Mauro Romero is 32, he is a widower and the father of a four-year-old child. Since 1999 he worked for the Los Álamos plantation, until May 16 when a strikebreaking henchman blew his leg off. Álvaro Noboa is 48, he is a lawyer with a postgraduate certificate of business, owner of Los Álamos and other fourteen banana plantations. He is also the owner of four shipping companies, one bank, two insurance companies, edible oils La Única and sugar refinery Valdez, not to be tiresome - he is one of the owners of Ecuador!

Now, Mauro Romero lives at his sister's in the neighborhood Unión de Bananeros, an area of half-built houses, a shanty-town of Guayaquil. Álvaro Noboa's main residence is in New York, at a suburb where other multimillionaires live. There, he does not need a bodyguard or smoked glass in his car. It is an excellent place to reflect and count money without the hounding of poor people: those tiresome smelly and resentful Ecuadorians who are ruining the country.

Mauro Romero looks at his leg and he can get no consolation. He tells us that at night pain is acute, terrible. "What am I going to do now? Where am I going to work like this?", he wonders, and so does his family, but there are no answers. On May 22, Álvaro Noboa launched his campaign to run for president of Ecuador. Hounded by journalists and questioned about the tragic events at Los Alamos, he expressed: "I love the workers of Los Alamos...".

"Paying poverty tax" at every traffic light

The bus taking us to the Banana Workers Union is a travelling market. There, you can buy pens, socks, sweets an cell phone covers. There is also a supermarket at each traffic light: "fruits, flowers, sweets, coconuts, matches, all you have to do is stop", like the song by Rubén Blades. Brother Mauro Romero tells us: "this is the way these poor people earn their living, there are no jobs for them and they do not have enough money to afford a ticket to leave the country".

Mauro, in the green hole

of the banana plantations

"At the banana estate there was no time for a break, I used to work seven days a week packing bananas", told us Mauro.

- How much did you earn?

- 32, sometimes 34 dollars a week, no more than that. It is not much, but complaining is useless.

- Did you use to live at the plantation?

- Yes, many people live there.

- What's a regular day at the plantation like?

- I would get up at 6.15, have breakfast and we were supposed to be at the plant at 6.40 in order to begin working. Lunch time is 12.30, and there are 15 minutes to go back to work. Workers are not given even a minute to rest, they are supposed to eat and go on working until 6.30 p.m. Just like other people interviewed, Mauro expressed that food at the company is dreadful and that many times, while having lunch, the plane flies past and sprays.

- What do you do after working hours?

- Well, people take a shower and try to rest. However, sometimes there are boxes to pile in the containers. Therefore, people have dinner and go back to put boxes until 8 or 9 p.m., if lucky.

- Do you get paid for the overtime?

- Until 6.30 there's no extra pay. If you stay longer, you get 4 dollars a week. But it still isn't too much! All night piling boxes is very tiring.

- Do they pay 4 dollars a week regardless the number of hours worked?

- No matter how many hours you work, or the time at which the container arrives, sometimes at one, two or three a.m.

- What was the sleeping room like?

- A small room, with two beds for four people to sleep.

- Was there anything but the beds?

- No, only the bed no mattress or anything. We use cardboard of the banana boxes and sleep there. The pay is not enough to buy a mattress.

- Are there toilets?

- They are being repaired now because they were destroyed. Workers had to go to the woods instead of the toilet.

How to demand your constitutional rights

without dying in the process

On May 6 the 1,200 workers on the Los Álamos plantation went on strike, demanding job security for three years and that 129 workers fired in March be reinstated. They were also asking for pay for overtime and vacations, the setting up of a health clinic, and to be included in the social security system. To sum up their demands: that the Corporación Noboa comply with Ecuadorian laws.

"How did the union come about?"

"People started complaining about the low pay. Everyone on the plantation was saying "We'll have to go on strike. Something has to be done!" - and one day the union was set up. To begin with, I didn't want to sign up, we were under a lot of pressure and they were threatening to fire all the workers. But one day I plucked up the courage and signed. I joined the struggle. And there I was, caught in the middle of the strike when the tragedy happened..." Mauro goes silent, remembering. He looks at his stump, raises his gaze to his sister, then covers his face and cries. "We were in the plantation," says Mauro, his voice choked with emotion, as he mops the sweat from his brow, "when all of a sudden we heard the door being knocked down, and a group of hooded men burst in. They started shooting left, right and center: bang, bang, bang!, and then they started taking us to the cabin. They made everyone lie face down. One of the bandits took my watch and said: "Walk, you son of a bitch!" And then he shot me in the leg.

"What happened next?"

"I lay there for hours, bleeding, thinking I'd die of pain. The hit men left when they heard gunfire coming from Puerto Inca, and it was only then that the others were able to help me. They took me to Guayaquil, where my leg was amputated."

"Has anyone from the company visited you?"

"No! The only people who've visited have been workmates from the federation and the union."

That same night Álvaro Noboa announced to the press that the conflict in Los Álamos was over, and that it was business as usual. However, the Federation's radio program informed strikers that the struggle continued, and that there was considerable international pressure, with a boycott of the "BONITA" brand in the offing. No doubt Mauro had trouble sleeping that night for the pain, the worry and the rage, thinking about his workmates, still on strike, and his son, so far away...wishing he could be with him, give him a hug and tell him never to forget that his dad loves him more than anything else in the world.

Author:

Gerardo Iglesias

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