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Meet the laborers of Camposol, the world's largest asparagus exporter and the employer of roughly 10,000 workers that have arrived from the Amazon, Andes, and throughout coastal Peru to take advantage of the abundant employment opportunities in the fertile Moche Valley. Over the next three weeks, I'll be collecting their stories and images. Stay tuned for more.

The Case of Camposol

English translation of Caso Camposol, published in La República on October 3rd.

A dusty blue bus pulled to a stop in the center of Chao, a series of faded facades lining the principal route between Trujillo and Lima. It was just after 5pm, the sun dipped low and the white sand dunes began their daily transformation from parchment to blush to rouge. One by one, the workforce of La Libertad's largest agribusiness, Camposol, lowered themselves onto the street. Those arriving from the field were identified by a wide-brimmed hat, a machete, or by a rag loosely tied around their head to shade against the sun. They quickly disappeared behind adobe walls covered by campaign signs and into congested storefronts.

Twenty meters away, in the back of the bus garage, fifty workers were gathered around a small plastic table. From a distance, the gathering could have been a standard World Cup viewing, the air intermittently scattered with cheers and boos; at one moment arms flung into the air, in others faces were buried deep into leathery hands. An hour away, at the Regional Labor Ministry in Trujillo, negotiators from SITECASA, Camposol’s only independent union, entered into their eight hour of collective negotiations with company representatives. Via two cell phones passed amongst the fifty workers, the group communicated with negotiators at the table, their collective chants measuring the approval or rejection of negotiation advancements.

Camposol

The agribusiness Camposol employs approximately 10,000 workers in the developing communities of Virú, Chao, and Nuevo Chao. Like fellow non-traditional agro-exporters Sociedad Agrícola Virú, Talsa, and Danper, the emergence of Camposol into the economy of northern Peru was facilitated by the Chavimochic irrigation project, which in 1994 brought piped water from the Andes to the otherwise arid coastland of La Libertad province. In it’s 13 years of operation, Camposol has not only become the largest agribusiness in La Libertad, accounting for 30.2% of regional production in 2009, but has also vaulted into the position of top asparagus importer in the world.

Increased access to global markets,

achieved with the recent signing of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, has meant greater product placement in international markets. Last year, in the midst of an international economic crisis, Camposol registered an official gross profit of 24.2 million, a 20% decrease from the 30.3 million earned in 2008. Running under the institutionalized slogan ‘do more with less’, Camposol has recently opened offices in Spain and the Netherlands and has planned expansion into the regions of Piura in northwestern Peru.

The Industry

Although it would be difficult to deny the importance of the agroindustry in La Libertad, the advent of non-traditional agriculture into the now productive valley of Trujillo has not come without controversy. Placed amidst vast fields of avocadoes, grapes, and asparagus, Camposol has become an emblematic example of the economic development typical of the agroindustry. Floated by national policies awarding tax, environmental, and labor incentives to agribusiness, Camposol has maximized the region’s natural resources and human resources prevailing not only from coastal regions but also heavily from the Andean highlands.

Despite their list-topping position in the international asparagus market, the company has been recently embroiled in labor disputes that speak to a general discontent among industry workers. In a sector-wide meeting of the National Agribusiness Union (SNA) last week, general concerns were vetted in an attempt to formulate a national platform that would be used in collective negotiations.

The complaints among SNA members are common to most: discrimination against union members, meager wages, extended working hours, and capricious dismissal of workers during 'seasonal recessions', the latter two legally protected under the controversial Law 27360. Commonly known as the Agricultural Sector Promotional Law, Law 27360 was created with the intention of attractive private investment to publicly funded irrigation projects such as Chavimochic through discounted labor costs. The law has been the center of many labor disputes in the industry; its abolishment was identified as a priority in the collective platform drafted by the SNA.

The Workers

“They'll shatter your dreams,” a 26-yr-old member of SITECASA explains. Over a cup of steaming tea, he continues, “under the agrarian law 27360, you won't advance,” he explains, “and this is the case with many of us. I wanted to take out a loan to continue with school, but in this job, no one feels secure. At any moment, at their whim, they could toss me to the streets and leave me unable to pay my loan.”

A husband and wife from the Andean highlands, Camposol workers, sat timidly at the Chao bus stop, coughing and sneezing intermittently. Eleven years ago they moved to Nuevo Chao to work in the agroindustry, yet after three consecutive years with Camposol, the husband was dismissed a month ago with little explanation. After laying his ‘notice of termination’ on the ground, he reaches into his bag and extracts ten additional pages. “These are the birth certificates of each of my children,” he said. “I can’t read or write, neither one of us can. I can’t read the document they’ve given me, but I know that I have ten children to feed. They haven’t been able to give me a reason for my termination yet.”

For those workers that migrated from the Andean highlands, the Peruvian Amazon, or from within La Libertad province, the agroindustry represented employment opportunity. Yet for many, with limited resources, education, and employment options, the temporal nature of work and the meager wages characteristic of the agribusiness represent a great amount of financial insecurity.

A Legal Framework of Insecurity

The recently signed Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Peru has been widely celebrated in the US Congress and President Obama for its improved environmental and labor standards as compared to past FTAs signed by the United States. Amendments added to Chapter 17, the labor chapter of the FTA, include an emphasis on the recognition of fundamental human rights defined by the International Labor Organization (ILO), to which Peru is a member. Most notably, it mentions acceptable working conditions, minimum wage, working hours, health and occupational security as fundamental rights to which all workers are entitled.

Labor attorney Javier Mujíca Petit has found that, in accordance with Law 27360, agricultural workers earn S/476.64 ($170) less per year than those workers protected by common labor laws, in other words, $170 less than minimum wage. “The disadvantageous labor regimen in the agricultural sector contradicts the obligations outlined in Chapter 17 of the Free Trade Agreement.”

An Exemplary Case

From collective negotiations emerged a collective disappointment. At 1230am the negotiations broke under what director Walter Campos described as “immense pressure from company representatives” to sign an agreement that awarded a one time S/50 payment to each union worker. No further advancements were reached. In the words of another negotiator, “we each gained a new pair of pants.”

With Talsa union negotiations failing in recent weeks and collective bargaining for Sociedad Agrícola Perú and other companies on the horizon, the case of Camposol is illustrative. Miguel Caldas, director of human resources at Camposol, confirmed that a salary increase did not figure within reached agreement. “What’s more,” he says, referencing the low salaries characteristic of the agroindustry, “this is not a problem that is exclusive to Camposol, but the entire sector.” With the largest agribusiness in the region failing to increase worker compensation, the industry lacks incentive to raise the collective bar.

Corporate Values

The idea of corporate social responsibility has grown in recent years as a counterbalance to the exploitation of natural resources and human rights violations that have come to be frequently associated with internationally traded commodities, industrialized agriculture, and raw material extraction. The blurring of the consumer producer relationship, inherent to global markets, has given rise to a consumer population that is increasingly concerns with the impacts of its purchases and with the privilege to choose products that align with personal ideals, be it a fair salary, environmental responsibility, or corporate respect for fundamental human rights.

Camposol publicly declares its company values to be ‘Integrity, Respect, Team Work, Excellence, and Austerity’. If Camposol were truly concerned with giving international consumers the impression that respect and integrity were cornerstones of its operations, an obvious first step would be to award its workers a salary that, at very minimum, equated Peruvian minimum wage.

Gas, Texas, and Protests in Quillabamba

I have just returned from Quillabamba, the center of the general strike that has blocked all roads to Machu Picchu and seen 17 protesters detained. Central to the protest: foreign gas exploitation in the Camisea gas fields, the exploration of which has been done in large part by Texas-based Hunt Oil Company. The company's $3.8 billion Peru LNG plant, meant to manufacture gas extracted from the Camisea fields, is the largest of its kind in South America.

The company has been a central source of controversy in its leveraging of political and economic power to acquire natural gas concessions in the indigenous reserves of the Peruvian Amazon. With a poor history of environmental protection and social responsibility, Hunt Oil was most recently criticized after gaining rights to explore Block 76, a 3.7 million acre tract overlapping the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve.

Company President Ray Hunt, a hefty contributor to the presidential campaign of George W. Bush and a board member of Haliburton, has continued to tow the line of economic development in the Peruvian Amazon, making frequent visits to the Peruvian legislature throughout contract negotiations. In the year 2000, during the last stand of dictator Alberto Fujimori, Hunt Oil was awarded the exclusive rights for 40 years to develop the Camisea gas fields. With proven reserves of 8.7 trillion cubic feet, it was called the "most ambitious energy project in Peruvian history" at the time of launching.

An 'indefinite strike' has been declared by the Comisión de la Lucha. Hunt Oil Co. has been largely absent since claims of environ-mental degradation and lacking social responsibility began to surface with the construction of the project's first pipeline in 2003. The protests in Quillabamba have been no exception. Yesterday, President Alan Garcia made a plea for peace after declaring a state of emergency after protesters forcefully entered a Camisea gas station on Friday. The Peruvian government has sent military forces as protesters continue to block all main arteries leaving the city.

Fear in Negotiations

After a number of general, contextual interviews with government and labor officials, and chamber of commerce spokesmen, I settled into Chao, one of many small towns outside of Trujillo where the majority of agroindustry workers reside. Scheduling visits with government officials was, as expected, a nightmare. Lunch hours beginning at 1pm commonly exhausted the afternoon, World Cup games beckoned, and generally, government officials didn't want to talk to me about the state of agribusiness in Trujillo. Interviewing workers, however, would be much more difficult.

Leaving the gates of the plantation, piling off the bus, seated quietly at the weekly union meetings. They were everywhere, approximately 10,000 workers employed by the agribusiness I'm following. They scattered quickly into the dark alleys of Chao, Nuevo Chao, Virú and Virú Puente, were quick to shake their heads and turn away when I approached. I didn't look like them. My Spanish didn't sound like theirs. My height, camera, and notebooks seemed intimidating, and even when I was able to hide the latter two, my presence caused anxiety in a plantation town.

There was simply no margin of error, and associating themselves with someone who gave the wrong impression was a risk most weren't willing to assume.

After being introduced by the union leader, things improved. My conversations generally looked at workers' demographic information, their experiences on the plantation, any infractions of labor rights that they have encountered, and why those reclamos were or were not filed with the Ministerio de Trabajo.

A word that I have become accustomed to hearing frequently, in all interviews: miedo. Fear. Fear, insecurity, and confusion as to what their rights as dispensable laborers are. These are the most commonly cited challenges keeping workers in the field, far away from the offices that were established to file their complaints.

The proposition of a general strike Saturday morning had lifted everyone's spirits. Collectively, they rejoiced in the anonymity that would be offered by a group protest recognized as legal by the Department of Labor. Yet, at 12:00am on Saturday morning, it seemed that even the most conscious of union leaders were plagued by the same challenge cited by so many workers: miedo. The lead negotiator, currently facing numerous lawsuits at the hands of his employer for speaking out publicly against inspection policies to the local press, broke down at the negotiations table. Citing fear and intimidation tactics, he signed away the union's right to strike in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

Saturday night, an emergency union meeting was called. In a small courtyard lined with adobe bricks, the workers packed in. Most faces were grim, soiled with dirt from a long day's work and chewing through the news that not a single point of negotiation was met the night before. When the lead negotiator took the mic, the crowd roared. "We put all our faith in you!," they yelled. "What will you say to my children!?" "How much did they pay you to stab us in the back?" The air was heavy.

The lead negotiator didn't attempt to reconcile his misgivings. He cried, simply and honestly. Cried before a crowd of a hundred grown men. He described a life full of terror, in which every day he arrives home to find a newly printed demanda from the company. Every time, he said, with three days to respond. I can hardly think, let alone live. His shoulders slumped, his eyes were broken. Tears streaming down his cheeks, the crowd softened. Women at my side wiped tears from their eyes. An older man offered some encouragement. "Have strength," he shouted, "There's no shame here!"

He resigned, admitting to have committed the worst mistake of his life, and backed down.

A la Huelga

They were the same age, he told me. It was easy to count the years. A husband and wife that had migrated from la sierra, the Andes, to work in the plantations on the Peruvian coast. Neither able to read or write, both coughing and sneezing. It was already 10pm when he offered his wife the only chair. He crouched on a cinder block and explained to me his recent dismissal from the company in question.

Accused of working in a state of intoxication and displaying aggressive behavior towards his superiors, he had been released on Father's Day with three days to appeal the decision. In the official letter of termination, no specific infractions were cited. Without money to pay for a lawyer and worried as to how he would feed the ten children that awaited him in Nuevo Chao, an informal settlement that has grown with the agroindustry that surrounds it, he went to look for work. Three days expired with no luck.

He's not the only one out of luck, something that the workers here speak of with frequency and a great deal of sincerity. Hundreds of workers from the same company have been dismissed in recent months under suspicious justification. Generally, the despedidas are correlated with one of two things, and most often with both: union activity and labor complaints.

Currently, the eight dirigentes of the workers' union are at the trade tables negotiating terms of a new contract under the threat of a general strike. The points of negotiation are varied, but include the payment of two years worth of utilidades, something that I understand to be a portion of company profits guaranteed to workers by Peruvian law. Another is the recall of a law known as the Ley de Promoción del Sector Agroindustrial, a law that has allowed agroindustry businesses exceptions to minimum wage, benefits, and vacation requirements required of other Peruvian employers.

It's 11:52pm. If a new contract isn't signed by tomorrow at 5am, most of the company will begin marching from the Plaza de Armas in Chao in a general strike that has been deemed legal by the local Department of Labor.

Agroindustry Field Work Begins