Human enslavement is alive and well in the land of the free.
"Slavery should have been abolished with the emancipation proclamation, but it wasn't. Now it just goes by a new name," said Lt. Bill Rule of the Collier County Sheriff's Office in Florida.
Indeed, when kidnapped Africans first began to involuntarily subsidize the profits of white men in this country more than three centuries ago "slavery" was the favored term to describe their forced labor. Today, the same phenomenon of coerced work is more commonly referred to as "human trafficking." While most Americans can identify and describe slavery, few can articulate the meaning of human trafficking.
Rule, one of several members of a South Florida task force charged to combat human trafficking, defines it as "a very nice way to say slavery." Regrettably, slavery's new title masks the grim reality that worker enslavement never ended. Slavery - in particular, slavery within U.S. borders - has always been a component of our economy; it's every bit American as apple pie.
Although largely outside of the public consciousness, slavery in the United States is big business. Devastatingly, business is good.
Historians report that the largest coerced migration of Africans into the United States occurred between 1798 and 1808. Approximately 200,000 people were forcibly displaced and enslaved during that decade. But in 2000, a CIA report estimated that as many as 50,000 people are "trafficked" into our country every year.
So who is at the forefront of today's abolitionist movement? Where are our Harriet Tubmans, John Browns and Denmark Veseys?
Enter the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a community group led by Mexican, Guatemalan and Haitian farm workers in Immokalee, Fla.
The CIW has uncovered, investigated and assisted in the prosecution of five major slavery rings operating in Florida's agricultural fields since 1997. More than 1,100 captive people have been liberated through the CIW's efforts.
In 2003, three members from the CIW were presented the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award for their work, marking the first time the prestigious award has been bestowed upon activists living in the United States.
However, none of the recipients were born in the United States. Instead, they hail from Guatemala and Mexico, as do more than three-quarters of farm workers in the United States. Their presence in the United States can often be attributed to their status as economic refugees fleeing the ominous paralysis of poverty back home, many acting only as a last resort survival technique for the well-being of their families.
Poverty is a tremendous vulnerability. By venturing north and courageously abandoning the comfort of family and community for the possibility of giving them a better life, thousands every year become susceptible to enslavement.
Poverty and slavery were fortuitously linked at a widely attended event on campus last semester, though the connection went unannounced.
During their interactive Hunger Banquet, members of Oxfam-UT invited attendees to pretend to be Romeo Ramirez, a 24-year-old tomato picker in South Florida.
Participants were told that Ramirez works 10-12 hours a day, receives no overtime pay, no benefits, has no right to organize and no sick days, earning about $7,500 annually. They were not told, however, that in 2001, as part of a covert CIW-led operation, Ramirez infiltrated a slave camp in Lake Placid, Fla.
After gathering adequate evidence, he escaped to inform government officials of the unthinkable scenes he had witnessed inside. Consequent testimony culminated in the emancipation of the more than 700 people who had been forced to work there at gunpoint.
When asked why human enslavement persists in the agriculture industry, Coalition members are quick to clarify that it is not a case of several bad apples; rather, it's systemic.
Gerardo Reyes Chavez, a five-year member of the Coalition, explains, "The everyday reality of the agricultural system is what allows slavery to flourish. If there were no sweatshops there would be no slavery."
Indeed, the very status quo of farm labor in the United States is so egregious that it provides the fertile conditions necessary for slavery to easily sprout.
In the United States, slavery is illegal and poverty is not.
Slavery seems inconceivable and repulsive, poverty is not. It must be understood, however, that slavery is nothing more than the ugliest form of poverty. The wretched assignment of governments then is to gauge the limits of reasonable misery (or define "acceptable poverty") and enforce them.
Human enslavement will not be taken seriously in this country if the idea of challenging widespread poverty remains taboo.
We reside in a culture that shrugs off the significance of permanent impoverishment, acting as if that were a perfectly fine type of suffering. So long as that's the case, the rise and persistence of slavery should surprise no one.
Buckley is a sociology and Spanish senior.
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