This story isn’t about me, but is one
I promised to tell when José Alí Rueda asked it of me in Managua, Nicaragua.
The heat seems to bake us inside
the concrete-box of a building that a small neighborhood of bananeros uses for their gatherings. Four of the people living there agree to meet
with a group of students from a far off university, although we’re not the
first. I strain to understand the
Nicaraguan accent of José Alí as Dr. Patrick Van Inwegen, another student, and
I inquire of his story. It goes like
this:
José
Alí began working for Dole Food Company, examining the quality of bananas, when
he was sixteen. He inspected the size
and overall appearance of the bananas to make sure they were up to par for this
international company. Then began the
use of the product Nemagon, whose main ingredient, dibromochloropropane, is
known to cause sterility in some male mammals and has hideous effects on
humans. Due to these side effects the
chemical was banned in the United States in 1979, but was used afterwards in
countries such as Nicaragua and the Philippines.
He
recounted that the chemical was first put into the irrigation water and the
order was given to spray it only when there was no wind and the workers weren’t
present. The poison was spread over the banana fields at night, when supposedly it
was less windy. José Alí was unaware of
the new chemical’s effects on human health, and was completely unaware that
when he drank the “clear and fresh” water he was ingesting a toxin that would
later cause him to have chronic urinary infections, cancerous boils on his
skin, and gastric complications. He
stated that the companies knew, but decided not to tell the workers of
Nemagon’s hazardous nature.
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At
first the workers didn’t feel any different, but over time headaches and
unexplained vomiting became frequent. In
addition, boils from within the body began to show themselves on the exterior
of their leathery skin. Nemagon was literally
eating José Alí and his compañeros
alive.
Upon
realizing the destruction that simultaneously affected multiple banana fields
in Nicaragua, between 3,000 and 7,000 (7,000 was the number given to me by José
Alí, while Dole claims 3,000) bananeros
had to make a choice: Do we continue to
work and possibly get compensation or do we leave our jobs and fight for
reparation? Many chose the latter. He recalled the intense 342 kilometer march
from his home in Chinandega to Managua. This
journey took eleven days, said José Alí, but people along the road took pity on
the banana workers and let them stay in their homes overnight.
Upon
arrival in Managua the workers sought political help from the powers that were
in place, but received little and were forced to settle in champas, clusters of tents used for temporary housing. It was not until Daniel Ortega quite recently
took office that the people received concrete houses, potable water, and
electricity. These people are not
economically poor, they claimed, but have been incapacitated due to continual
health conditions and believe they’ve been wronged.
In
order to further their cause, the bananeros
hired attorneys from the U.S. to fight Dole in the United States. However, they felt as if their lawyers,
charging around $300 per hour, did very little to further their case. This could be due to greed or busyness, but
after trying several lawyers and many years the workers found their pockets
empty and their problems persisting. The
justice system seemed futile.
A similar
story can be found of the faith the workers had in film crews bent on making
emotion-igniting documentaries of injustice.
However, after interviews and chilling stories, these film-makers were
not heard from again. Perhaps they
struggled to break even or made off with the profit. The remorse felt by the workers continues.
~
I forget
about the heat and a chill runs down my spine as José Alí discusses the
afterlife. It’s apparent that his faith
is the only thing carrying him through this one. Counting himself as a dead man, his wrinkled
face brightens as he speaks of death, when he’ll leave his terrestrial body and
join his Father in Heaven.
His
mood changes alarmingly, though, as he considers out loud the consequences of
his death. He looks away from me as he
speaks of his wife and daughter he would leave behind. He has fought for his children ever since the
Nemagon crisis, so that they might have a better life and receive some sort of
solitude from Dole Food Company. Our eyes
meet again. They remain fixed as I focus
in order to correctly translate what he’s telling me. After feeling cheated by so many for so long,
the thought of dying and leaving his daughter causes his eyes to fill and his
lip to quiver. As a tear rolls down his
cheek I’m unsure—Is it his tear? Is it
my tear?—maybe we share it.
I ask
him what a few chele students from the
U.S. could possibly do to help their situation.
The response brings me abrupt frustration: they already see themselves as dead men and
women, and all I can do is relay this story and make their afflictions
heard. Here I pass it on to you all, as promised;
so that you know someone suffered and continues suffering because of corporate
greed and unrealistic customer demands, many of which came from the United
States. The story of José Alí is not one
of violence or bullets, but he has fought and his scars remain. In a globalizing world it can seem like some
actions have no consequences. However,
this man opened my eyes to the fact that even if the consequences are nonexistent
or hidden within the U.S. they are felt by another. We’ve inherited a world that is every day more
interconnected, but with this comes responsibility to educate ourselves and own
our actions.
I would like to say thank you to José Alí Rueda for his
openness on this subject despite the personal and collective pain he lives
with.
-Austin Vander Wel
