SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — “Sugarcane cutters are among the most exploited section of the working class in the Dominican Republic,” Jesús Núñez, national coordinator of the Sugarcane Workers Union, told the press at the opening of the group’s second national conference held at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo here March 18.
“Thousands of cane cutters have applied for their pensions and been denied,” he said. The fight for pensions and health care is a key part of the union’s activity.
Most bateyes — company towns owned by the sugar barons — and other towns where the cane cutters live have little or no electricity, no running water and dirt roads that become a muddy mess when it rains. There are almost no medical clinics. Most can’t read or write. But by standing up for their rights, they show they’re not victims, but fighters.
It is not unusual for workers in their 80s to still work part time cutting cane to avoid eviction from company-owned housing. Several of these workers were brought up to the front of the room and introduced.
Núñez noted that Haitian-born workers and workers of Haitian descent are the overwhelming majority of cane cutters; as well as of farmworkers in rice, bananas, vegetables and other crops; and in construction and domestic workers. They and their children are a crucial component of the working class in the Dominican Republic. The struggle to end the discriminatory conditions they face is crucial for unifying working people.
In this fight, the government of President Luis Abinader backs the sugar bosses every step of the way. It added new restrictions on cane cutters getting their pensions, requiring them to obtain a Dominican residency ID, which is only valid for four years.
Some workers are still fighting to get a pension for the first time. For others the payments stopped when their ID residency expired and bureaucratic red tape make getting a renewal difficult.
The Sugarcane Workers Union was formed in 2009 and has led a series of battles — including organizing hundreds of demonstrations — succeeding in winning pensions and residency documents for thousands of Haitian cane cutters.
Threats of deportations
Every government in the Dominican Republic, no matter which capitalist party is in power, has fostered racism against workers of Haitian descent, seeking to divide and weaken the working class. This worsened after the country’s Constitutional Court ruled in 2013 that a reactionary reform to the Constitution that denied citizenship to those born to “undocumented” Haitian parents was retroactive back to 1929.
Even after a law was passed a year later that opened a complicated path to legal residency, thousands — despite having been born in the Dominican Republic — find themselves threatened with deportation. So are new Haitian immigrants, who arrive in the country every day, fleeing increasingly dangerous conditions in Haiti.
Last October the Abinader government ordered the immigration police to start deporting 10,000 Haitians a week, aiming to instill fear among those who remain. While deportations rose, the roundups have fallen far short of that goal.
Núñez points out that while Haitian-born workers face the worst conditions, Dominican workers also face challenges getting pensions that are adequate in the face of today’s sky-high prices.
Sanctions lifted on sugar baron
The conference took place just one day after the U.S. government lifted its sanctions on Central Romana, the largest sugarcane plantation in the country, part-owned by the U.S.-based Fanjul family.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection had imposed the sanctions on the company. It said Central Romana withheld wages, imposed excessive overtime and other abusive working and living conditions.
Central Romana — which sells sugar in the U.S. under the Domino and C&H brands — is the largest employer in the Dominican Republic, with more than 20,000 workers and its own private police force. Most workers live in the company’s 101 bateyes.
The U.S. sanctions had nothing to do with improving workers’ conditions. U.S. companies responded by importing more sugar from other Dominican sugar plantations that treat workers no better than Central Romana.
In anticipation of the lifting of the sanctions, Núñez reported, Central Romana started jacking up production and extending the workday. Workers start work “at 4 or 5 a.m. instead of 6. They aren’t getting back to the batey until 8 or 9 at night, instead of 6 p.m.,” he told the conference.
Bosses there have a long history of harassment against union supporters. Since 2018, “la Romana has kicked 129 union coordinators out of their homes in the bateyes,” Núñez said.
Company security prevented cane cutters from boarding a bus sent to take them to this conference, he reported. “The cutters had walked 7 kilometers [4.3 miles] since la Romana has banned buses from picking them up in the company-owned batey.” But the guards found out and went to the rendezvous point. “They told the bus driver that if he lets the workers on the bus, they would slash the tires.”
Learning about other struggles
The conference was an opportunity for the cane cutters to learn about struggles of working people in other countries. Israel Rousseau, general secretary of the National Union of Sugar Workers of Cuba; Dania Leyva, a leader of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers; Hebert Garrido, from the Association of Bank Workers of Uruguay; a delegation from the Socialist Workers Party in the U.S., including Rachele Fruit, Gerardo Sánchez and Seth Galinsky; and Philippe Tessier from the Communist League in Canada all gave greetings or made presentations at the conference. Sánchez is an organizer with Local 111 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union in Fort Worth, Texas, and Tessier is a rail worker in Montreal. Fruit is a hotel worker and member of UNITE HERE.
Many cane cutters nodded their heads when Rousseau explained that before the 1959 Cuban Revolution, sugar workers there faced the same challenges they do. He described the historic changes in conditions made possible by the revolution, including workers control over safety.
‘Workers gain confidence’
“Workers around the world are gaining confidence that we can win through the solidarity we are extending to one another. You are part of this,” Fruit said during a talk March 21 based on the book Capitalism’s World Disorder by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes. “Only the working class is capable of ending this system of exploitation and ushering in a new future for humanity.”
After Fruit’s talk, nearly a dozen cane cutters took to the floor to describe the conditions they face.
“I came in 1960,” 81-year-old Luis Lacare said. “I have a paper saying I am eligible for a pension. But they haven’t paid me for 10 years.”
“I was born in Haiti in 1954 and came here in 1959,” said Cedemena Seda. “I was raised here. My children were born here. I say I am from here.”
“I cut cane as if I were a man. I spread fertilizer as if I were a man. I planted cane as if I were a man,” she said. But the government and the bosses “look at us as if we are garbage.”
Pointing to gains made by working people from having a union, she said when she was a child “there was no school in the batey. But now my children can read.”