Schedule a Showing of Bananas!* in Your Community!

Nicaraguan workers accuse Dole of fraud and suborning testimony!

BANANAS!* is multi-layered courtroom drama delving into the global politics of food, the dynamics of First and Third world nations, and ultimately, human rights at the basest of levels.

Directed by investigative journalist Fredrik Gertten, BANANAS!* focuses on a landmark and highly controversial legal case pitting a dozen Nicaraguan plantation workers against Dole Food Corporation and its alleged use of a banned pesticide with a probable link to generations of sterilized workers.
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Banana workers camp in Managua near the National Assembly.

An interview with writer Vicent Boix
By Giorgio Trucchi [Translated by Katherine Hoyt]

Introduction

More than 15 years have gone by since former banana workers affected by DBCP—Nemagon or Fumazone—began to take their first steps to get the transnational corporations that have produced, sold and applied this mortal agrochemical to take responsibility for tens of thousands of resulting sicknesses and deaths.

It has been a long history of struggle and hope, one that was a symbol of resistance in the face of transnational power and its exploitative economic model. But it was also a history of divisions, fights, and insults among the groups of affected workers, lawyers, and politicians which, in the end, weakened the process of achieving worker demands.

In 2007, a jury of the Superior Court of Los Angeles, CA, found two U.S. transnational corporations, Dow Chemical Company and Dole Fruit Company, Inc., responsible for causing sterility of Nicaraguan workers because of direct exposure to Nemagon and awarded US$3.3 million to six of 12 claimants.

Then, in a second historic decision, Dole was asked to pay an additional US$2.5 million to five of the six in punitive damages. However, this second damage award was thrown out by Judge Victoria Gerrard Chaney. U.S. attorney Juan Jose Dominguez and his collaborator in Nicaragua Antonio Hernandez have appealed that decision.

Because of these historic decisions, the lawyers decided to present other cases in Los Angeles, but what happened was catastrophic.
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The Flor de Caña Boycott Group Extends its Protest with a Campaign of Letters to Importers around the World

In April 2009 a youth group launched a boycott against Flor de Caña, the famous Nicaraguan rum. The boycott is in solidarity with former sugar cane workers who are members of the Nicaraguan Association of Those Affected by Chronic Renal Insufficiency (ANAIRC). The youth have decided to extend their campaign by sending protest letters to the Compañía Licorera de Nicaragua SA, which together with the Nicaragua Sugar Estates Ltd. and the San Antonio Sugar Mill belong to the economically powerful Pellas Group. The protest letter campaign is also aimed at all the companies that import and distribute Flor de Caña rum around the world.
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A group of students at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania calling themselves “Hear Out Yellow,” or HOY for short, traveled to Nicaragua, and with a grant from Projects for Peace Davis Foundation, produced a moving short documentary on the issue of the Nicaraguan banana workers who have been make ill by the pesticide Nemagon.  The film is now posted on YouTube divided into two parts.  To learn more about the students’ project visit here.

To view the video, go here.

To learn more about the issues surrounding the Nicaraguan banana workers, visit here.

[Attorney Maria Luisa Acosta in her Bluefields office before the murder of her husband.]

A documentary by Mallory Sohmer

The documentary was filmed in Bluefields, Monkey Point, Pearl Lagoon, the Pearl Cays, Leon and Managua, Nicaragua. It tells the story of the murder of Francisco Garcia, a Bluefields businessman and science professor, who was killed in an attempt to silence his wife, indigenous rights lawyer Maria Luisa Acosta. The film includes testimony of lawyers involved in the case and of indigenous leaders of the communities which were represented by Attorney Acosta in their struggles to preserve their traditional lands.

To see scenes from the documentary, go here.
To download the film in its entirety, go here.

Write to Nicaraguan authorities demanding that they bring to justice those responsible for the murder of Francisco Garcia. Contact information and sample message below.
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Worker cuts cane in a burned field in western Nicaragua.  Photo: Mike Elliott.

[The Nicaragua Network has received this important alert from the New Haven-Leon Sister City Project. We urge you to take action!]

Urgent: Add Your Voice….Support 700 Workers, Community members
in Chinendega and Leon, Nicaragua

Many workers and community members have been organizing for years to trying to get fair treatment from Nicaragua Sugar Estates (NSEL), a large sugar producer in the states of Chinendega and Leon in northwest Nicaragua, where many of them work or have worked until they became too sick. In March, they filed a complaint with the IFC/World Bank for a $55 million dollar loan made to NSEL in 2006 and are trying to get the IFC/World Bank to apply its own environmental and labor standards to the loan – and to NSEL.

You can support their struggle AND increase IFC/World Bank accountability.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 1, 2008
CONTACT:
Kris Genovese 202‐742‐5831
Victims of Biofuel: Nicaraguan Communities Affected by IFC‐Funded Ethanol Plant File Complaint

Washington, D.C.—Over 700 community members and ex‐sugarcane workers from the Pacific coast of Nicaragua filed a complaint yesterday with the International Finance Corporation for injuries to their health and environment caused by the operations of Nicaragua Sugar Estates Limited (NSEL). NSEL received a $55 million loan from the IFC in 2006 to increase its sugarcane production and to fund the construction of an ethanol plant. The complaint to the Office of the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, the mechanism established to hold the IFC accountable to communities for violations of environmental and social standards, presents evidence that NSEL activities violated these standards.

Much of the sugarcane produced by this project, like an increasing percentage of the one hundred fortyfive million tons of sugar produced each year worldwide, will be used for biofuels. Although the benefits of using biofuels as an alternative to fossil fuels are touted, the costs to its use are often significant and overlooked. Sugarcane production for biofuel use, for example, can exact a high toll on the environment and the people who work to produce it. The community complaint details these costs in the Nicaragua project.

The towns of Chichigalpa, Goyena, and Abangasca, in Nicaragua, are surrounded by thousands of hectares of sugarcane. Members of the communities are experiencing respiratory problems caused by the clouds of smoke and ash created when the sugarcane fields are burned prior to harvest. Moreover, many community members believe that the chemicals applied by the company to the sugarcane are the cause of the epidemic of chronic renal insufficiency in the region, prevalent among those who work in NSEL’s fields. The communities also worry that use of significant volumes of water to process the sugarcane will dry up their rivers, threatening their water supply.

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With the advice of our partners in human rights and women’s organizations in Nicaragua, the Nicaragua Network, joined by the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign of Great Britain, on December 4, 2007, sent a letter with the signatures of over 300 solidarity activists and others to key Nicaraguan officials asking them to do what they can to reverse the criminalization of therapeutic abortion.
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PRESS RELEASE
From the Law Offices of Juan J. Dominguez, APLC
November 16, 2007
Contact: Ivonne Rodriguez at Juan J. Dominguez, APLC 800-818-1818

Los Angeles Jury Punishes Dole Foods Company, Inc. for Maliciously Sterilizing 5 Poor Nicaraguan Plantation Workers

On November 15, 2007 a Los Angeles jury rendered a punitive damages verdict in the amount of $2,500,000.00 on a finding of malice to punish corporate giant Dole Foods Company, Inc. (“Dole”) in sterilizing 5 Nicaraguan banana plantation workers with the pesticide Dibromochloropropane (“DBCP”) in the 1970s. [Tellez, et. al. v Dole Foods Company, Inc, et. al Los Angeles Superior Court Case #: BC 312852]. Malice in these sterilizations was found by the jury at the higher corporate decision making level of Dole. The Jury also found that Dole fraudulently concealed from these plantation workers the toxic sterilization dangers of the DBCP pesticide. The recovery for the Tellez, et al workers now totals over $6,000,000.00 against Dole and manufacturers The Dow Chemical Company (“Dow”) and Amvac Chemical Corporation.

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The Los Angeles Times reports that the jury deliberating the fate of Dow Chemical and Dole Food reported their verdict this morning (Monday, November 5,2007) and awarded damages to six of the twelve Nicaraguan banana workers. Here is the story:

Jury finds Dole Food liable for farmworker ailments

Dole Food Co. concealed from poor Central American farmworkers the danger of sterilization posed by a pesticide used in the Nicaragua banana fields, a Los Angeles jury decided this morning.

Jurors awarded $2.8 million to six workers, and held Dole responsible for 80% of the damages. The trial will continue Tuesday to determine if Dole should also be assessed punitive damages.

The verdict was the first time an American jury has been allowed to decide on the dangers to farmworkers of the pesticide, read more by clicking here.

Read background material about the Nicaraguan banana workers affected by Nemagon.