Contemporary Connections: The Farming of Bones and Modern Day Slavery

In The Farming of Bones, Sebastien worked as a sugar cane cutter, along with many others, in the Dominican Republic in 1937. There were many people in this line of work because they needed to provide for themselves and their family and the job options are very limited for Haitians in the Dominican Republic. It is now 2015 and not much has changed in the harvesting of sugar canes, the worker conditions, wages, etc.

This is still happening today. There are many countries that harvest sugar canes with forced labor. Usually it is the families that send their children to work in the fields because they need the money and because there aren't many other options. Many of the children work there way up to cutting the sugar canes, first they start off gathering weeds in the fields and then at age 15 or 16 they begin cutting the sugar canes. Many people from Haiti migrate to the Dominican Republic to find work because it is very hard to find a job in Haiti, it has an unemployment rate ranging from 67% to 75% (as of 2010), and they wind up working in the cane fields, which is very taxing on their health because of the hazardous working conditions, (i.e.,using a machete to cut the canes, lack of shade). The sugar cane cutters work 12 hours per day, every day of the week and the most money that the workers can make in a day is up to 12 U.S. dollars. And because of these working conditions and the meager pay, and that children are working the fields along with the adults, the job of sugar cane harvesting is considered by many as modern day slavery.

However this just isn't happening in the Dominican Republic, there are sugar cane workers in other countries working under the same conditions, in Nicaragua, other countries in central america, Brazil, India, and many other countries. In fact in Nicaragua there is a mysterious kidney disease affecting only sugar cane workers and no one is sure of the main cause behind it, but they do know that it is related to the occupation. As you can see, there are many health hazards to harvesting sugar canes because of the lack of shade for the workers, the dangerous tools, and then they can barely feed themselves with the amount of money they receive.

This link explains more about the conditions that sugar cane workers work in, their earnings, and also the largest importers and exporters of sugar in the world, the current price of sugar, and the economic importance of sugar.