Modern agricultural slavery goes on display in Florida - St. Petersburg Times

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In Print: Sunday, March 7, 2010

Oscar Otzoy from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers works on the Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum. It is the replica of a cargo truck that was in an actual Florida slavery case in 2008.

[Trafficking Monitor: Click on URL at the end of the article to see this image. You simply have to see the chains.]Oscar Otzoy holds chains that will be part of an exhibit in the Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum.
[Associated Press]

FORT MYERS — The white truck's cargo space is dark, cluttered and hot — walls lined with stained plywood, cardboard boxes stacked head-high, a steel, roll-down door.

This is what home looked like for some of the Navarrete family's slaves.

It's best not to imagine what it smelled like — the 24-square-foot truck's corners were the locked-in captives' toilets.

This ordinary-seeming produce truck is the centerpiece of the Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum, which began touring recently.

It's a replica of the one the Navarretes used before they went to federal prison in 2008 for keeping 12 slaves they forced to pick tomatoes on some of Florida's biggest farms. After promising the Mexican and Guatemalan men work, Navarrete family members confiscated their IDs, tied, chained and beat them if they tried to leave. Although they advanced their victims "credit" for necessities, they didn't pay them for their work, all of which added up to slavery "plain and simple," according Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Doug Molloy.

Slavery? Didn't slavery end in 1865?

Not in Florida's agriculture industry, say the farmworkers putting the mobile museum together.

In fact, the U.S. government has freed more than 1,000 slaves in Florida since 1997.

The idea is to educate people about how this scourge persists and how to end it, according to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which is putting it together.

In addition to trying to improve pay and working conditions, the grass roots nonprofit is recognized as a leader in the fight against contemporary slavery. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement asked the group to help create its slavery investigation curriculum and FBI director Robert Mueller has lauded it.

Visitors to the free museum can climb into the truck as well as view other grim exhibits.

In one glass case is a wrinkled shirt, blotched with blood. In 1996, it belonged to a 17-year-old worker named Edgar, explained coalition member Lucas Benitez. When the teen paused in the field to get a drink of water, the boss beat him savagely "to make an example of him," Benitez said.

But the young worker fled, eventually making his way to the coalition. That night, hundreds of workers marched to the boss' house. The next morning, the boss could find no one to work for him. Afterward, the boss changed his ways.

"You can talk about slavery intellectually, but to be able to actually see (artifacts) creates a whole different, visceral response. To look at that box truck, to think about people living in there — you experience it to get it," said Nola Theiss, executive director of the Human Trafficking Awareness Project.

Museum visitors also can see coverage of slavery in Florida over the years and learn what the group is doing to end it. Key to its efforts is the Campaign for Fair Food to increase wages for harvesters and improve their working conditions.

The coalition has forged Fair Food agreements with the three largest fast-food companies (Yum Brands, McDonald's and Burger King); Compass, the world's largest food-service company; and Whole Foods, the largest natural food chain.

The group has asked Publix to join, too — and to stop buying tomatoes from Pacific Tomato Growers and Six L's, where the Navarretes took their slaves to work. Publix has said it will not sign on.

After its tour of the state, on April 16 the truck will be at the head of the coalition's march from Tampa to Publix's Lakeland headquarters.


[Last modified: Mar 06, 2010 11:14 PM]

Modern agricultural slavery goes on display in Florida - St. Petersburg Times