El Salvador Children Trade School for Sugar Fields

The Boston Globe, 7 de julio de 2004 Por Alberto Barrera

CASERIO LA ASUNCION, El Salvador (Reuters) - Twelve-year-old Joel Rivera missed school all last year after he slashed his leg to the bone with a machete working in El Salvador's sugar fields to help his mother and three siblings survive.
"I've been working since I was 9," Joel said proudly.
He is among an estimated 5,000 to 30,000 children -- some as young as 8 -- trading school for dangerous work on the nation's sugar plantations. According to human rights activists, their exploitation benefits big international companies like Coca-Cola Co., and the activists want the companies to stop the practice.
Last month, advocacy group Human Rights Watch called on Coca-Cola specifically to take measures to halt the abuse.
"Child labor is rampant on El Salvador's sugar cane plantations," Michael Bochenek of the organization's children's rights division said. "Companies that buy or use Salvadoran sugar should realize that fact and take responsibility for doing something about it," he said.
Coca-Cola said it does not buy directly from any farm employing children illegally and promotes industry efforts to combat child labor.
CIRCUMVENTING THE LAW
Many days Joel works five hours helping his mother weed around sugar cane and corn stalks before going to his fifth-grade class. He said he likes school, especially math and language.
At this time of year his mother, Yanira Rivera, 26, gets occasional work on farms around her home on the slopes of Guazapa mountain north of the capital, earning about $3 a day.
But at sugar harvest time from November to March she earns $70 a month on the plantations. She can use Joel's help.
"Here in the country no one has consideration for women, they only give us work and you must do it to eat," she said, cradling Joel's 4-year-old brother Leni. "That's how we live."
Salvadoran law prohibits children under 18 from doing dangerous work and those under 14 from doing most other jobs.
But children often are hired as "helpers" rather than employees with rights, Human Rights Watch said after visiting the Central American nation last year.
Coca-Cola owns none of the country's sugar plantations and does not buy directly from them. Rather it purchases from a Salvadoran sugar refinery that is supplied by a mill, neither of which use child labor, the company said.
Its own rules prohibit Coca-Cola from purchasing directly from suppliers who use child labor. But Human Rights Watch said that provision should include indirect suppliers such as sugar farms that supply the mills.
"If Coca-Cola is serious about avoiding complicity in the use of hazardous child labor, the company should recognize its responsibility to ensure that respect for human rights extends beyond its direct suppliers," Bochenek said.
Coca-Cola spokeswoman Lori George Billingsley said the company is working with the Salvadoran sugar industry to enforce child labor laws on farms, with stricter monitoring in place for the next harvest and other measures.
In a letter to Human Rights Watch the company said, "We reiterate that The Coca-Cola Company does not condone child labor in El Salvador or anywhere else."
DANGEROUS WORK
Sugar is the No. 2 export crop after coffee in this nation of 6.5 million people, half of them living in poverty.
Some 222,000 Salvadoran children work, at least 30,000 of them in dangerous jobs like sugar harvesting, according to the International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor, or IPEC, part of the International Labor Organization.
Work on sugar plantations involves cutting and burning cane under hot sun. Accidents are frequent. International labor organizations and Salvadoran officials recognize the work as dangerous, even for adults with experience.
"We are developing a strategy for the next sugar harvest to verify that no children are doing dangerous work in the fields," Agriculture Minister Mario Salaverria said.
But he added, "It's an economic and cultural problem. The children are on vacation (at harvest time) and they go with their parents to work."
The government is implementing programs to promote safe, productive activities for children on plantations, such as making pinatas and paper from sugar cane remnants for sale.
Children miss school to work at harvest time, and often older children drop out completely, Human Rights Watch found.
"Child labor does not only affect the health of children, it mortgages and even embargoes their futures," IPEC's Jorge Castrillo said at a recent forum in El Salvador.
Still, Joel Rivera guards his dreams. He hopes to continue studying, as long as his mother can afford the school costs. If not, when he turns 15 he'll go to the United States.
"You earn good cash there," he said.