The sugarcane workers
are in Managua

ANAIRC mobilizes to demand damages from the Pellas Group

They set out from Chichigalpa, in western Nicaragua, at 4 a.m. on March 9, so they would arrive early at Managua. They set up camp near the Cathedral, with their hammocks, their things and the food they had brought with them. The campsite is located in the center of the city, some 500 meters from the Pellas Building, where the powerful economic group concentrates all of its activities in the Nicaraguan capital. The campers are the former sugarcane workers grouped in the Nicaraguan Association of People Affected by Chronic Renal Failure (ANAIRC), an IUF affiliate.

They decided to march to the capital to demand that they be compensated for the serious illness they developed while working at Ingenio San Antonio. The members of ANAIRC have been denouncing the responsibility of the Pellas Group -which includes the company Nicaragua Sugar Estates Ltd., owner of Ingenio San Antonio- for years now, blaming it for the indiscriminate use of agrotoxic chemicals in the sugarcane plantations and the ensuing pollution such chemicals have caused in the area’s aquifers.

According to ANAIRC statistics, 3,209 people have died in the last few years in the departments of León and Chinandega, and there are over 4,000 more that have been affected. It is a real epidemic that has left thousands of widows and orphans. Which explains why many of the 200 people that have marched to the capital are widows, who are asking the company to respond for the death of their husbands.

In a press release sent to the media last week, the former workers affected by CRF declared that Law No. 456 (the Act for the Addition of Occupational Risks and Illnesses) classifies CRF as a professional illness and includes it in the Code of Labor.

The number of people who have died is calculated based on the deaths reported in the Municipality of Chichigalpa, and the cases that are reported to ANAIRC by people from other municipalities. A total of 2,202 people have died between March 14, 2005 and March 5, 2009.

Forty-six people die every month as a result of CRF alone. This situation, the press release says, must bring the country’s competent authorities to declare a health emergency, particularly in the area where sugarcane is planted.

The situation is even more serious if we consider that, according to the people affected, when someone dies of CRF, the health system records the cause of death as heart attack. The aim of this is to hide this professional illness, thus “covering up for” the employer who should respond for putting their workers’ health at risk and endangering their lives,” the release says.

For this reason, ANAIRC has sent yet another letter to the company -the tenth letter in just a few years- asking Mr. Carlos Pellas, president of the Group, to sit down to talk with the victims and open up a negotiation process.

“Over the past few years we’ve sent several letters to Mr. Carlos Pellas, asking him to listen to us and give us a response, but he has refused to even acknowledge our request,” the vice-president of ANAIRC, Gustavo Martínez, said to Sirel.

“We want to be compensated by the Pellas Group for the damages it has caused us. Right now, everyone is resting, because the trip has been very tiring, but in the next few days we will begin a series of mobilizations to protest in front of the Pellas Building so that they will hear us.”

For Julio César Paz, another member of ANAIRC, this march to Managua was something that could not be put off any longer. “We’ve seen too many people die in Chichigalpa, and as we have had no reaction from the owners of Ingenio San Antonio, we had no choice but to come here to demand compensation.”

Verónica Flores, one of the widows in ANAIRC, says that what she’s had to go through since her husband died from CRF has been extremely tough. “Our struggle, as widows, is for a just cause. My husband worked for almost 25 years at Ingenio San Antonio, where he got sick. It’s a sad illness, because it slowly wears you down, until you’re left without any strength, without any possibility of working. He spent the last six years of his life sick, but the final two years were the worst. He suffered so much, until finally he passed away in September 11, 2008.

The illness and death of our husbands -Flores continues- has forced us widows to take over the responsibility of supporting our families, and it’s very hard, because we have nowhere to turn to earn enough to survive. In my case, I receive a widow’s pension of 100 dollars a month, but that doesn’t even cover minor expenses. And that’s why we’re here.

Our husbands died because of their work at Ingenio San Antonio and it’s fair that we should be compensated. We’re not going to budge from here until we get an answer. I ask people and organizations in the country and around the world to support us, because we’re fighting for something that is just, and it is important that everyone is aware of what happened in the Chichigalpa sugarcane plantations and all we’ve been through,” Flores concluded firmly.

In these first hours in Managua, ANAIRC distributed letters to the Health, Environmental and Natural Resources Commissions in Parliament, and the Labor and Social Security Commission, asking for their support. It also sought out medical support from the Nicaraguan chapter of the Red Cross, to guarantee immediate health care in the event the situation of some of the sick people at the camp worsens.

Various organizations have joined in to support the struggle, and the IUF will continue to follow the mobilization closely to report on any new developments.