Dominican Republic: Solidarity with sugarcane workers: No more forced labor and repression in the sugar industry!
Introduction:
The Dominican Republic’s sugar industry enjoys the largest quota of imports with preferential tariffs in the United States, despite having engaged for decades in practices such as forced labor, child labor, starvation wages, lack of freedom of association and racist persecution of Haitian and Dominican of Haitian descent workers. Major U.S. brands such as Hershey’s use Dominican sugar as a raw material.
In 2022, US Customs and Border Protection authorities banned the imports of sugar produced by the Central Romana company, based in the Dominican Republic but with majority US capital, for engaging in five of the eleven indicators of forced labor as defined by the International Labor Organization (ILO). Despite this ban, the Dominican Republic retained the largest sugar export quota with preferential tariffs to the United States. The Union of Sugar Cane Workers has denounced that Central Romana continues to fraudulently export to the US through the sugar companies CAEI and Consorcio Azucarero Central, whose labor rights violations are equally as severe and egregious.
The Dominican government, led by president and businessman Luis Abinader, has lobbied on behalf of Central Romana to lift sanctions and has refused to investigate violations of Dominican labor laws in the sugar industry.
The government itself is responsible for some of the worst human rights violations to the detriment of sugarcane workers. Since 2021, it has launched an offensive against the Haitian immigrant community, imposing a virtual state of exception-transcending the rule of law, suspending legal and constitutional rights for the country’s black population. Every week, countless raids are carried out without warrants or the presence of prosecutors, and thousands of people are detained solely on the basis of racial profiling. Robbery, extortion, brutality and sexual violence are frequent in the process. Migration agents have even murdered migrants as part of this brutal crackdown. The bateyes, the sugarcane communities, have not been exempt from these repressive attacks.
Because the Dominican regime denationalized several generations of Dominicans of Haitian descent in 2013-roughly two hundred thousand people, through a racist and unconstitutional court ruling-many of those who are persecuted by this policy of mass deportations are Dominicans in a legal condition of statelessness. They are also frequently the children and grandchildren of sugar cane workers brought to the country as braceros since the first half of the 20th century.
Haitian workers have been overexploited in both state and private sugar mills for decades. As the sugar industry became the backbone of the Dominican economy for most of the 20th century, the Dominican regime has proceeded to rob sugar cane workers of their pensions when they go into retirement and their health and physical strength have been exhausted. By imposing all kinds of obstacles to both the regularization of their migratory status and to their access to the pensions for which they made their legal contributions and worked for many years, the Dominican regime has ensured that thousands of Haitian sugar cane workers die without ever having received a pension.
Despite all of that, the workers’ mobilization succeeded in getting previous governments to grant thousands of pensions to sugarcane workers. When the current president came to power in 2020, he promised that he would add more than 1,600 sugarcane workers to the list of pension beneficiaries. But not only did he fail to fulfill this promise, he has also stopped paying hundreds of pensions to those who already received them, by imposing new requirements to pensioners such as having a valid ID card or in some cases even the unusual requirement of obtaining a life certificate from the Central Electoral Board. These procedures imply great expenses and long travel distances. As a result, many sugar cane growers do not manage to recover their pensions. This is a deliberately anti-worker and racist policy.
The sugar companies, with the support of the government, frequently evict workers from their homes if they demand their rights or are not able to continue working. The living conditions in the bateyes are of absolute poverty; they are communities that frequently lack access to electricity, sanitary facilities or running water, constituting true enclaves of semi-slavery. The Dominican sugar industry reported more than US$100 million in exports in 2023.
To maintain the previously described conditions, workers’ freedom of movement is severely restricted by company security agents, and when any labor protest arises, the government unleashes all its repressive force. A recent example of this was the May 26 attack by military and police forces against workers of the Central Sugar Consortium, owned by Dominican and Guatemalan capital. More than a dozen Haitian workers were injured by firearms and bladed weapons after refusing to work due to the accumulation of debts by the company. Two of the workers suffered serious injuries to their legs and eyes, which may result in permanent disability. The government also expeditiously expelled some sixty workers, using its immigration agents to break the strike.
Another case that illustrates such repression is that of Dominican worker of Haitian descent Miti Senvil, one of the victims of the racist policy of retroactive denationalization. This young 25-year-old worker has been arbitrarily detained since March, after denouncing the anti-worker and illegal practices of the Central Romana company to international investigators.
We call on the Dominican government to put an end to its policies that violate the rights of Haitian workers and Dominicans of Haitian descent in the sugar industry. We demand an end to forced labor and for the freedom of association of sugar cane workers to be respected. We demand that the Attorney General’s Office investigate and exemplarily punish the repression against workers of the Central Sugar Consortium in the month of May and that the government pay compensation to the workers who were victims of violence and arbitrary deportations, especially those who have suffered permanent injuries.
We demand that the Dominican government guarantee the payment of pensions to all those who worked and made legal contributions to the social security system for decades, putting an end to the discrimination and outright theft of their contributions. We also demand an end to the evictions of retired workers from their homes in the sugar cane communities by the Central Romana, CAEI and Consorcio Azucarero Central companies.
We demand that the government of Luis Abinader put an end to its racist mass deportations, arbitrary detentions, extortion, illegal raids, brutality and sexual violence by police, military and immigration authorities against the Haitian community and Dominicans of Haitian descent.
We demand that the Dominican government put an end to the racist denationalization policies against the Dominican community of Haitian descent, which have resulted in the statelessness of thousands of people.
We demand the immediate release of the Dominican worker of Haitian descent Miti Senvil, subjected to an unjust process weaponized to silence the grievances of the sugar cane workers.
Organizations
Dominican Republic
Movimiento Socialista de Trabajadoras y Trabajadores (MST), Colectivo HaitianosRD, Coordinadora Popular Nacional, Articulación Nacional Campesina, Mujeres Socio Políticas Mamá Tingó, Grupo de Jóvenes del Batey Los Jovillos, Aquelarre RD, Conexión Intercultural por el Bienestar y la Autonomía La Ceiba, Comité por la Unidad y los Derechos de la Mujer (CUDEM), Grupo Latinoamericano de Acción y Formación Feminista (GLEFAS)
Unites States
Decolonial Feminist Collective
México
Unión Afromexicana de Chiapas UBUNTU AC, AFROntera, Mexiro AC
Individuals
Dominican Republic
Cristiana Luis Francisca, president of MUDHA (Dominican-Haitian Women’s Movement); María Fernanda López Pérez, activist; Micely Díaz Espaillat, social worker; María Cándido, community activist; Elena Lorac, Movimiento Reconocido; Lorena Espinoza, graphic designer; Johanna Agustin Federico; Gandi López, activist; John Presimé, computer engineer; Esther Girón, activist; Nicole Estefany Aponte Cueto; Ana Beatriz Rosario; Denise Paiewonsky, retired educator; Adela Dore, artist; Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso, writer, theorist and educator; Carolina Zapata; Inmagela R. Abreu; Yania Concepción; Gabriel Lora, graphic designer; Natalia De Peña Angeles, psychologist; Camila de Peña, civil engineer; Jeannette Tineo Durán; Génesis Massiel Báez Rosa; Melissa Lebrón Herrera; Miguel Tejada
Alemania
Katia Sepúlveda, visual artist and healer
Argentina
Juan Carlos Giordano, elected national deputy from the Frente de Izquierda y los Trabajadores (FIT-U) of Provincia de Buenos Aires, leading member of Izquierda Socialista (IS); Cecilia Casamajor, visual artist, writer and jounalist; Mónica Schotthauer, national deputy from IS and FIT-U and train workers union delegate; Mercedes Trimarchi, leading member of feminist group Isadora and legislator in Buenos Aires City representing IS (Socialist Left) and FIT-U (The Workers’ Left Front – Unity), Rubén “Pollo” Sobrero, General Secretary of the Unión Ferroviaria seccional Oeste; Edgardo Reynoso leading member of the train workers Union Cuerpo de Delegados de Ramal TBA-Sarmiento; Pablo Almeida, leader of public employee’s union from the Ministerio de Economía; Graciela Calderón, teacher and union leader, Mercedes Mendieta, elected national deputy IS y FIT-U, Buenos Aires City, Angélica Lagunas, General Secretary of ATEN Capital sindicato de docentes de Neuquén (Teacher’s Union), militant in IS and the FIT-U; Liliana Olivero, former deputy from Córdoba from IS and the FIT; Mariana Scayola, General Secretary of the board of directors from Ademys-teachers from Buenos Aires City; Lila Ferrer Morillo, writer and anti-racist activist
Bolivia
Humberto Balderrama, miembro de la Dirección Nacional del Partido de los Trabajadores; Eliseo Mamani, ex ejecutivo Federación de Maestros Rurales de La Paz
Brasil
Joao Batista Araujo “Baba”, former council member in Río de Janeiro (RJ) and leading member from the Corriente Socialista de los Trabajadores (CST); Michel Tunes, leading member from CST; Rose Messias, leading member from CST; Pedro Rosa, leader in Sintuff and the Federación trabajadores de las Universidades (Fasubra); Adriano Diaz – union leader in Correos RJ y de CSP-Conlutas; Bruno da Rosa– dirigente Garis (Recolectores de residuos) de RJ; Diego Vitello member of the Metro de San Pablo labor union; Barbara Sineidino – from the Coordinadora general de SEPE (Profesionales de enseñanza); Gerson Lima, Coordinador-General SINTSEP-Pará
Chile
Ranier Rios, dirigente del Movimiento Socialista de las, los y les Trabajadores (MST); Francisca Rodo; Paulina Abufhele
Colombia
Rosa Inés (Ochy) Curiel Pichardo; Diana Cristina Castaño Hoyos, educator
Ecuador
Nathan Galarza
EEUU
Amaury Rodríguez, writer and activist; Luis Feliz León, labor journalist; Meiver De la Cruz, doctor; Rafael C. Gomez; Robert Cuffy, trade unionist DC37; Stephanie Holguín
El Salvador
Evelyn Martínez Mejía, professor-researcher
Angélica Cuero Caicedo; Paloma Moreno; Josep Lluis del Alcázar,leader of Lucha Internacionalista (LI); Marga Olalla, delegada sindical de trabajadores municipales de Barcelona, Militante de LI; Miquel Blanch, delegado sindical de profesorado de escuelas de adultos, militant in the Corriente Sindical de CCOO de Girona, Militant of LI; M. Esther del Alcázar, union delegate from the public education sector and leading member in LI
Guatemala
Claudia Acevedo
Haití
Watson Valcourt, recepcionista
Italy
Eugenio Gemmo, dirigente Movimiento Liga Marxista Revolucionaria (MLMR)
México
Mikaelah Drullard; Sara Flores; Carmen Cariño; Jade García; Cecilia Muñoz Tostado, administrative worker; Iyari Sánchez; Itzia Miravete, human rights activist; Jon James Barousse, performance artist
Nicaragua
Eveling Carrazco López, Glefas
Panamá
Priscilla Vásquez, ex dirigente nacional de los trabajadores del Seguro Social
Perú
Enrique Fernández Chacón, ex diputado nacional y dirigente de PT-Uníos,Jorge Corzo, dirigente de PT-Uníos. Angela Liliana Maihuasca, secretaria general del sindicato de Hospital San Juan de Lurigancho; Brigitte Valdeiglesias Ochoa, estudiante universitaria
Portugal
Renata Cambra, leader of the Movimiento Alternativa Socialista (MAS)
Türkiye
Sedat Durel, Secretario General del Sindicato de los trabajadores revolucionarios de la telecomunicación y de centro de llamadas; Atakan Çiftçi, delegate from the Sindicato de los trabajadores de educación y de ciencia; Oktay Çelik, president of Partido por la Democracia Obrera (IDP), Gorkem Duru, dirigente de IDP
Uruguay
Tania Ramírez, Mizangas movimiento afrofeminista; Hellen Pintos, odontóloga, Mizangas; Ada González Alcoba
José Bodas, General Secretary of the Federación Unitaria de Trabajadores Petroleros de Venezuela (Futpv); Orlando Chirino, National Coordinator of the Corriente Clasista, Unitaria, Revolucionaria y Autónoma (C-cura); Armando Guerra, ex former trade union leader from Hidrocapital; Miguel Ángel Hernández, leading member of the Partido Socialismo y Libertad (PSL)