"THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPHYXIATION OF THE WORKERS: TRAPPED WITHOUT EXIT?"

by Marlene Castillo Jiménez

Banana exports in Costa Rica gene-rate juicy profits and better living conditions to a very reduced group of people, most of whom are foreigners. Meanwhile the mass of men and women workers who contribute their labor in work days, that at times surpass 14 hours a day, live in subhuman and demeaning conditions. The duties of planting, gathering, and packaging bananas occupy a mostly peasant or migrant population who have been pummeled by government policies that destimulate small scale agriculture, and who have been forced to sell their lands, and seek stable salaries because their income no longer is sufficient for the subsistence of their families. All these people are pushed to work in the banana plantations by conditions of extreme poverty, by personal and collective histories of violence, abandonment, discrimination and, above all, by a lack of opportunities. These conditions have marked their lives and they face a profound process of the loss of a peasant identity, and the absence of a viable life project to call their own. Once the duties begin on the banana plantation, these occur together with long and extenuating work days; subhuman personal relations of exploitation and degradation; insufficient salaries to satisfy the basic needs for the subsistence of the family; the loss of spaces of workers to call their own; and the intensive use of agrochemicals that damage the environment and human health. This conjunction of situations and characteristics make these people feel evermore diminished, exploited, trapped, demeaned, frustrated, guilty and impotent, both at an individual and at a collective level.

Long extenuating work days The duties of planting, gathering, and packaging bananas require the direct participation of human beings. These duties are planned by taking into consideration the number of boxes the company needs to dispatch daily or weekly, which is variable; this depends on the contracts made with the buying countries. It does not matter that the legal working day is eight hours, nor that the physical limitation of the human body required to carry out the duties are surpassed. If the contract stipulates a quantity of boxes that require work days of 14 hours or more, men and women workers must continue working until the stipulated amount is completed, without receiving compensation for overtime, since salaries are paid according to boxes packed per day. Nobody must complain of physical hardships nor solicit not to carry out a duty because of illness or exhaustion. Whosoever does, receives demeaning answers and threats of being laid off by the foremen, which often carry through. No one dares refuse to carry out a duty nor to express the hardships a duty has on the worker. The company has created a particular "socialization", an organizational culture in which the selfsame fellow workers are the ones who humiliate those who show their tiredness or physical ailments caused by the long work days. The law of silence rules, as well as the law of who can withstand the most. The bodies must comply with the assigned duties at the greatest speed possible, without it mattering what the person feels. The workers allow their bodies to be exploited and their rights be denied, as long as they are not demeaned or their valor questioned by fellow workers or foremen. This type of exploitation directed at the body is the key to obtain the submission and silence of the workers.Insufficient Salaries Much is said about the salaries on the banana plantations being greater than those earned in other jobs; the companies pride themselves of this. This has also made the banana plantations become the centers of attraction of a labor force, in which often the supply surpasses the demand. This situation serves as a constant threat to those who need a job and fear that any complaint will bring on their disemployment, since many others are waiting in line and willing to work unconditionally. Never the less, the high sala-ries in the banana plantations, more than a reality, are a myth. If it may be true that they often surpass the salaries in other rural employment, it must also be considered that the work days are practically double of what is legally stipulated. Moreover, the work in the banana plantations is not ruled by the minimum regular work day, but rather the contract is done for hours worked. This goes in detriment of the men and women workers because even though they may work more than the legal workday, all the hours are paid the same. Despite the fact that the workers dedicate all their energies, physical and mental, to their work on the plantation, the economic retribution they receive is not sufficient to satisfy the basic needs of food and housing for their families. Living in precarious conditions, the people work long days in order to achieve a capital they never see, because the fruit of their work, their salary, is insufficient. This, of course, generates a high level of tension, frustration, impotence and personal lack of satisfaction, which often is expressed in violent treatment toward sons and daughters, wives and husbands, hypersensitivity, low self esteem, and a sensation of being trapped. Many women and men workers experience their condition as a personal fault or incapacity to improve their life condition, resulting evermore in a poor self image and falling into passivity. The person does not realize that far from being guilty, he or she is the victim of a social system that exploits, utilizes and impoverishes him or her more every day. Thus is formed a strategy of survival that co-lors daily life with defeat and senselessness. Many people take refuge in alcohol, drugs and other evasion mechanisms, which far from resolving the problems, accentuate the situation of violence and poverty in which they live. This is complemented with a series of strategies the company has in order to hoard the spaces in which men and women workers might be protagonists, express their creative capacities and their organizational possibilities. This, obviously, comes to sever the already deteriorated identity of the working class.The companies take over spaces of the working class The human and social scene of men and women workers of the packing plants and of the banana plantations is a world of interactions, group processes, support networks, strategies of resistance, processes of identity creation and the seeking out of dreams and illusions, all of which crash abruptly against the structures of exploitation and dehumanization. The company or management group has well designed strategies that impede and neutralize the personal and collective development of men and women workers. One of these strategies consists in taking over the spaces and initiatives that have always been of the working class. For this, the company employs three key pieces: physical infrastructure and human resources, the presence of the Solidarista movement, and long work days. With the physical infrastructure and human resources, the company takes charge of the social and recreational activities, arranges them to the convenience of the management, without considering the men and women workers for whom the activities are supposedly organized. They are programmed at a time and place decided by the management representatives. Often the men and women workers find out about these events at the last minute, without having the opportunity to voice an opinion or to participate in the organization of the event. It is said that the workers participate and have a say by means of the Solidarista Associations, but these, if it is true that their structures include the presence of workers, look after the interests of the management, and not that of the working class. This occurs with the sporting activities, with the events of non formal education and many other activities. The Solidarista Associations, that are made up of management employees and laborers who represent the management class, offer a wide gamma of possibilities set up to the convenience of the management. On the other hand, the working class finds itself disarticulated and demobilized. The management representation steals the protagonist role of the working class, generating in the latter a loss of a sense of belonging and identification with the activities that have traditionally been their own. The men and women workers no longer own anything. This sense of loss of control, dependence and a false sense of protection, together with an absence of expressions that give the working class an identity as a collectivity, are part of the effects of this strategy. The company is the only protagonist in everything, it is the only identity that exists, the only one that is expressed. The men and women workers as individual or collective identities do not exist, consequently they have nothing to express. They do not decide, do not have opinions, do not chose, nor do they dispose of their time. They are trapped, carrying out the will of the company, without possibilities of growing as persons and having a life project.Patriarchal relations Generally, the interpersonal relations on the banana plantations are mediated by power that is obviously not distributed evenly. Thus, these relations are violent, exploitative, demeaning and discriminating. They are the pillars which hold up a patriarchal ideology that considers some people to be superior to, or more valuable than others. The relations are vertical and authoritarian, with their corresponding counterparts of submission and aliena-tion between administrators and foremen; between foremen and laborers; between experienced workers and newcomers; between men and women; between adults and children. The former subjugate and exploit the latter, who in turn obey and comply with resignation what is demanded of them.Contaminated environment The banana industry is characterized by an intensive use of agrochemicals highly effective in the control of pests. The transnational companies seek out pesticides that are the least expensive, readily available, and that are effective against pests. So they access extremely toxic products, some of which are prohibited in the United States and Europe. Their toxicity affects not only the flora and fauna of the banana regions, but also the health of workers and of the surrounding communities. Pesticide application is done by aerial fumigation as well as manual fumigation by workers, who are subject to allergies, respiratory diseases, chronic cephalic ailments, sterility, organic diseases, and even acute intoxications, some of which have claimed mortal victims. The intensive use of agrochemicals is part and parcel of a relation of predation and aggression against Nature, against human beings, and against life in general. This goes against the relation which the peasant working class has with the land and all life forms, a relation that is that of caretaker, of respect and mutual protection. As laborers they live profound processes of alienation and loss of identity. They are victims, and at the same time accomplices, of the destruction, and with this they experience a sense of guilt and of meaninglessness to life and their place in it. To summarize, the companies have achieved the demobilization of any possibility of solidarity among workers, or of recognizing in their fellow workers the corporal ailments they themselves suffer, or of expe-riencing relations of care and respect towards Nature and towards their own bodies, or of being critical of, and differentiated from, the company that exploits them. In a state of submission and exploitation, these people behave ignorant of their own bodies and what they feel, of their traditional values of solidarity, care for the earth and for life in gene-ral. They recognize as real only what the company demands. It does not matter if this contradicts their own wishes or their most profound identity. In this way individuals and groups are formed who have no identity or project of their own, resulting in easy prey for exploitation. Impotent as persons and collectivities, trapped in the daily anguishing monotony of work, without possibilities of accessing their own spaces of education, technical training, or possibilities of learning trades other than those related to the banana plantation, and with consumer needs created, and at the same time limited, by the company, and finally with the destruction by the managerial class of possibilities of organizing, little by little, these workers, men and women, begin to feel diminished as human beings, not only in their work, but in their family life and own in macies.

SOME ASPECTS OF THE PROCESS OF DEVALUATION

The following are some of the traits with which men and women banana wor-kers feel their self worth as human beings diminished. Demeaned, because they can scarcely read and write, they do not dress in the latest fashions, and come from peasant traditions, commonly associated with little intelligence, simplicity and social inferiority. Frustrated, because despite their efforts to work arduously, their life conditions do not improve. Infantilized, daily in their interpersonal relations, both at work and at home, by bosses, fathers, spouses and companions. Ignorant, because they know of no other reality than that of the banana plantations, and they have always worked in labors considered socially inferior, requiring only great physical labor. Abandoned by the health and social security institutions that are indifferent to the violation of human rights on the banana plantations; by their families or spouse who have left them or treat them with violence; by the government whose policies go against the small independent farmers; by their own bodies that begin to falter and weaken under the hard working conditions; by their original families who have stayed behind, in other regions and in other activities; by the banana company that gives them house and salary, but at the cost of an exploitation that silences and annihilates them as people and as collectivities. Dull, for not knowing the rules of etiquette, ways and habits of city people and intellectuals. Impotent, when confronted with an aggressor with a name but without a face, infinitely superior in economic and social power, and of whom they are dependent: the banana company. Finished, because they feel without the strength to fight or to resist their bosses, as well as the national social and political reality. Useless, because the body with which they have always earned a living loses strength and begins to fail because of the exposure to agrochemicals and long work days. Trapped, because even though they feel the anguish of the daily routine, they depend on a salary to clothe and feed their family, they have no other sources of employment and they have not learned any other skill, since from early ages they have only worked on the banana plantations. Disillusioned, because the anguishing routine provokes a state of stagnation of which they are aware: they remain there by inertia and because the social environment offers no other opportunities. Guilty, because they live in poverty, ignorance and an absence of opportunities or possibilities of growth as persons. They consider these circumstances as personal failures and not as direct effects of a system and an exploitative and unjust company that has impoverished them and has denied them the possibilities of development and of a more dignified life.