Belching Out the Devil (18 page)

 

Heading back to the main drag we pass the company transport parked at an angle on a bank of earth just by the field. It's an old American-style yellow school bus, with Transporte de Personal Agrícola Ingenio Central Izalco (transport for the agricultural staff working for Central Izalco) written on the destination plate above the driver. Central Izalco the sugar mill has driven the workers down here to the fields, as they often do. Given the reputation for child labour in the area I wonder if the use of a school bus is an act of corporate irony.

 

As we bump along the narrow mud track, dodging dogs and grunting pigs, at one point we slow right down and inch past a homestead on the roadside. It consists of a sloping shelter made of palm leaves. The roof nearly extends to the ground at the rear and the two side walls are almost triangular. In the shaded light we can make out a wooden framed couch. To say there is no door on this shelter would be to miss the point, as there is no wall on which to hang it. Standing in front of it is a young mother washing bowls and she smiles as we pass. Her
kids have all got thick scruffy morning hair, they look up too, while a chicken scuttles round their legs. They were all standing in the kitchen. But the use of the word kitchen in this instance leaves the word straining and groaning at the seams of its own meaning. The kitchen is an area in the dirt that has been swept. One sheet of corrugated iron stands upright to support a board and a bowl. In the middle of the orderly dirt is a table, with a couple of chairs and a single piece of wire runs around the whole area at waist height - tied to a tree here and a stick in the ground there - it is a boundary, just so we all know where the ‘kitchen' actually is. I have wandered into this world without walls carrying a simplistic set of values picked up off the Fairtrade shelf, where kids working = bad. And I curse myself.

I have forgotten that there is another equation here in this place where a piece of wire marks out a room, and this is as true as the first one and it is this: kids not working= really bad.

 

HRW clearly identifies the kids working/not working equation as they recommend that the sugar mills ‘should never take actions that would deprive child laborers of their livelihoods without ensuring that children and their families are receiving programs and services designed to provide them with alternatives to hazardous labor.' It is better that children do hazardous work than go hungry. But, in an environment where the only options open to these children are starvation or hazardous labour, then The Coca-Cola Company has only one option, which is to make sure it isn't responsible in any way for either.

Barely minutes later along the highway we happen upon another harvest. Slowing as we approach we peer out of the
van window. David the American squints, ‘I can't tell how old these people are, they must be 200 metres away…'

 

At that moment a young man pops up and looks at us from the field. He was bent over cutting thus making it impossible to see how old he is, but straightening reveals he must be all of 13 - though David is right, it is hard to get an accurate age. Regardless of his exact age this young man is definitely too young to be working here. We know this because as soon as he sees our van with the camera, he runs rushing into the uncut cane and disappears. We have had only seconds to catch the look of panic on his face before he is swallowed by the dense green and brown stalks and hidden from sight.

 

The original HRW report had said, ‘Plantation foremen turn a blind eye to the fact that children as young as eight cut cane.'
⁹
Since its publication I had heard that the foremen were now concerned not so much with using child labour, but with being
seen
to use child labour. Perhaps that is what the boy was doing. Trying to make sure the plantation was not seen to be using child labour.

Another ten minutes down the way and my suspicions are aroused again. This time a young lad, machete in hand, trims cane. Having learnt our lesson from the first incident we don't slow down, we drive on. Once out of sight, we turn around, head back and stop. The child is out in the open field when the van brakes suddenly, men near to him shout and he breaks for the refuge of the sugar cane, his legs splaying awkwardly as he hops over the stumps and stalks protruding from the ground. He disappears momentarily but can only
have gone a few feet into the dense wooded canes, as he pokes his head out to take a quick peak, catches sight of us, and then vanishes once more.

 

Barely moments later a white jeep arrives on dirt track by the side of the field, carrying three officials from the Ministry of Labor. This looks like a spot check of some kind and they dismount the vehicle with considerable officiousness. Civil servants they may be but their walk is pure Sweeney. Or at least a version of the Sweeney that works out. Wearing smart short-sleeve shirts and even shorter necks, the body-building bureaucrats start to go through paperwork with the plantation foreman. Coca-Cola say the Ministry of Labor ‘has labor inspectors whose only task is to detect child labor.'
¹⁰
Could we be witnessing the authorities clamping down on child labour? How will they find the lad who has just hidden? What will happen to him and the foreman?

 

Actually, nothing happens. Their inspection seems to be just checking papers. It might appear brusque but it is short, sweet and painless. As they get back into the jeep I run over with Armando translating and say, ‘I wonder can I grab a few quick questions? My name is Mark Thomas from the UK.'

 

Sitting in the front passenger seat an official turns to me. His expression is that of a man who can't quite be arsed to be menacing, like a bouncer with a minor case of ennui. He rolls his shoulders and blankly says ‘Hello' - though I am sure his shoulders just told me to ‘fuck off'.

‘I'm making a programme for TV in Britain and it looked like you were making an inspection and I just wondered what you were doing?' I say, all breezy and blasé.

 

He replies with a mixture of boredom and aggression, ‘What the ministry does is check for children working here and for illegal immigrants.'

At this stage I realise I might as well be standing before him in plus fours with a 12-bore under my arm, spouting like a toff, ‘I'm on a child hunt don't you know…'

 

Nonetheless I plough on, asking, ‘Oh…is there much child labour here?'

‘Here? No.'

‘None at all?'

‘Not here…' He says through rigid lips.

‘None?'

‘Not on this plantation.'

‘You've checked for children working here illegally have you?'

‘There is none here…at the moment…none.'

 

He rolls his shoulders at me. Twice.

Solving the problem of child labour involves a lot of different groups of people, including the Salvadorean Ministry of Labor. The HRW report highlights the complexity of the problems and is clear that it is not just the problem of one organisation. The solution, they say, will involve people from UNICEF, the Salvadorean Government, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Labor, as well as the sugar industry and Coca-Cola. The problem is that Coca-Cola seem to be taking a back seat on this particular example of problem solving. The HRW report made a series of recommendations that The Coca-Cola Company should adopt to play its part in eradicating child labour. Though there is no compulsion for the company to adhere to these recommendations it is worth noting that TCCC has not implemented a single one of them.