PARAMILITARY-STYLE GUARDS INSTILL FEAR IN WORKERS IN DOMINICAN CANE FIELDS
One of the largest sugar supplies to the U.S., Central Romana in the Dominican Republic is coming under government scrutiny for labor practices.
Sandy Tolan, Euclides Cordero Nuel
October 14 2022, 1:09 p.m.
ON A WARM, muggy morning in February 2021, masked men arrived at a dilapidated wooden shack in a remote Dominican Republic work camp without light or running water. Armed with 9-mm pistols and 12-gauge shotguns, and wearing masks to cover their faces, they were part of a private security force assembled by one of the largest exporters of sugar to the United States.
The armed force dismounted from their motorcycles and approached the tin-roof dwelling. It was the home of Flexi Bele, a Haitian sugarcane worker who had lived with his family in this distant corner of this Caribbean nation for decades. Now, he was facing a peril that many of his fellow cane cutters dreaded: The masked men, employed by the billion-dollar Central Romana Corporation, pounded on his door.
“They kicked me out of the batey,” said Bele, using the term for a sugarcane work camp in the Dominican Republic. After 40 years as a Central Romana cane cutter, Bele, 66 years old, had been told there was no more work for him. He was being laid off. “I worked, and worked, and worked, I gave them so much work.”
Bele lived in a camp known as Batey Lima, company housing owned by Central Romana. The armed men standing at his door had come to evict him.
“After they kicked me out of my job, they kicked me out of the batey,” said Bele, whose story was corroborated by a fellow cane worker who lived nearby. “They were armed,” Bele said. “They are always armed. I didn’t argue with them.”
More:
https://theintercept.com/2022/10/14/dominican-sugar-central-romana-fanjul-domino/