Solidaridad’s mission is structural poverty alleviation and promotion of peace and justice. We support farmers and farm workers in a wide range of commodity chains, such as sugarcane. Solidaridad supported the CUC in the early 1980’s in its struggle for better wages. More than 30 years later, Solidaridad works with the corporate sector to improve the impacts of commodity production for the world’s poor. Solidaridad is a member of Bonsucro®, a global multi-stakeholder initiative that unites farmers, producers, end users and other stakeholders in their drive to improve the sustainability of the sugarcane industry. Solidaridad also supports the work of Impunity Watch, which seeks to reduce impunity for past atrocities in post-conflict states by improving understanding of why it persists, promoting more effective policies to challenge it, and enhancing throughout the voices of local civil society actors who promote victims’ rights. Impunity Watch works closely with the community of Santa Lucía in Guatemala.

www.solidaridadnetwork.orgwww.bonsucro.comwww.impunitywatch.org

Acknowledgements

Organisation: Solidaridad Mario Coolen, mario.coolen@solidaridad.nlSven Sielhorst, sven.sielhorst@solidaridad.nlPhotography: Piet den Blanken, www.denblanken.com

A special thanks to: Bonsucro, KLM – Royal Dutch Airlines, Ovidio Orellana and Mario Trinidad

Thank you for your interest in this mini exhibition about the cane cutting community of Santa Lucía in Guatemala. In no more than six photos, it tells the story of cane cutters and people who stood up for their rights.

Faces of cane

Still, almost none of them wishes for his children to become a cane cutter, but reality often leaves no other choice. The wages paid by the middle men do not allow for decent schooling – and the cane cutters often burn out quickly due to the high work pressure. The next generation simply needs to step in to support the family.

The story of the men in these pictures is the story of many cane cutters around the globe. Solidaridad aims to break this circle of poverty. Countries and companies around the world have shown that sugarcane can bring prosperity to all of its stakeholders, including its employees.

Solidaridad supports Bonsucro® in its aims to abandon child labour, forced and bonded labour, as well as discrimination and to allow people to organize and stand up for themselves without fear of prosecution. That is why Solidaridad is proud to give a face to the millions of cane cutters around the world at the 2011 Bonsucro Annual General Meeting in Brisbane, Australia.

A bitter history

Sugarcane labour protests in Santa Lucía, Guatemala

Santa Lucía Cotzumalguapa is a small town situated on the tropical southern coast of Guatemala, where sugarcane is grown on a large scale. The cane is cut by seasonal

workers, of whom many are landless Mayas who move from the mountains to the coastal areas each year in search for work.

In the late 70’s, the CUC, El Comité de Unidad Campesina (the Committee for Peasant Unity) was installed in Santa Lucía. Its objective was to create humane working conditions and better wages for the sugarcane cutters. A massive strike in early 1980, organized by the CUC, led to a wage increase of 200%. Shortly after this victory, the repression hit back hard. The first fatal victim was padre Walter Voordeckers, Santa Lucía’s parish priest, who vigorously supported the workers’ right to organize themselves. Everything indicates that some hundred members and sympathizers of the CUC were killed or kidnapped in the period after the strike. They disappeared for good.

Now, in 2011, working conditions on the sugarcane plantations of Santa Lucía have not fundamentally improved. The workload is high, wages are not sufficient to maintain a family and pre-harvest burning has severe health impacts on workers and local residents. The word ‘organization’ is still an absolute taboo since the wave of violence after the successful 1980 strike.

On November 2nd, 2011, relatives of the victims received a memorial book that describes the lives of the victims of the violence. The book is a monument and a tribute to the brave men and women who gave their lives for the right to a decent life.

The Juárez family

René Juárez was an important leader of the CUC during the 1980 strike. It was him who gave the green light for action on one of Santa Lucía’s plantations. Shortly after that, it became clear that René was wanted, so he often spent the night away from home. In the evening of September 24th, 1980, armed men entered the house of the Juárez family. When they could not find René there, they took his wife Marcelina Catalán, who was beaten and kicked in view of her five children. Marcelina has never been found again. Alicia, the eldest of the children, was 12 years old at that time. She took care of her brothers and sister for years, under very difficult circumstances. René was afraid to come anywhere near his family, because the authorities were still looking for him. Only after thirty years, the Juárez family members managed to meet each other. This is the first family portrait that was made of the Juárez family after all this time.

Alejandra Ramírez with Isidro and María Victoria Loch

Isidro and María Victoria Loch were active in Santa Lucía’s church. Isidro had worked as a cane cutter for years, while María Victoria managed to get her teacher’s degree. She taught in one of Santa Lucía’s schools. Isidro was one of the CUC leaders and María Victoria was the organisation’s secretary. Both of them were kidnapped in broad daylight, on September 27th, 1983. The photo shows Alejandra Ramírez. She is holding the portraits of her kidnapped husband Isidro and her sister in law. Alejandra was left behind with five little children after the kidnapping of her husband. She strongly believes that Isidro and María Victoria were taken to the military barracks of Santa Lucía after their kidnapping and that their remains are to be found there. Alejandra hopes that Santa Lucía will get a monument one day for the victims of the terror of the early eighties.

Manual cane cutting is among the toughest jobs in the world. The cutters in the pictures work from dawn to dusk, with temperatures reaching 40˚C. They move into a cane field within hours after it has been burned. They are often seasonal labourers, staying in barracks away from home. Most cane cutters are proud to support their family through their hard labour – and rightly so.