Colombia 2 October. The sugarcane cutters of the region of Cauca, Valle del Cauca
are on strike for 17 days.
The families of the strikers are hungry since the beginning of the strike,
they came to Cali to freely express their anger.
Long live the strike of the sugarcane cutters!
I am here with my landlady.
We do pay rent. This morning I ran out of gas.
I am not the only one. Many families are affected.
Ardila Lule, the owner of the Cauca, says he's paying 28.000 pesos per barrel.
But in reality they pay 5.500 pesos per barrel.
So they are stealing from them when weighing the sugarcane as well as with the price.
It is not as much money as they say it is!
Let me talk!
I am from Pradera/Valle. I support the workers and my husband.
We are from the Mayagüez estate.
We got all together because we all feel the same.
We ask the Secretary of Labor to take back his effrontery,
we ask him to stop calling us guerilleros.
We are honest people.
The president with his perverse corruption has introduced
the cooperatives so they can exploit our husbands.
Our children are undernourished!
The sugarcane cutters are undernourished!
This is social racism!
Our husbands have done a lot for the Valle del Cauca!
I congratulate the employers who pay decent wages.
But Coca-Cola, the breweries, the have to pay decent wages.
The minister says that you have to let the people work
who want to work. Those people take the side of the companies
and the days they endure are killing us.
We have been starving for 3 years!
And the country is full of corruption.
There has never been as much corruption as under this government.
Mister President, you better watch out who you are going to work with!
Look: 36.000 Pesos (12 Euro/19 USD). Nobody can live on that.
The children of the sugarcane cutters cry from hunger.
That's why the women demonstrate in Cali.
We are really experiencing big problems
because of the problems of the sugarcane cutters.
They are not getting paid the way it would be right.
The children suffer a lot too.You don't know what to do.
We keep on fighting to get ahead.
Let's trust in God that things will get better again.
It will come that way, there you can be sure.
Corteros without work ? that ruins the trading business.
We accompany the corteros and the Colombian society
that are in conflict with the president.
He has failed us all.
He tells us to end the strike and he would find a solution.
But he doesn't find a solution. Neither for the truck drivers.
... we are fighting here for the demands of the people.
Right now, the workers are over-exploited.
They fight for their interests in order to improve their living conditions.
It's about enforcing direct negotiations with the estate owners
and about abolishing the cooperatives
through which the workers were wretchedly exploited.
Right in the 21st century, the most minimal job safeties
are refused to the sugarcane workers in Cauca.
I support the fight because I think it is fair.
A cititzen that joins the families of the corteros.
Say something, go!
Yes,... we are not doing well at all.
Tell them, that we are STARVING!
We want the govenor to come.
There is no right!
Slavery is abolished!
We are all in very bad shape. We are starving.
We are without water and electricity! There is no food in this house!
My husband is sick because he got poisened from the water over there.
They cut off our water, our electricity, everything, everything!
We're starving at home for 17 days now.
The poor corteros sit around there like criminals.
They have no right. There is no justice here in Colombia.
What we demand is higher wages for the workers. Because this right now are starvation wages.
For the old. For the children, especially.
They suffer bitterly, especially the children.
The government says that they support the children.
But the children of the workers here suffer
because of the lack of food and medicine,
because there is no health care for all those kids.
If the government wants to help the children, they should help all children.
The old people get a very low wage:
150.000 pesos (50 Euro/ 75 USD) every two months.
I for example don't have enough to support the family.
It is just not possible on that income.
150.000 pesos every two months, so that's 75.000 a month.
How are we supposed to pay rent from that, how to feed our families?
Our new generation, that needs help from the old ones.
We can't even have our own apartments with those wages.
If we pay rent, we can't eat.
If you have food, it is not enough for the education of the children.
I was a sugarcane cutter once. I know about those woes.
The women get up at 3 a.m. to cook.
There is no protection. They get up at 3 a.m. to cook for their husbands
and then they keep working for the children, to send them to school.
The woman suffers more than the man.
The man suffers, but the woman suffers more.
That's why we need help for our women, the new generations.
So that they help us, all the poor, because the majority of us is poor.
We cannot survive with the wages they are paying us in Colombia.
What could a way out of this situation look like?
A solution would be to have a government of the people.
Like in Venezuela, like in our brother country Ecuador,
like in Bolivia, where the poor get helped.
We here in Colombia are abandoned.
We have supported the government,
but now we are fed up with supporting this government.