Just inland from the idyllic beaches of the Dominican Republic, where U.S. vacationers go to capture winter sun, slavery is thriving along with the cane in the county’s sugar plantations. Almost all the work product from this slave labor ends up in the United States. Imported under favorable terms, the sugar price is fixed at up to double that of the world market, with the Dominican Republic receiving the highest import quota from the U.S. government. The documentary, The Price of Sugar, tells the story of a priest’s journey of discovery in the sugar plantations of San Jose de Los Llanos in the Dominican Republic.
Father Christopher Hartley had a privileged childhood. His father’s family owned England’s Hartley’s jam and pickle empire, and his mother was part of the Spanish aristocracy. Finding purpose through his faith as a teenager, Father Hartley was ordained by Pope John Paul II in 1982. He worked with Mother Teresa at several of her missions in the poorest parts the world for 20 years before volunteering as a missionary for the Diocese of San Pedro de Macoris in the Dominican Republic in 1997.
When Father Hartley first arrived in his new parish, he was warned to stay away from the local sugar plantations, owned by the corrupt Vicini dynasty, who seemingly operated them above the law – and the government. It took Father Hartley several months to pluck up the courage to visit his parishioners in the plantation bateyes, or shanty towns. The conditions and stories he uncovered there would eventually shock the world.
Haitians, lured by promise of good jobs and a better life in the Dominican Republic, were smuggled over the border by cruel plantation agents. Stripped of I.D. and documents, these now stateless people were transported under the cover of darkness to the bateyes, where they were guarded by armed men. There the laborers worked for less than a dollar a day, which wasn’t even given to them as money, but as vouchers which could only be spent at the company store.
Into these squalid conditions, where malnutrition and disease was rife, Father Hartley brought food, healthcare, housing, and most importantly hope. A hero to the people of the bateys, and a threat to the status quo of the plantations, where life had changed little since the first slaves were brought over from Africa, Father Hartley became the subject of death threats, and stumbled into the center of a race storm whipped up by the sugar barons in an effort to get rid of him. Father Hartley was forced to leave the Dominican Republic in 2006, but through the media attention his battles brought – and this film – he helped make the world aware of the true price of sugar.
Narrated by Paul Newman, the film opens in New York on September 26th and Los Angeles on October 19th.
Leave a comment