Workers pay brutal price for cheap fruit
From Elizabeth Mistry
When Alvaro Noboa, Ecuador's richest man, sent an army of hired muscle to break up a strike at his plantation, it wasn't entirely unexpected because violence is a common response by the banana barons who want to hang on to control of the multi-million pound business. But Noboa, who promotes himself as a man of the people, could be Ecuador's next president and the incident has spread ripples of fear among the region's agricultural workers.
It was around two o'clock in the morning when masked men burst into the makeshift shacks on the Los Alamos plantation, less than 50 miles from the country's second city, Guayaquil. Strikers were hauled off the wooden banana boxes they use as mattresses and told they would be shot if they didn't halt the week-long protest.
In Los Alamos, which is a vast complex of banana fields and packing centres, there are no telephones and no electricity. Nor is there any medical provision for the 1200 workers who have to carry drinking water in empty chemical containers, violating the code of conduct set up by agrochemical manufacturers, such as Syngenta which produces the banana fungicide Amistar at its plant in Grangemouth.
It is 11 miles up a dirt track to the first packing plant where the fruit is wrapped in polythene and prepared for shipping to the US and Europe where it is sold under the Bonita brand. Banana exports, a mainstay of the Ecuadorian economy, are worth about $900 million each year. The country produces more than a quarter of the world's crop but wages are low. Workers at Los Alamos are paid between $25 and $30 for an 84-hour week.
When union co-ordinator Guillermo Touma, a former teenage banana worker, arrived at the plantation, he found 33-year-old Mauro Romero lying in a pool of blood with a bullet in his leg. For Touma, the scenario was hardly a novelty but on that day he was accompanied by Jan Nimmo, a Glaswegian artist who is also the Scottish coordinator of BananaLink, a British NGO.
Nimmo, who returned to Scotland this week, was shocked by what she found. 'When we arrived the place was in chaos. The guards had beaten people up, thrown some of them into one of the banana transporters and tried to shut them in,' she said. Luckily they didn't succeed because they would have died in there. 'I had to dive under the truck and could feel the bullets pinging off the side of the vehicle. No police came until later and it was clear they were not going to intervene.'
In the report Tainted Harvest, which was issued last month, Human Rights Watch slammed the Ecuadorian industry for malpractice, including child labour. Ian King, senior organiser for the GMB union in Scotland, said: 'Conditions won't improve if people stop buying Ecuadorian bananas but it would help if people tell stores they want fruit that has been produced in accordance with fair practice. Retailers are demanding cheap prices from producers but they don't realise the implications for workers and families. Standards in Ecuador would appall any civil society.'
Noboa has yet to officially declare himself a candidate. He was runner up in 1998, and is believed to be waiting until after the World Cup to announce plans for his new political party - the Independent Renewal Party of Alvaro Noboa. He insists the protest is over, but Touma says it continues with the displaced workers camped outside the gates of Los Alamos because their homes were flattened and belongings and money stolen in the raid. Fenacle, the union federation where Touma works, is looking after Romero whose leg was later amputated. The hospital initially refused to treat him because his employer, a shell company owned by Noboa, hadn't paid his social security stamp. He now has little hope of providing for his wife and daughter.
'Our bananas are bonita - beautiful,' says Touma. 'But they are produced with our blood. We are paying too high a price so you can have cheap fruit.'
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