5.30.2007

Bananeras rise up !


For the Original men and women who struggle to provide us with food just to barely feed themselves. YA BASTA! As Indigenous men, women and children rise up to relcaim their humanity against the slavery imposed by the multi-national corporations, the evil offspring of colonialization. Many of us that that were reared in the states, even in the midst of the poorest of environments, still can not imagine life for our people in the "third world". So we never generate interest in the lifes and well-beings of those people and block them out of our consciousness. We are taught and instructed to be concerned for nothing except the "wonderful life" here in the wilderness of North America. Like horses with blinders on.

It makes me of my father and the letters we would send from Boriken and the times he would tell me of nothing to eat except for bananas...and the numbers of children here who grow up preferring a 25 cent bag of swedish fish over a banana. What our people have went through for us to have the audacity to 'not' want to eat healthier. Of course this 'preference' having been rooted in miseducation. Miseducation not withstanding, there are many of our people who assume a strident position of maintaining and perpetuating ignorance. It's the relationship between the two realities that's the jewel. Alla y Aca. Like 'blood diamonds' that people and especially 'rappers' continue to flaunt despite the controversy that surrounding the topic after the film "Blood Diamonds" was released.


Plantation workers look for justice in the North
by T. Christian Miller
May 29, 2007

After years of toil in Central American fields where they say pesticide use made them sterile, they're suing Dow, Dole and other firms in L.A.

Chinandega, Nicaragua -- THE people crammed into the stifling basketball gym. They filled the court, lined the walls and tumbled beyond the doors onto the sun- blistered streets.

They had gathered to hear a promise of justice.

Many had spent their lives toiling on banana plantations that U.S. companies operated in this region some 30 years ago. By day, the workers had harvested bunches of fruit to ship to North American tables. At night, some had sprayed pesticide into the warm, humid air to protect the trees from insects and rot.

As the decades passed, the workers came to believe that the pesticide, called DBCP, had cost them their health. Prodded by U.S. lawyers, thousands joined lawsuits in the U.S. and Nicaragua alleging that the pesticide made them sterile.

The U.S. firms that sold and used the pesticide have never faced a U.S. jury trial over its use abroad. Last month, a Los Angeles attorney named Juan J. Dominguez stood before a sea of nearly 800 dark, hard faces and predicted that the day of reckoning was at hand.

"We are fighting multinational corporations. They are giants. And they are going to fall!" Dominguez thundered.

The crowd exploded. They leapt to their feet, waved their hats, shook fists in the air. "Viva! Viva!" they chanted.




Also, more information can be found at: www.studentsforbhopal.org/DirtyDow.htm

PAZ!
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