Re: [Marxism] Slavery alive and well in Florida

[sabocat59@xxxxxxx]

As an anthro grad student I did one year of fieldwork in Indiantown FL, a small 
migrant town south of Immokalee. Mainly grapefruit, oranges, and some lettuce 
and seasonal vegetables as opposed to tomatoes, and just as poor. To make 
things more surreal Pratt-Whitney had a combat helicopter plant not ten miles 
down the road. 

I was there in 1983-1984, working in a service center funded by the UFW and the 
Catholic church.  The migrant population at the time consisted of the usual mix 
of Mexican, Puerto rican, Central American and Jamaican, in addition to Haitian 
and Kanjobal Mayan genocide survivors from northeastern Guatemala. 

It was quite an educational experience for a young middle class southerner. 
There was a legal team taking depositions for political asylum claims for the 
Mayan refugees, and organizers for the UFW would drift through on a regular 
basis. They tried to recruit me to enter the stream but I declined due to my 
mediocre spanish. 

Instead I helped to make a half hour video featuring the stories of the 
Kanjobal survivors, and the story behind the marimba which they brought with 
them. We basically filmed volunteers who did not mind relating their horrific 
accounts more than once. An anthro professor assisted a Guatemalan attorney 
with the interviews, and he  got it shown on statewide PBS. It didn't hurt that 
our videographer worked at a Gainesville tv station. 

We also helped to organize marimba festivals and soccer matches, anything as an 
excuse for group activity on the weekends when they were not working. We also 
spent some time showing the living and working conditions of some of the 
grower-owned camps. 

A few times there were intense face-offs. Our vehicle was stopped on a side 
road leading into an orange grove by a chopper which swooped down and blocked 
the road in front of us. Needless to say I kicked it in reverse and got the 
hell out of there. Stories abounded among the migrants of isolated camps where 
workers were held basically as slaves.  
Periodically the press swoops in and does an expose` but the conditions 
continue unchanged. 

 One time some tv reporters from miami came in and landed on the playground 
behind the school where the Kanjobal Mayan children studied. When the children 
saw the chopper some scattered and ran into the woods while others hid under 
their desks or in closets. The Guatemalan military and their helicopters was 
the only reference which this intrusion represented. 

A Harvard psychologist came in and worked with the children to get them to draw 
pictures of the horrible massacres they witnessed and that were too terrible to 
put into words. They were simply too traumatized.  

Most of the pictures involved helicopters raining down death on their villages. 
 Some of them those same choppers could have been made right down the road. 

 We got the pictures made into a collection which was copied and sold at 
museums to help fund the legal campaign. We eventually won asylum for the 
majority of the complaints but not before a lengthy appeal process reminiscent 
of Bleak House. 

Greg McDonald      
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