For many Haitians fleeing poverty at home and looking for work in the cane fields, the Dominican Republic has been a refuge. But now many Haitians in the DR could face forced deportation back to Haiti or be forced to live outside the law. More information about this video is available here.
Sugar is more than just a sweetener for the children in the bateyes of the Dominican Republic. For these children of sugar cane cutters, sugar is the reason they can survive. But it is also sugar that keeps them in their impoverished condition. In the batey where the sugar cane cutters and their families live, the children run around in the midst of tiny shacks and garbage heaps, exposed to malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS. This 10 minute segment is from a 30 minute documentary. To learn more about this programs and others, visit saltandlighttv.org.
In the Dominican Republic, a tropical island-nation, tourists flock to pristine beaches unaware that a few miles away thousands of dispossessed Haitians have toiled under armed-guard on plantations harvesting sugarcane, much of which ends up in U.S. kitchens. They work grueling hours and frequently lack decent housing, clean water, electricity, education or healthcare. Narrated by Paul Newman, “The Price of Sugar” follows Father Christopher Hartley, a charismatic Spanish priest, as he organizes some of this hemisphere’s poorest people to fight for their basic human rights. This film raises key questions about where the products we consume originate and at what human cost they are produced.