La Strada Documentation Center

The Price of Sugar

Document number
1595
Date
2007
Title
The Price of Sugar
Author/publisher
Bill Haney
Availability
LSI library
Document type(s)
Multimedia,
Keywords
Debt bondage, Forced labour, Exploitation, Servitude, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Documentary, Labour exploitation, Domestic labour, Slavery-like practices; Agricultural labour;
Summary
Bill Haney’s fascinating documentary concerns the relationship between the sweets we consume every day and human rights abuses in the Dominican Republic. When charismatic priest Father Christopher Hartley breaks a centuries-old taboo and ventures into the sugar plantations where most of his parishioners live, he discovers that the rich sugar industry thrives on the backs of thousands of dispossessed Haitians who tirelessly work the cane fields under inhumane conditions. Eager to escape the squalor and desperation of their own country, these poor Haitians are lured across the border by the plantation owners, only to be stripped of their documentation (rendering them non-citizens in both countries and forced into a life of de facto enslavement). Following Hartley in his crusade to expose the corrupt plantation owners, the film powerfully champions the sugarcane workers’ efforts to change the brutal system, which counts the U.S. at its largest export market. Narrated by Paul Newman. Official website: http://www.thepriceofsugar.com/trailer.shtml
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