On the morning of July 6th 2009, we met several staff members of New Haven Leon Sister City Project (NHLSCP) to discuss the logistics of a project it has just begun working on with the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL): CIEL is representing several communities from the districts of Chinandega and Leon in an International Finance Committee (IFC) dispute resolution proceeding against the Nicaraguan Sugar Estates Limited (NSEL).
After a brief meeting in NHLSCP’s office, the five of us loaded into the back of a pick up truck and headed to the town of Chichigalpa to meet with ASOCHIVIDA, an association of former NSEL employees who NSEL terminated after a company doctor diagnosed them with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD).
When we arrived at ASHOCHIVIDA’s headquarters shortly before 11am, the summer heat was already unbearable. The thick, humid air stifled our breathing and transformed our outfits into sweat rags. As I stepped down from the truck, I surveyed my surroundings: ASOCHIVIDA’s office consisted of a huge dirt lot with one large tree. It lacked a latrine, garbage can, electricity, or running water. ASHOCHIVIDA had erected two large, open-air, black tents which offered its members some relief from the sun and rain. The office contains several plastic chairs, three hammocks, one table and an unobstructed view of Ingenio San Antonio’s security gate, one of NSEL’s sugar plantations where all the male members of ASOCHIVIDA used to work.
As we stepped down from the truck, Eziquel – the President of ASOCHIVIDA – greeted us with a warm smile and a firm handshake. A dozen members of ASOCHVIDA gathered behind their President. Unlike Eziquel, however, their eyes and body language delivered a different message: suspicion, skepticism, fear, anger, and fatigue. After briefly introducing ourselves, Eziquel provided us with a detailed history of ASOCHIVIDA’s battle for NSEL recognition:
“We are sick and dying” he proclaimed. “We gave them everything and this is how they have repaid us for our service. We are not asking for much, food to feed our families, access to doctors and medicine to help us fight off death, an alternative form of employment so that we can provide for our families. Though we fear death, there is nothing more humiliating and disheartening, then not being able to support our families. Thousands of people just like us are already dead and thousands more are in the process of dying, and for what? They are already the richest family in Nicaragua.”
As the poignancy of his words soaked into our minds, the magnitude of the situation we had just walked into became instantly apparent.
Eziquel took us on a tour of one of the neighborhoods, just outside the Ingenio. To the unsuspecting eye, the community looked no different than your typical Nicaraguan neighborhood.
“What’s missing?” Eziquel asked us.
We looked around but before we were able to venture a guess, he answered his own question.
“The men! They’re a dying breed here. And they’re dying off faster than ever before. Men use to work twenty or thirty years before getting sick. Today, one is lucky to last ten.”
We drove past a large group of young men walking, machetes in hand, to cut sugar cane at the Ingenio. The young men, excited by our presence, directed a series of compliments to the female members of our delegation. “Hola chelas! We love you!” the chavallos yelled, using the Nicaraguan slang for gringas. They laughed and smiled brightly; they looked happy, healthy.
“Most of them will be dead in ten years” Eziquel chimmed in. “The weakest of them won’t last five . . . The company has begun to hire our women to cut,” he added. “What does that tell you?”
The answer I was afraid was not that NSEL was striving to become more gender inclusive in its hiring practices.
When we returned to ASHOCHIVIDA’s headquarters, we introduced ourselves to several members of the association. In the midst of our small talk, a tall, gaunt man stepped forward from the crowd and in a calm, direct voice posited to us the question/challenge that would change the entire nature of our delegation.
¨What are you planning to do here?” he began. “We have seen groups like yours before. They come here with cameras, pens, and notebooks, asking us many questions; we share our stories, our pains, our fears. They express their empathy and desire to help. They will go home and inform others; they will be outraged they say.
And, then they leave; most never return. And, what do we have to show for it?” he asks. “Perhaps the people in your countries are angry about what is happening to us, but we are dying. Today! Please forgive me, but I am skeptical. I want to know what makes your group any different¨?
It goes without saying that we were not prepared to adequately respond to the man’s question. We certainly did not reveal to him that our plan for the three weeks was to conduct interviews and gather enough pertinent research information about NSEL, CKD, sugar cane, and the IFC’s loan to NSEL to write up a detailed report or two next semester at school.
Though we are a socially conscious delegation, in my opinion, we had totally failed to consider the impact our field research might have on the human beings whose lives we were asking to enter, the group for whom the stakes and implications of our human rights inquiries were real. They were dying now and they were tired of the whole song and dance routine performed by intellectually curious, well-intentioned foreigners whose articles, films, and projects ASOCHIVIDA never saw nor directly felt the benefits from.
When we left ASOCHIVIDA’s headquarters that afternoon we knew one thing with certainty: we were not going to spend our short time with ASOCHIVIDA gathering information for our personal projects. Our delegation would instead work directly with ASOCHIVIDA to design and implement a community development agenda that they wanted, the benefits from which they would feel, beginning bright and early the following morning.
