History

Nicaragua is referred to as the Banana Republic that never produced many bananas.  While the banana lands of Nicaragua are smaller in comparison to other regions in Latin America, the banana industry has been a key player in much political upheaval here.  The United States government in collusion with the United Fruit Company staged a host of manipulative actions under the watch of the Somoza Regime.  These included coups in Honduras, the training and housing of troops and pilots used in the Guatemala coup of 1954 and the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961.

Nicaragua's economy has always been dependent on agriculture yet the lack of government regulation has allowed multinationals to walk heavily on Nicaraguan soil. From 1945 to 1960, the U.S. owned Nicaraguan Long Leaf Pine Company (NIPCO) paid the Somoza family millions of dollars in exchange for favorable benefits to the company, such as not having to re-forest clear cut areas. By 1961, NIPCO had cut all of the commercially viable coastal pines in northeast Nicaragua. Additionally, expansion of cotton plantations in the 1950s and cattle ranches in the 1960s forced peasant families from the areas they had farmed for decades. During those two decades, 40% of all U.S. pesticide exports went to Central America. Banned in the U.S., compounds such as DDT, endrin, dieldrin, lindane and DBCP were extensively used in Nicaragua and its neighboring countries.

From under the boot of the oppressive and U.S. backed Somoza regime a full blown, broad based revolution erupted in 1978 led by the Sandinistas (FSLN).  Some of the Sandinista’s early changes involved the eventual removal of abusive multinationals like Dole and significant education and land reform programs designed to empower the citizenry.  Though victorious in ousting Somoza, fifty thousand people would die during the U.S. instigated Contra war.  The war was waged ostensibly to put Nicaragua on “the road to democracy" (Ronald Reagan) despite the US having backed three generations of the dictatorial Somoza clan.  The war continued despite Daniel Ortega of the Sandinistas winning easily in a free and fair national election in 1985. The United Nations estimated material damage from the revolutionary war to be USD $480 million and in 1987, the International Court of Justice ordered the U.S. government to pay Nicaragua an indemnity of US$16 billion in compensation for the losses caused by its terrorism during the Contra War. The US ignored the ruling. The FSLN took over a nation plagued by malnutrition, disease, and pesticide contaminations. Lake Managua was considered dead because of decades of pesticide runoff, toxic chemical pollution from lakeside factories, and untreated sewage.

Despite the hardships and manipulations they have endured, Nicas are taking these issues on at the local and international level. Unfortunately, they are currently experiencing the effects of decades of toxic contamination.  Illnesses include cancer, tumors, skin deformations, birth defects and most pressing, the current fight against an epidemic of kidney failure in its sugar producing regions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nicaragua

Chinandega, Nicaragua

Chinandega is a department, equivalent to a U.S. state, in Nicaragua located on the border with Honduras with a population of 441,300. 'Chinandega' refers to the word Chinamitl-tacalt, meaning 'place surrounded by cane'. During the Spanish colonization, the city was a small town, located on fertile soil in an area of intensive commercial traffic. In the past, a monoculture of cotton brought wealth to this region. When the prices fell and the soil exhausted, the farmers managed to find other crops that grew well in this area including sugar cane, bananas and peanuts. Nowadays the Nicaragua’s premier financial empire, the Pellas Group, dominates the area around the city of Chichigalpa with their sugar plantation Ingenio San Antonio.  This is also where Nicaragua’s famous rum, Flor De Caña is produced.

The aquifer in Nicaragua's León and Chinandega departments has seen extensive contamination by persistent organochlorine pesticides applied over decades of intensive agricultural activity.

DBCP was not banned in Nicaragua until 1993.  

Presently Nicaragua is the focus of the international fight of bananeros (banana workers) made sterile by DBCP. The lawsuits against these multinationals have spread internationally to eight countries.  From the Ivory Coast to the Philippines, workers are aiming to hold U.S. and European companies accountable. These cases are historically significant as they offer a chance to set a precedent and serve as a warning to those who continue to degrade the lives and lands of the developing world for their own profits.

Global Impact

The reach of these problems is certainly not limited to Central America or the United States.  Due to paralysis of the press from overly litigious companies Known as “The Chiquita Syndrome” many of these issues are not addressed adequately in the press.  Agent Orange still affects millions and cancerous dioxins are found in human breast milk as well as in European and U.S. dairy products.

"Excellent studies conducted by independent scientists have clearly shown that chlorpyrifos, the active ingredient in Dursban(A Dow product), is toxic to the human brain and nervous system and is especially dangerous to the developing brain of infants," said Dr. Philip Landrigan of the Department of Community and Preventative Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.

Child cognitive development is threatened by domestic pesticide use, US and European markets are contaminated and multinationals promote dangerous chemicals as safe for home use in India and in the U.S.  The EPA has caved to lobbying pressure allowing for toxic pesticide use in California in the form of methyl iodide despite warnings from Nobel winning scientists.  Most disturbingly, corporate giants like Chiquita who made payments to Colombian paramilitaries and Monsanto who attempted to bribe Indonesian officials, are allowed to avoid the costs and bad press of lengthy trials by paying a cash penalty to the U.S.  Government when they have erred internationally.  Given the history of industrial agriculture’s collusion with several U.S. administrations it is just another case of one hand washing the other. 

The advent of DDT for use in pest control in World War II, the Banana Republic's desperate use of concentrated Bordeaux Mixture in the 1920's, and the manufacturing of chlorine based chemical weapons during WWI and WWII set the stage for the problems we face today.  Zyklon-b, Agent Orange and many other chemical weapons were modified for use in the agricultural industry. Known as the Green Revolution, the use of these new chemicals led to significant short term increases in cash crop production (rice, beans, corn) between the 1940s and 1960s.

The consequences?  This chilling example of supply side economics has resulted in sterilization and fatal poisoning of workers, increased risk of cancer and other diseases in those who consume or are exposed to these products, and the deterioration of quality of essential environmental resources such as water.

v Aerial Map

Evolution Of Agricultural Chemicals

The raging kidney failure epidemic as experienced by sugar cane plantation workers, cañeros, in the company town of Chichigalpa provides the clearest example of the personal and social costs of business as usual.  Chronic Kidney Disease, CKD, has claimed between 2800-3500 lives in this municipality of 42,000 over the last 10 years, and thousands more are sick. The victims are overwhelmingly cane workers.   The number of affected in this municipality is at least 8 times the national average.  No one has successfully told this story involving one of the largest but most treatable epidemics in the Western Hemisphere.  Leading epidemiologists have referred to this disaster as a ‘veiled genocide.’

La Isla, a community of about 400 families has taken the name The Isle of Widows, as there are over 80 widows all due to CKD.  The social costs of this loss of life are incalculable as poor, single mothers struggle to provide for their families.  As if the difficulty of having to carry on with a terminal disease was not enough, the employer makes things even more dire for these workers by firing those who test positive for the illness leaving them with little financial recourse.  Through a system of intimidation by private security, corrupt police, and dangling offers of compensation in front of desperate families, the company maintains precarious control over a volatile situation.

La Isla and the regional prevalence of CKD were the impetus for forming our NGO, La Isla Foundation.  We simply felt that making a film wasn’t enough. 

Chronic Kidney Disease

3 out of 5 men in this photo have died from IRC. The other 2 are terminally ill.

Early season sugar cane sprouts

Chinandega, Nicaragua

Spraying Agent Orange in Vietnam.

Photograph public domain

1,2-Dibromo-3-chloropropane

DBCP in California

At a Dow Chemical Company picnic in California, the wives of chemical plant workers wondered why they were all having trouble conceiving.  Believing that they were physically healthy, they wondered if their husbands' exposure to chemicals on the job might be the cause.  The Dow plant produced dibromochloropropane (DBCP), a soil fumigant and nematicide sold under the name Fumazone. After running tests it was discovered that the plant workers were made sterile by exposure to the compound. These workers successfully sued Dow Chemical Company in 1977. The Environmental Protection Agency, having been newly established in 1970, banned the product from the US market in 1979. After further investigation the EPA declared that by 1974, farmers in the US treated crops with over 9 million pounds of DBCP.  By 1977, California alone was using 831,000 pounds of this chemical.

DBCP Internationally

Dole Fruit Company claimed that without the use of DBCP in worldwide banana production, their sales would plummet. As Dow began closing down their California factory Dole filed suit against Dow for breach of contract.  Business obligations forced Dow to continue production of DBCP for international export. Royal Dutch Shell was also persuaded by Dole Fruit Company to follow suit and to continue exporting their DBCP version branded as Nemagon.

Nicaragua is where our production began and still stands as a powerful reflection of historical and present day costs of an industry run amuck.  Since then the film has taken us to Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica and beyond.  Shortly we'll have profiles of these countries and specific challenges we've uncovered in them as well.