The Bitter Taste of Sugar
By: Father Shay Cullen
The reality of debt-bonded workers, including millions of child laborers, is a commonplace tragedy in the Philippines.
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These men, women and children were rescued from slave-like work conditions in sugar fields in the tourist town of Batangas. |
I saw a snapshot of colonial slavery from 200 years ago when I arrived in the sugar cane fields in a swirl of dust churned up by police vans.
I had arrived in Nasugbu, Batangas, a tourist town about 60 miles southwest of Manila (the capital of the Philippines), with others to free the men, women and children from slave-like conditions as they worked in the sugar cane fields.
I stood among the towering sugar cane stalks and saw ragged, weary workers and children stagger from the fields of cane bewildered and unbelieving that they were being rescued. They had not been paid, were threatened at gunpoint if they tried to escape and were charged exorbitant prices for the food they ate. They were in debt bondage the day they were brought to the fields.
This form of modern slavery is common in the democratic Philippines—supposedly under the rule of law but, in fact, under the rule of the elite.
The existence of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) anti-trafficking unit, effective and efficient during the operation, is testimony that there is a huge amount of trafficking and trade in men, women and children in the Philippines. It has to be opposed and eliminated.
Trials and convictions, however, are hard to get. The U.S. Department of State has placed the Philippines on a list of critical noncompliance with international agreements to curb human trafficking and gross failure to prosecute the traffickers. Sex trafficking. too, is a scourge in the Philippines that continues unabated. Yet powerful elites continue to conceal and deny the widespread existence of child exploitation.
That
day, we rescued two teen-agers, 15 and 17 years old, from the sugar cane
fields. They were already condemned to a life of illiteracy and
ignorance.
Two other children, ages 3 and 5, of one worker and his wife were not in school. Instead, they worked in the slave camp, gathering firewood to cook the meager portions of rice distributed by the manager.
This is a common reality in many parts of the Philippines: most child workers are working to help their impoverished families seek out a living by planting enough food for the family to eat. Anything beyond that is a dream.
A CYCLE OF HARDSHIP & DEPRIVATION. The Philippine government has reported that in every 10 Filipino families, three have children working to help the family. That means about 3 million families rely on their children for their meager financial support. Four million children in the Philippines between the ages of 5 and 17 are working and missing out on a basic education.
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An anti-trafficking law enforcement agency carried out the raid |
About 70 percent of these children work the fields in rural areas. They grow up illiterate, abused, exploited and can never reach economic stability where their children could go to school and break the cycle of poverty. It is a self-perpetuating system of hard ship and deprivation of children.
Advocates of family planning and population control say the average Philippine family of six to eight children is the cause of poverty. But is it?
Parents in these poor families often say that if they only have two children, all will starve. But with more children, they have a better chance to survive and live a bit longer. This survival strategy lies in the strength of numbers: more child workers in the family mean more food, not less.
It seems to work, because there are millions of children surviving, although utterly impoverished and deprived. Life is all they have, even if it is lived in utter want.
The government must end exploitation of the poor and let the children go to school. With more prosperity, survival is more certain, fewer children are needed to work, and the family can succeed.
The children of the poor, by necessity work in the fields, haul water, sell in the streets, beg on corners and scavenge in garbage dumps. Some are lured into prostitution, break stones in quarries, work in back-street factories or collect scrap and junk.
They are exposed to pesticides, chemicals, fumes and dangerous gases and lead. They get diseases from insects and parasites from the contaminated food and water, and nearly all suffer from malnutrition.
Poverty and social injustice is a form of slavery—and a cruel one at that.
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COLUMBAN MISSION
WWW.COLUMBAN.ORG
March-April 2007
