The Price of Sugar (2007)

Paul Newman's narration of The Price of Sugar occurred after he had moved from acting roles to voice roles and narration. It was the second-to-last film in which he had direct involvement before his death in 2008. The film made it onto the Academy's documentary feature shortlist for the Oscars.Newman's participation helped call attention to the plight of undocumented Haitians recruited by the Vicini family in the Dominican Republic to work on their sugar plantations in extraordinarily squalid and pathogenic conditions. Deprived of their identity papers on arrival, and looked down upon by many among the lighter-skinned local population, most sugarcane workers and their families could no longer leave the plantation, let alone the country.Father Christopher Hartley is a Catholic missionary priest who grew up in a wealthy Spanish family that moved to London about the time he was born. He later worked with Mother Teresa in Calcultta for many years and with Latino immigrants in NYC before beginning his ministry in the Dominican Republic. There he revived a church by developing close ties with the poorest of the poor. Gradually he drew international attention to the exploitation and mistreatment of the Haitians sequestered on vast plantations devoted to growing tall, perennial, sucrose-rich Saccharum grasses.The film is about Hartley, his campaign to improve the social and working conditions he encountered, his commitment to his parish, and the effect his doggedness had on the forgotten lives of migrant Haitians. He may have a bit too much photogenic chic and ease around camera crews for some tastes — suffer the upper-class priest to go unto the cutters and forbid his amour-propre not — but indisputably Hartley lived and worked for a decade in places others feared to dread.If you number among those who tire of seeing religion expropriated for political gain — or if you tend to find people who walk the talk against very long odds more noteworthy than various permutations of Idol shows — you might appreciate this fleeting glimpse behind the DR's PR: Tropical Island Nation Prospers by Rising to Meet Demand of First-World Neighbors.If your conscience has the wherewithal to trump comfort, prepare to squirm. The Price of Sugar shows how profiteers knowingly degrade the lives of unseen thousands so that a chunk of the world's largest crop, sugarcane, may wend its way from its raw state to refined American kitchens.

I recommend this film for all people who are fearful of immigrants. I am sure that you will find the absurdity in the fear the Dominicans feel for Haitians. These two groups resemble one another that it boggle the mind that they fail to see that they have many attributes in common. If you come away with this same observation then asked yourself what sets you apart from any immigrant group. They want what you want, and they have the same needs. The differences between them and US citizens will evaporate in a single generation.The Haitian hate groups should be ashamed of their behavior, but no more than any American-first organization. We live in the same world, we breath the same air, and we share a common DNA. And like the Xenophobic Haitians, you benefit from the labor of immigrants.The son of an immigrant woman

I haven't seen the movie. But I will. A free market doesn't rely on hundreds of millions of dollars of annual subsidies to prop up a business, as the sugar industry does. In fact, the sugar industry in the U.S. has contributed significantly to Florida's environmental degradation. They have horribly disfigured our democracy and they have influenced greatly our foreign policy towards Cuba, completely counter to American public opinion. A previous commenter must have some personal interest in the sugar industry, or they are completely ignorant as to the realities of what a true free market is. If the previous commenter who bashes the movie was honest and had some integrity they would turn their venom towards the sugar industry in Florida from which our citizens suffer the pollution of our democracy and the defiling of our environment. The history and truth is right there for anyone to read. See the movie.

I had heard some time ago a story about how modern day Haitians were going through some form of slavery in the fields of Dominican Republic. That's all I heard and never heard anything more on the topic. However, being of Dominican origin, the relationship between Dominican Republic and Haiti had always interested me. Many studies have been published about this but are typically aimed at anthropologists thereby making this topic unknown to the general public, that is, until now.With the promise of better pay and quality of life in comparison to their home in Haiti, Haitians are driven by the bus load into a terrible trap, forced labor on a sugar cane field run by the mysterious sugar barons known as the Vicini family who have ties within the Dominican and American governments. They are forced to stay within a labor camp infested with all kinds of dangers and with no way to quit or to walk out without the risk of being shot. But thanks to the work of Father Christopher Hartley, a missionary priest sent to a nearby parish where the Bateyes (slave compound) are located. Through his work, the lives of some of the Haitians do improve but with it come the death threats and riots instigated by the Vicini to oust the priest.This documentary is important for both Dominicans and for Americans to be educated on a topic that rarely ever makes a blurb in the papers. Slavery should not exist in the twentieth century yet there it is in our own backyard.