monopoly of the
banana company. They continued producing corn, beans, plantains for national
consumption, which in their opinion were an adequate market. They also had
reforested their small farms with wood trees and fruit trees, which required
years to bear their benefits.
Intuitively, they implemented
integrated agricultural systems oriented by their own experience with
production and commercialization, and their knowledge of the ecological limits.
They did not wish to lay bare their lands and dedicate them to banana
monocultures. At the same time, they suspected that the government promises
seemed to good to be true.
The IDA, instrument of
repression
The rejection of these
farmers irritated the other farmers, and the government saw them as an obstacle
to their Banana Plan. These farmers began to suffer a series of pressures and
threats that tried to force them to join the contract. The most serious was
when the IDA sent official letters threatening them with cancelling the
adjudication of their lands if they did not enter the Banana Plan. According to
the letter:
"(...) if it were
necessary, measures would be taken in those cases of land owners who are not in
accord with the establishment of banana production, with legal procedures,
which we, as the Institution are authorized to apply, be it by procedures of
nullifying land titles, or by the revocation of the adjudication of the lands
(...) We hope, therefore, that you reconsider immediately your position, so
that you may join us in consolidating this grand project in the short term. We
reiterate that our only intention is to procure the well being of the small
farmers and we are sure that with this productive project we will achieve
this". (1)
The peasant farmers who did
not wish to enter the plan called on the Parish of Bataan and its parishioner,
Father Walter Marchena. With a telegram, Father Marchena asked the IDA to
desist from pressuring the peasant farmers. "Leave them in peace and free
to cultivate their lands," the priest requested. (2) With a lawyer
provided by the Church, they analyzed the tripartite contract in order to
understand the legal requirements of the contract. Based on this analysis, they
reiterated their decision not to enter the Banana Plan, for being too risky.
The IDA began pressuring the Church. In a telegram directed to Father Marchena,
the executive president of the IDA said:
"Sword, keep to your
sheath, says a wise proverb. (...) We respect your inexpert criterion in this
matter, but we do not share it. In the short term we will have the joy of
seeing peasant farmers for the first time producing bananas and living under
better conditions. Hopefully with the blessing of a Priest who is up to date on
the agroindustrial systems Costa Rica is achieving. For this reason, I do not
plan to, as you say: "Leave them in peace. Because the peace of the
cemeteries is not what we want, while the men of my country have the strength
to fight for Costa Rica". (3)
Justice is made
A short time later, the
Church presented a Recourse of Unconstitutionality against the IDA in support
of the peasant farmers and their lands. The verdict was favorable: the IDA
could not take away their lands.
The fears of the twelve were
well founded. By 1994, the company of Gallegos was in financial crisis. (La Nación, October 5th, 1994). The company could
not carry out its obligations nor pay salaries or other benefits it owed the
peasant farmers "partners" in the business. Neither could respond to
the Banco Popular, from which it had received financing for the company. (La
Republica, March 4th, 1995). The indebted peasant partners also could not
respond. The consequent conflicts between the peasant partners and the Gallegos
company included strikes at the processing plant and the takeover of the
plantation.
In these conflicts, the
Church was also present. The Diocese Commission of the Social Pastorate asked
the Ombudsman to obtain reliable information regarding the real situation of
the company and that the Ministry of Labor intervene in the conflict. Father
Gerardo Vargas, in representation of the Diocese of Limon, collaborated as
mediator.
Consequences of the company
offensive
Nevertheless, the future of
the peasant farmers remained frustrated. In the midst of this uncertainty, many
returned to peasant production as a means of survival. Some formed a
cooperative to resume banana production, taking advantage of some banana farms
and the processing plant. Others left the land.
For months the situation did
not change. Many diverse negotiations on the part of the Church and the peasant
farmers did not bear fruit. Finally, in June of 1996 the Banco Popular
announced its intention of auctioning off the lands, claiming it had no
alternative. Nevertheless, with the new negotiations of the Church and the
grass roots organizations of the region, at the last minute the bank suspended
the auction and asked the government to resolve the problem. A few weeks later,
the government announced that it would cancel the debt of the peasant farmers
had with the Banco Popular. The IDA would acquire the land to distribute it
again among the same peasant farmers.
The promise of the IDA that
"in the short term we will have the joy of seeing peasant farmers for the
first time producing bananas and living under better conditions," was not
kept at all. Moreover, the project completely failed. It only left a legacy of
distrust, ecological destruction and poverty.
Notes1. Letter to Jose Antonio Mesen Ortiz, January 5th, 1990 signed by
Sergio Quiros Maroto, executive president of the Institute of Agrarian
Development (IDA). Photocopy filed by the Diocese Commission of the Social
Pastorate, Siquirres, Limon.2. Telegram to Sergio Quiros Maroto from Walter
Marchena, the 11th of December, 1989. Copy filed with the Diocese Commission of
the Social Pastorate.3. Telegram from Sergio Quiros Maroto to Walter Marchena, December
22, 1989. Original filed by the Diocese Commission of the Social Pastorate.