For What We Must Answer

The sacred cows of India have been imported here for meat. Does anyone but me find this odd and awful?

Bananas: Why I Hate Chiquita

I feel as if I'm living in "Hitlerville." The trains run at night. I hear their clanking and their whistles. The trucks run night and day and especially throughout the night. I can hear the containers being loaded and unloaded at the dock. The whistles blow from the dock as if we are really a company town; the "Company" moved out of here a few years ago and left folks TOTALLY without work. When I was here in 01, I hated the "Company" because of atrocious working conditions; sucky benefits; horrendous hours; chemicals and pesticides with exposure to the "disposables"--mostly First Peoples who do the very basic work. All this moving of bananas from the community just north of us (where the company has moved its headquarters, complete with luxurious houses and a GOLF COURSE--membership is more exclusive than any country club!) has a really evil feel--perhaps it's that so much of this happens at night, under cover of darkness. One night we happened to be outside and there was this really creepy black train that looked and smelled evil. I've not seen it since and no one talks about it. No one knows what it carries. Workers process bananas without gloves or masks. If one attempts to talk with the workers, the supervisor will send you away--with a guard carrying a serious machine gun--pointed at you--locked and loaded, too!! The supervisors will not talk to you either. No one will identify the chemicals and pesticides that have poisoned our water, air, soil. Crop dusters fly the deadly agents overhead. Our community has a great number of folks with schizophrenia-like behavior and illnesses. Bananas are not indigenous to here. They were brought by another "Company" back in the late 1800's. And the history is a complex one for the folks here. My first look at a banana plantation brought tears to my eyes and I saw red...as far as you can see, there are banana plants/trees wearing blue plastic bags around the bananas--they look not unlike huge, used, blue, condoms dripping from the trees like some fiendish decoration. These bananas destroyed acres and hectares upon acres and hectares of rainforest and jungle. Union is not a nice word here. Remember when you eat a non-organic banana, that it is fertilised by the blood of workers, trying to make a better life for themselves by asking for a union, killed and disappeared into the fields, as a sign to others. Disposable people working 12 to 16 hours a day for several dollars a day, with no health care, and no concern for safety. I'm from the US South and I know a plantation when I see one; I know the evils of plantation life and they are here. The "Company" IS a plantation; its worst fruit is the weird dependency and helplessness of a company, of "Massa" doing "good" for the slave, the poor black man, the poorer brown man. When our first power bill came, it was to "The Company"--Chiquita. I screamed! This is the "Company" who cuts off the power and water to at least two villages and towns--sometimes four hours a day; sometimes for DAYS. One pays as if the power was on all the time. People don't need potable water; children don't need lights for school and study because we gotta get those bananas loaded on those ships to send to Europe...for that's where our bananas go.... As we search for donations for alternative sources of energy; as we all save for a generator for the parish; as we search for ideas for the creation of cottage industries; as we try to educate our children--the power runs for bananas. The "machine shop" and the "power plant" are about half a block from our home. It is as montrous as the Black Train. It looks like The Borg. One rarely sees a human being and usually those humans are uniformed and armed with those ever-present machine guns. The gates are locked and bolted and no one is allowed in, even to see. There is a section of the plant that strikes terror somewhere deep within me. I know I have a vivid imagination; I also know I am an empath and I feel and hear within my body the screams of workers tortured in this place. Really, it looks more terrifying than any image of a concentration camp I've ever seen. It is dark; everything is rusting metal; there is constant rumbling, clanging, echoes, and reverberations--and no people. Cats don't go there; neither do dogs; and only vultures perch on the top of the building. It's perfect for the horror movie that is real life here. Today we had a community meeting to talk about the situation of power, water, work, etc. We were met by uniformed and suited government officials; we were met by militia types, guards, and police all puffed up with their angry dangerous macho'd fingers slipping with sweat on their triggers. I say the meetings have to go underground, into the churches, into homes like in the US during the Civil Rights years. Who will speak for these people? Who will help? Who will put the word out? Who will start the boycott? Because I'm ready to begin daily prayer vigils outside every Chiquita building and production site I can find--and there are many. The Padre says nothing to my suggestion but I know he is worried and concerned and that he is praying and planning. We need Jesuits, Franciscans, Pace e Bene, Greenpeace, and anybody else who can stop this violence. People here want to work. They want decent lives for their children--education, health care, clean air/water/soil, food. This is not the US of endless consumption. This is beyond any Union activity I've ever been involved--The evils of the Marriott look almost decent in comparison. Perhaps it is so ominous and overwhelming because one sees the land here; one sees the water; the soil; breathes the air. One sees the deforestation for even more bananas, growing for The Company and growing a mold that requires more and more toxins. Tyson, the nuclear weapons industries, and the military are equivalent evils. I dream of the Black Train; I have nightmares where I hear the voices from the field crying out. I hear children crying from hunger. I see this community in black and white and gray. It IS a concentration camp.