With Silvio Baltodano Flores

We’re only asking
for what is rightly ours

As executives of Ingenio San Antonio, property of Nicaragua Sugar Estates Ltd, a company of the Pellas Group, announce with great fanfare the shipment to Europe of a total of 40 million liters of ethanol -half of its expected production for 2009- and the increase of its daily distillation capacity to up to 500 thousand liters, which will bring it some 60 million dollars in foreign exchange, the former sugarcane workers and widows of ANAIRC, an affiliate of the IUF, continue to camp out in Managua demanding reparation for damages arising from their work in the company’s fields and facilities.

Silvio Baltodano Flores is one of these former workers. For nine years he worked at Ingenio San Antonio, in tasks that included mixing agrotoxic chemicals and spraying them in the fields. He is one of the victims. Chronic Renal Failure (CRF) has brought him to the brink of death, having permanently compromised 57 percent of his kidney function. When the company realized that “he was hit” (sick), it stopped hiring him and told him to request his pension from the Social Security agency. 

Sitting on one of the hammocks at the camp, Silvio tells Sirel his story, demanding that the owners of Ingenio San Antonio respond for the damage caused to thousands of people.

-What year did you start working for Ingenio San Antonio?

-I started working in 1992, participating in an agricultural research study. I worked with different kinds of agrotoxic chemicals, including Roundup, Gramoxone, 2,4-D, Hexazinone (Velpar), and Diuron (Gesapac), among others.

We applied them to small plots, where different varieties of sugarcane were planted, with the aim of selecting them, for large-scale planting. Once selected, the agrotoxic chemicals were used massively. I worked during two different periods of time. In the second period, I worked for nine straight years, winter and summer, and in 2001 I came out with a 1.9 level of creatinine in my blood.

When I showed up to “hook up” for the next harvest, they sent me for a medical examination, as they always did. The company doctor saw how high my creatinine level was, and he told me to drink a lot of water and eat things like pineapple, to bring down the creatinine level. But instead, it went up to 2.2. Finally he told me: “We’re really sorry but we can’t hire you. You’re ‘hit,’ you’re sick; so you better go to the Social Security agency to get your pension.”

 Years later, I’m still waiting for that pension.

-How were these agrotoxic chemicals applied?

-First we mixed the product, then we added water to it, and we filled up the pumps to spray it manually. Usually this meant these products would drip onto our backs and our bodies.

-Did this happen often?

-Almost always. I remember once I was practically drenched in Gramoxone (Paraquat), and three days later I had burns all over my body. I called the engineer and they sent me to the hospital, but a week later I was working again.

There’s no doubt in my mind that this disease I have now is a result of having been in constant contact with the agrotoxic chemicals.

Another problem was the lack of water. We each had to carry our own water bottle, but we would finish the water quickly, and then we would have to go thirsty until we returned from the fields.

-How is your health now?

-My creatinine level has been 1.9 for years, and the last test I had done showed that 57.25% of my kidney function is compromised.

-How are you getting along?

-My brothers help me, but it’s hard. I have a family, and sometimes my kids have nothing to eat. When I go looking for work in the fields they turn me down because of my condition, and when I do get something in construction, after two or three days I can’t go on because I’m too tired, and I have to quit.

-What are you asking from the company?

-Ingenio San Antonio has to find a solution to this problem. They know we’re former workers, that we worked for them, and that it is thanks to our work that they’ve gotten where they are. This illness is like a cancer; it doesn’t stop until it kills you. When I went in to work at Ingenio San Antonio, I was healthy, and I came out of there sick. Camping out here with me in Managua there are widows and parents who have watched their sons and daughters die. And there are many more who are not here, who stayed back in Chichigalpa. We’re carrying out this struggle to receive compensation for what happened to us, to obtain what is due to us.

-If you could talk to the owner of the company, what would you say to him?

-I would tell him to look into his heart and value us for the human beings that we are. We hope to receive an answer soon, and we’re willing to stay here staging this civic and peaceful, but firm protest, until we get a solution.