![]() ![]() He had become a headache to the Vicini family, which owned many of the plantations in Hartley's parish. The strike was also a turning point in the priest's fortunes. "This was a turning point in the struggle." And then it is your right to remain on the plantation or to leave," he recalls. I said, 'I propose that none of you goes to work until you're told. "I turned around, with my back to the bosses, and faced the crowd. As he spoke, a crowd gathered around, as did the company guards. One day, after some new arrivals complained that they did not know what their wages would be, Hartley began urging them to go on strike until they were told. Haney spent two years filming, as Hartley tried to win better conditions for the Haitians. The Dominican Republic has a preferential trade deal with the U.S., which purchases most of its sugar. Then he learned that American consumers "subsidize" the misery of the Haitian workers. But I really think a film about some of the issues that I'm seeing in this parish might have something valuable to say,'" Haney recalls. "The next morning he called me and said, 'I'd be very grateful for your medical supplies and support. Haney says as they talked over dinner, he asked the priest what he could do for him. ![]() Bill Haney, a documentary filmmaker, was among them. By October 2004, Hartley had amassed a stack of evidence, when some American volunteers arrived in his parish to deliver medical supplies. Ten years ago, the priest began documenting what he saw, snapping digital photographs of a young boy working in the field, an armed guard, an old man with a finger missing, a painfully malnourished child. Children would sow the sugar cane fields for approximately 25 cents a day, and this would include pregnant women and young girls." "People were denied very frequently the freedom to congregate, for example, the freedom to come to mass," he says. They're forbidden to leave the plantation. Speaking from Spain, Hartley says the workers drink from the same water source as oxen. The camera follows the priest as he greets Haitian migrants who have crossed the border illegally and now live in the bateyes, or compounds within the sugar plantations. "Gradually, I began to learn more about their situation. ![]() "I arrived in the Dominican Republic in September 1997," you hear him say in the film, as he bounces down the dusty roads in his jeep. Tall and powerfully built, rakishly handsome, with salt and pepper hair and an accent betraying his Spanish aristocracy, Father Hartley is as comfortable with the camera as he is with his mission: to change the plight of Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic. It's hard to imagine Hartley was not hired for this role. The film involves two narratives - one on camera, and one off. The Price of Sugar examines the sugar plantations of the Dominican Republic through the eyes of a Roman Catholic priest named Father Christopher Hartley.įor nine years, Hartley waged an escalating war with one of the wealthy plantation families over their treatment of the migrant Haitian workers who live and work there. That tablespoon of sugar in your coffee is the subject of a new documentary film. ![]()
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