Guatemala pays high price for global food system failings

[xchrom]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/may/31/global-food-crisis-guatemala-system-failure

Domingo Tamupsis works on a Guatemalan sugar plantation for a company that exports bioethanol to fill the fuel tanks of US cars. He has a job as a harvester, six days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day, in a country that is a major producer of food for global markets. His settlement in the fertile Pacific coastal area is surrounded by industrial farms, but he earns so little that his family can't afford to eat every day. Some days he survives his shift of hard physical labour on nothing but the mangoes that drop from trees by the roadside.

His wife, Marina, is 23-years-old, but is so slight she might be mistaken for a young teenager. She has two daughters, Yeimi aged six and Jessica aged two. Jessica is the size of the average European one-year-old, her distended stomach a sign of chronic malnutrition. When she tries to smile, hollow creases form in her cheeks, betraying her semi-permanent state of hunger.

Last year, Marina gave birth in the eighth month of pregnancy to a stillborn child. She had been ill and hungry throughout, but then felt severe pains one day while making a breakfast of a small corn tortilla for Domingo before he went out to work. She carried on, knowing that if they miss a day on the plantation the men often get fired.

When she finally reached the nearest medical help, a hospital a 45-minute bus ride away, staff told her the baby was dead. They operated and returned the baby's body to her, but she and Domingo had no money for the return bus fare. A compassionate doctor gave them the price of a fare, and a friend in town lent the money for a coffin. So it was that their third child, Marvin Orlando, a brother for their two little girls, came home to be buried.

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. There's a lot of DUers who need to read this article -

I can't name names, of course, but they can be found in any thread about illegal immigrants, saying we need to just kick them all out to solve all our problems.

THIS is why they come here in the first place, and it puts the blame exactly where it belongs - on US & international corporate policies as enacted by NAFTA and CAFTA.

[xchrom]

2. +1

[TheMadMonk]

3. His story is in many ways the secret of the brief supremacy of...

...the US middle class.

Which ALWAYS had beneath it and propping it up with their labour: the "hicks", bayou dwellers, kansas hayseeds, hillbillies, watermellon farmers, cotton pickers, tobacco planters. A whole underclass of people who worked their entire lives, "can to can't" just to put food on the table.

Ever noticed that the harder a person is expected to work, the lower the renumeration he is expected to accept in return?

Now the powers that be, are working hard at making everyone, who isn't a power, just like Domingo and with our help, pushing the Domingos of the world deep into something even worse that serfdom or slavery which lacks even the limited duty of care that goes with those practices.