Boycott Flor de Caña in Support of Sugar Workers!
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.
More than 480 people – the number keeps constantly increasing — have joined in a Facebook group to express their support for this cause. The idea is to keep up the pressure, to force these companies to change their labor logic and agree to negotiate a reparations package for the former sugar cane workers, and for the widows of ANAIRC, whose husbands died from IRC. For the last two months, the members of ANAIRC have been camping out in the center of Managua demanding a dialogue with the Pellas Group which has ignored their demand for negotiations.
To read an interview with Carmen Rios, president of ANAIRC, click here.
Now, through the Alternative Mesoamerican Communications website, the Flor de Caña Boycott Group announces this new campaign of letters that seeks to strengthen the protest.
The campaign web site explains: “In Nicaragua, a holding company by the name Pellas Group has a sugar cane plantation and mill called the Ingenio San Antonio. This plantation produces the raw material for making Flor de Caña rum. The labor conditions and the use of pesticides on the plantation have sentenced to death more than 3,000 former workers, besides contaminating the water, lands and the air of the western part of the country.”
“This holding company,” – says the text that is becoming known through the Internet — “is Nicaragua´s most powerful, and it is very difficult to get it to change its corporate practices, above all because it fashions itself a responsible and pro-environment business, buying public opinion through corporate social responsibility programs. For this reason, we request people´s solidarity through protest and dissemination of the message.”
The members of the group believe that at this point it is important to get those companies that are importing and distributing Flor de Caña around the world involved in the campaign. For that reason they have prepared letters translated into different languages, so that each person who wants to show his/her indignation about what is happening and let his/her protest be known, can send those protests to Compañía Licorera de Nicaragua SA, and to the importers and distributors of Flor de Caña rum in their respective countries.
Sample Letters
Letter to Compañía Licorera de Nicaragua, SASend to: info@flordecana.com
CC: marrowsmith@deussenglobal.com y boicotpellas@gmail.com
Directors of Compañía Licorera de Nicaragua SA:
The purpose of this letter is to inform you of my decision to refrain from buying or consuming Flor de Caña Rum. This decision is based on the current situation of your company, regarding its involvement in a series of claims having to do with labor, human rights, and environmental issues. Among these:
1) Contamination of land and water of the western part of Nicaragua (Chichigalpa), where the Ingenio San Antonio is located. This is due to the excessive use of toxic agricultural products in the region.
2) Air contamination, due to the irresponsible burning of the sugar cane fields as a common planting/harvesting practice in the western part of Nicaragua (Chichigalpa), where the Ingenio San Antonio is located.
3) Contamination of workers at the Ingenio San Antonio through fumigation with toxic agricultural products. This, along with other questionable labor practices (such as an excessive number of hours working under the sun) has contributed to workers developing Chronic Renal Insufficiency (IRC), a disease which has already killed more than 3,000 people in that zone of Nicaragua.
4) The proscription of independent labor unions, allowing only those that are “company unions” sponsored by the businesses of the Pellas Group (Compañía Licorera de Nicaragua and Nicaragua Sugar Estates Ltd, proprietor of the Ingenio San Antonio).
I urge you to review and change your environmentally hazardous practices regarding the use of chemicals and the burning of sugar cane fields (among others). I also urge you to welcome independent studies of water, land and air quality at the Ingenio San Antonio and its vicinity. Lastly, I urge you to listen to and answer the claims of the former workers organized through ANAIRC.
As long as these minimal conditions are not met, and clear evidence of policy change is not produced, I will continue to denounce, both nationally and internationally, the suspicions regarding your corporate practices.
Sincerely,
Name
Country
Letter to importers and distributors
Distribution/importation into the United States:
Skyy Spirit LLC (Property of Gruppo Campari Company) (http://www.skyyspirits.com/home.php)
Gerard Ruvo, Chairman and CEO
Skyy Spirit, LLC
One Beach Street, Third Floor
San Francisco, CA 94133
skyyreception@skyy.com
Dear Mr. Ruvo:
The purpose of this letter is to inform you of my total disagreement with your company´s importation and distribution of Nicaraguan Flor de Caña Rum. My position is based on the fact that the brand´s holding company—the Pellas Group—is involved in a series of claims having to do with labor, human rights, and environmental issues. Among these:
1) Contamination of land and water of the western part of Nicaragua (Chichigalpa), where the Ingenio San Antonio (plantation and sugar mill) is located. This is where the sugar cane with which the rum is produced is grown and processed. The contamination is due to the excessive use of toxic agricultural products in the region.
2) Air contamination, due to the irresponsible burning of the sugar cane fields as a common planting and harvesting practice in the western part of Nicaragua (Chichigalpa), where the Ingenio San Antonio is located.
3) Contamination of workers at the Ingenio San Antonio through fumigation of toxic agricultural products. This, along with other questionable labor practices (i.e. such as an excessive number of hours working under the sun) has contributed to their developing Chronic Renal Insufficiency (CRI), a disease which has already killed more than 3,000 people in that zone of Nicaragua.
4) Violation of labor rights, through the prohibition of all but “company unions” paid by the Pellas Group (Compañía Licorera de Nicaragua and Nicaragua Sugar Estates Ltd, proprietor of the Ingenio San Antonio).
For these reasons, I have decided not to consume this product until the Pellas Group is completely free of suspicion and has demonstrated a change in its corporate practices associated with the environment, as well as the life, human rights and labor rights of its workers, former workers, and the Nicaraguan people in general.
I hereby let my protest be known against the importation and distribution Flor de Caña Rum, in solidarity with the people of Nicaragua. I appeal to your sense of corporate responsibility to become informed about this product which is currently being boycotted in Nicaragua for these reasons, and which is being questioned by a group of former workers from the Ingenio San Antonio who are suffering from CRI, organized under ANAIRC. They are demanding a reparations package from the Pellas Group, and to this day have not yet received an answer.
If your company does not reconsider the importation and distribution of Flor de Caña rum, it will become an accomplice to the corporation that produces it.
Sincerely,
Your name
City and State
