Farmworker Slavery Museum tour

Coalition of Immokalee Workers has created a mobile slavery museum that is touring Florida telling the tale of modern-day forced labor.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum has begun a six-week tour of the state. The mobile educational vehicle contains multimedia displays on the history of slavery in Florida, including its roots, reasons it continues today and its solutions.

The museum features a replica of a cargo truck used to enslave farmworkers. Numerous displays accompanying it detail the history and evolution of forced labor in Florida agriculture.

The museum features a replica of a cargo truck used to enslave farmworkers.

The museum will culminate its tour at the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Farmworker Freedom March from April 16-18 in Tampa, Plant City to the headquarters of Publix Super Markets in Lakeland. Despite knowledge of the most recent forced-labor case, Publix continues to purchase tomatoes from two farms where workers were locked in a cargo truck, beaten and chained and taken to work, according to Interfaith Action of Southwest Florida.

The museum, which is open and free to the public, made two stops in Naples: First Christian Church and North Naples United Methodist Church. About two thousand visitors toured the museum in its first five days.

People don’t know

“We are bringing this message because perhaps there are people who don’t know that this [slavery] continues to happen within agriculture,” said Leonel Perez, 23, a coalition member. “Slavery’s roots are the poverty and the powerlessness that continue to prevail in the industry.”

Slavery’s roots are the poverty and the powerlessness that continue to prevail in the industry.

Perez has been a farmworker in Immokalee for four years. Perez pointed out that farmworkers standing up for their rights in the farms are at risk of losing their jobs.

Visitors to the museum are encouraged to pick up a 32-pound bucket filled with tomatoes. Florida tomato pickers earn about 40 to 45 cents per 32-pound bucket. A farmworker has to pick 125 tomato buckets, representing about two tons of tomatoes, to earn $50, according to Perez.

The cargo truck replicates one in which workers were enslaved by crews for two Immokalee growers in 2007. Museum visitors can read about seven forced-labor conviction cases in Florida agriculture in recent years.

Recent case of slavery

In the most recent case of slavery in Southwest Florida, Cesar and Geovanni Navarrete padlocked workers in trucks and charged them $5 to bathe in the backyard with a garden hose, according to court documents. Farmworkers were able to escape by punching a hole through the roof of the truck.

The Navarrete brothers each received a 12-year sentence in federal prison for enslaving undocumented farmworkers from Mexico and Guatemala.

Growers often face no consequences for such forced-labor practices.

Perez pointed out that growers often face no consequences for such forced-labor practices, and contractors go back to work after serving their sentence.

An ongoing coalition demand is for the Publix grocery store chain to adopt a code of conduct that would include zero tolerance on slavery. The coalition also seeks direct talks with the grocery chain. “That’s the only way that we as farmworkers can achieve dignity,” Perez said.

Publix buys from two companies involved in a 2008 slavery case, involving farms owned by Six L’s and Pacific Tomato Growers.

Farmworker Freedom March

The museum tour will conclude with the cargo truck leading the coalition’s Farmworker Freedom March the afternoon of April 18. Hundreds of farmworkers and their allies are expected to march from Tampa to Lakeland, headquarters of the Publix grocery store chain.

Coalition officials invite the public to join the march. “This isn’t a campaign that is just for farmworkers,” Perez said. “It’s a campaign for consumers as well.”

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) has reached agreements to improve wages and working conditions for workers who pick tomatoes for Whole Foods, Subway, McDonald’s, Burger King and Yum! Brands.

United Methodist Church has supported the workers’ efforts.

The United Methodist Church has supported the workers’ efforts. The denomination’s highest policy-making body, General Conference, voted in 2004 to join the CIW boycott against Taco Bell restaurants. The boycott was suspended when an agreement was reached with the restaurant chain.

The United Methodist Church has a long tradition of supporting workers rights dating back to its 1908 Social Creed, the first by any denomination. Among many provisions supporting workers, the 2008 Social Principles support “rights of workers to refuse to work in situations that endanger health and/or life without jeopardy to their jobs” (¶163C, “Work and Leisure”).

More information about the Traveling Farmworker Slavery Museum is available online, including photos. Press coverage has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Ft. Myers News-Press and Naples Daily News.