Nicaragua: in support to sugar workers : Cleveland IMC (((i)))

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=76399022845

"In Nicaragua, a holding by the name Pellas Group has a sugar cane plantation called Ingenio San Antonio. This plantation produces the raw material for making Flor de Caña rum. The labor conditions and the use of pesticides in the plantation have sentenced to death more than 3,000 former workers, besides contaminating the water, lands and the air of the western part of the country.”

“This holding is Nicaragua´s most powerful, and it is very difficult to get them to change their corporate practices, above all because it fashions itself a responsible and pro-environment business, buying public opinion through corporate social responsibility programs. For this reason, we request people´s solidarity through denunciation and dissemination of the message”

For this reason we have prepared letters translated into different languages, so that each person that wants to show his/her indignation to what is happening and let his/her protest be known, can send them to Compañía Licorera de Nicaragua SA, and to the importers and distributors of Flor de Caña rum in their respective countries.

Letter to importers and distributors

Distribution/importation in the United State
Skyy Spirit LLC: skyyreception@skyy.com (Property of Gruppo Campari Company)

Directors of Skyy Spirit LLC,

The purpose of this letter is to inform you of my total disagreement with your company´s importation and distribution of Nicaraguan rum Flor de Caña in [your country]. My position is based on the fact that the brand´s holding company -the Pellas Group –is involved in a series of claims having to do with labor, human rights, and environmental issues. Among these:

1) Contamination of land and water of the western part of Nicaragua (Chichigalpa), where Ingenio San Antonio is located. This is where the sugar cane with which the rum is produced, is grown and processed. The contamination is due to the excessive use of toxic agricultural products in the region.
2) Air contamination, due to the irresponsible burning of the sugar cane fields as a common practice of planting and harvesting in the western part of Nicaragua (Chichigalpa), where Ingenio San Antonio is located.
3) Contamination of workers at Ingenio San Antonio through fumigation of toxic agricultural products. This, along with other questionable labor practices (i.e. such as an excessive number of hours working under the sun) has contributed to have them develop Chronic Renal Insufficiency (IRC), a disease which has already killed more than 3,000 people in that zone of Nicaragua.
4) Violation of labor rights, through the formation of “company unions” paid by the Pellas Group (Compañía Licorera de Nicaragua and Nicaragua Sugar Estates Ltd, proprietor of Ingenio San Antonio).

For these reasons, I have decided not to consume this product until the Pellas Group is completely free of suspicion and has demonstrated a change in its corporate practices associated with the environment, as well as the life, human rights and labor rights of its workers, former workers, and the Nicaraguan people in general.

I hereby let my protest be known against the importation and distribution Flor de caña rum, in solidarity with the people of Nicaragua. I appeal to your sense of corporate responsibility to become informed about this product which is currently being boycotted in Nicaragua for these reasons, and which is being questioned by a group of former workers from Ingenio San Antonio who are patients of IRC,organized under ANAIRC. They are demanding a reparations package from the Pellas Group, and to this day have not yet received an answer.

If your company does not reconsider the importation and distribution of Flor de Caña rum, it will become an accomplice to the corporation that produces it.

Sincerely,

Name

Action now
by Flor de Caña boycott group Sunday, Jun. 07, 2009 at 9:06 PM

Cleveland Indy Media Center