The Bitter Work Behind Sugar
Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
4.7 • 8.7K Ratings
🗓️ 18 September 2021
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sugar is a big part of Americans’ daily diet. But who harvests some of that sweet cane?
Reporters Sandy Tolan and Euclides Cordero Nuel visit Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic who do the backbreaking work of cutting sugarcane for little pay. They live in work camps, or “bateyes,” that are part of a vast sugar plantation owned by the Central Romana Corp. The company is the Dominican Republic’s largest private employer and has strong links to two powerful Florida businessmen, Alfonso and Pepe Fanjul. The reporters speak to workers who have no access to government pensions, so they’re forced to work in the fields into their 80s for as little as $3 a day. Through its sugar exports to the U.S. and other businesses, Central Romana generates an estimated $1.5 billion a year – but some workers are so poor they can’t afford doctors’ visits.
In the 1990s, Tolan reported on human trafficking and child labor in the Dominican sugar industry. Conditions improved following pressure on the government from local activists, human rights groups and the U.S. Labor Department. But major problems persist. And cane cutters say they must go into deep debt just to survive, leaving them trapped.
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| 0:00.0 | From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. |
| 0:09.7 | I'm Al Edson. |
| 0:15.3 | This past July in Baltimore, amid fireworks and patriotic music, workers relit the famous Domino sugar sign, which was under repair. |
| 0:28.7 | For decades, this icon has cast a red glow over the city's inner harbor. You can see it from miles away. |
| 0:37.0 | Each year, Domino produces millions of pounds of |
| 0:41.2 | refined sugar for candy makers and supermarkets. But if you look at their packaging, it doesn't |
| 0:47.3 | say exactly where that processed sugar originates. Some of it comes from cane grown in the U.S. Brazil and Mexico are also big suppliers. |
| 0:57.0 | Then there's the Dominican Republic. We're still today. On vast plantations, sugar cane is cut |
| 1:05.0 | by men with machetes and hauled away by ox-drawn carts. |
| 1:13.6 | The work is grueling. |
| 1:22.6 | This past month, hundreds of workers protested in the Dominican capital Santo Domingo. They chanted, without cane cutters, there is no sugar. |
| 1:26.6 | These men are from Haiti. They chanted, without cane cutters, there is no sugar. |
| 1:33.6 | These men are from Haiti and are among the thousands of Haitians who are living across the island's border in the Dominican Republic. |
| 1:37.8 | They're demanding simple things like the pensions they were promised |
| 1:40.8 | and better living conditions for their families. |
| 1:44.8 | Conditions are harsh, but things were even worse 30 years ago when reporter Sandy Tolan first visited. |
| 1:52.5 | Walking down this dirt street, and each house is surrounded by standing black water, |
| 1:58.8 | which is just human waste and garbage. |
| 2:02.4 | Kids playing around this water. |
| 2:04.2 | It's a breeding ground for mosquitoes. |
| 2:06.4 | It's a really poor place. |
| 2:09.0 | In the sugar plantations, Sandy met people living in work camps |
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