El Salvador – Spain

Here and there

Calvo's double personality

 

While in Spain the Galician transnational corporation honors the right of workers to organize and form trade unions, in El Salvador it continues to apply an antiunion policy that has reached emblematic heights in Latin America. And in the region with the world’s highest rate of labor right violations, that’s saying a lot.

 

 

As Calvo launches the first “100% fat-free white

tuna” at the Alimentaria International

Food & Beverage Exhibition being

held in Barcelona, Spain from

Tuesday 11 through Friday 14,

responding to the demands

of concerned consumers

wishing to lead a healthier life,

in El Salvador, on the same

Tuesday of the inauguration,

inhabitants of 16 districts and

communities of the Department of La Unión

-where the transnational corporation has its production

plant- marched in the streets demanding that the sanitary

landfill ASIGOLFO (Inter-Communal Association of the

Gulf of Fonseca) be shut down.

 

According to the newspaper Co Latino, demonstrators

marched from El Salvador del Mundo to the Ministry of the

Environment and Natural Resources. Aurelio Ventura,

community leader of the department of La Unión,

said that every day some 290 to 300 tons of garbage

were dumped in the landfill, producing foul smells and contaminating the aquifers.

Ventura also complained of Calvo’s waste deposit. “This company is dumping its fish waste on us, and the contamination it produces is worse because of the type of chemicals it uses for odor prevention,” the leader explained.

 

Apparently for Calvo there are two categories of people: first and second class citizens. Because of their purchasing power, first class citizens deserve Calvo’s respect and consideration. On the other hand, second class citizens -the poor- are regarded as disposable material. Calvo also discriminates in environmental matters: while it polishes its image in Europe, it uses El Salvador as a dump.

 

 

From Montevideo, Gerardo Iglesias
Rel-UITA
March 13, 2008

 

 

 

 

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