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SPECIAL REPORTS |
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BOLIVIA: Amazon Nuts at Exploitative Prices
By Franz Chávez*
LA PAZ (Tierramérica) - Bolivia is the
world's leading exporter of the shelled
Brazil nut, a nutritious food source that
grows abundantly in the country's Amazon
rainforest region. But in this tropical
paradise, many of the nut-gatherers live in
hellish conditions.
Bolivians simply call the Bertholletia
excelsa a "castańa" (a catch-all name for
"nut"). Globally, it is known as the Brazil
nut or the Pará nut, while in South America
it has many other local and traditional
names.
It is a food rich in selenium and other
minerals, as well as proteins, carbohydrates
and oils, and represents 30 percent of the
Amazon forest revenues in the northern
Bolivian provinces of Pando and Beni,
bordering Brazil. In fact, nut-gathering is
the main local economic activity, following
the decline of natural latex extraction from
the jungle's rubber trees in the mid-1980s.
But the competitive price of Brazil nuts
from Bolivia brings with it a heavy
component of exploitation of poor families,
including children and adolescents, warns a
study by the Centre for Labour and Agrarian
Development Studies (CEDLA), sponsored by
the Ministry of Labour, the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF), and the Dutch
development organisation Hivos.
Families who work gathering nuts are in a
situation of extreme vulnerability,
according to the study.
Poverty, exclusion from labour rights and
"cruel" exploitation are the norm in the
collection of nuts in the northern Bolivian
Amazon, according to CEDLA researcher Bruno
Rojas.
In the 2008 season, which lasts from
November to March, nut gathering mobilised
some 17,000 people in Pando, Rojas told
Tierramérica.
Nut exports in that period represented 75
percent of the region's economic movement.
Data from Bolivia's foreign trade institute
indicate that exports reached 80 million
dollars and created jobs for 30,000 people,
including work in nut processing and
transport.
Under the "piecework" mode, workers are paid
11 to 17 dollars per 23-kg box of nuts,
which takes 12 to 14 hours to gather. Not
only is the work poorly-paid, but workers,
and often the entire family, put in much
more than eight hours a day, the limit
stipulated by the country's labour laws.
In last year's harvest, the nut company
owners and landholders caused an artificial
drop in the price of the 23-kg box from 17
dollars to just three dollars, according to
María Saravia, communications secretary of
the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of
Bolivia.
This practice is common among landowners and
wholesalers, in order to drive down wages
and then avoid paying back wages for the
harvest, she said in a Tierramérica
interview.
Some indigenous communities who have
obtained formal title to their land can get
better prices and deliver their products to
whoever they choose, but workers and their
dependents who come from other regions are
subject to the whims of the wholesalers,
Saravia added.
"This is an ongoing fight for a change in
the lives of the nut-gathering families,"
said the indigenous activist.
According to Rojas, "the more that is
produced, the more the country's labour laws
are broken." Entire families make their way
through the dense forest, left to their fate
among the dangers of the jungle, the threat
of disease and the long distances they must
cover while carrying their harvest on their
backs.
"They have no medical or accident insurance,
they do not pay into the social security
system, and they are unprotected by labour
laws and by a weak government that lacks the
ability to make the company owners obey the
law," the researcher said.
Silvia Escóbar, the lead author of the CEDLA
study, told Tierramérica that "often the law
is negotiated, when it should really just be
obeyed. We need a government that enforces
the law."
Sixty percent of the people employed in
nut-harvesting and processing come from
urban areas, and the other 40 percent are
from rural areas of Beni, Pando and the far
north of the province of La Paz.
The nut-growing area is rainforest, situated
at an average altitude of 300 metres above
sea level and temperatures of 30 to 38
degrees Celsius. The trees, which grow to 50
metres tall, cover an area crisscrossed by
rivers, study co-author Wilson Rojas told
Tierramérica.
Because of its topography and soil
conditions, the area is not suitable for
raising cattle or for growing rice or root
crops, he added.
Today's nut-gatherers are the successors of
the labourers who worked in nut, cotton and
latex extraction, the Amazon products of
greatest international demand in the early
20th century.
Harvesters of these products in the 1920s
and 1930s often worked in conditions of
servitude and semi-slavery. In addition to
gathering latex and nuts, the labourers were
required to work without pay in the homes
and ranches of the large landowners, said
Bruno Rojas.
In the country's Amazon jungle region, a
pre-capitalist economy reigned. Today, so
many years later, the labour rights of
nut-gatherers are still not protected.
According to the Ministry of Labour, in 2007
there were 2,600 children and 2,000
adolescents involved in nut-gathering, and
450 children and 1,400 adolescents working
in nut processing.
In the cracking, shelling and selection of
Brazil nuts, two out of three children in
the area work five days a week between 2:00
and 7:00 in the morning, "and the lucky ones
go to school at 8:00, without sleeping or
eating, and they fall asleep in class," said
UNICEF representative in Bolivia, Gordon
Jonathan Lewis.
"We have to do something. It is an
obligation and a duty," he said as a
challenge to the Bolivian government when
the study was presented in mid-September.
According to Escóbar, decisions must be
taken to eradicate child labour in the
forests and in the warehouses where the nuts
are selected. Bolivia consumes just two
percent of the nut harvest, while 98 percent
is exported to Europe, the United States and
Asia.
The manual labour involved in nut-gathering
has not changed in decades. It requires the
use of a machete and a box to carry the
nuts, he said.
Labour Minister Calixto Chipana promised to
take the report into consideration in
drafting the National Plan for the
Progressive Eradication of Child Labour,
which is part of the ongoing process of
reforming the country's labour laws.
Approximately 116,000 of Bolivia's 1.5
million children between the ages of seven
and 13 work in various activities. The
government wants to create a "list of jobs
prohibited for children," said Chipana.
(*This story was originally published by
Latin American newspapers that are part of
the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a
specialised news service produced by IPS
with the backing of the United Nations
Development Programme, United Nations
Environment Programme and the World Bank.) |
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