I just came home from a movie screening I went to with my mother called, The Price of Sugar and it was one of the better humanitarian documentaries I’ve seen. It was sponsored by the people at the Vineyard: Christian Fellowship. As someone who has travelled to the Dominican Republic with her church, I really felt seeing this film was necessary. I have been a supporter of the Faire Trade movement for awhile now and I just think it is one of the more beneficial movements out there. Some of the things that were spoken in the documentary really struck a chord with me. I suppose its because I’ve seen some of the poverty in the Dominican Republic – but there is a difference to be Haitian and living in the DR than a Dominican living in the DR. In some respects (and correct me if I’m wrong) but I’d assume that since the relationship between the DR and Haiti is so non-existent that I think I’d rather be a Dominican living in the DR rather than a Haitian because at some level. I think it would be very difficult for someone to live in a country where its’ natives despise them.

The whole documentary reminded me of a moment when I was with my HSYG and we were at a supermarket in the DR. Every time we went to the supermarket there was a Haitian family living outside. If I remember right I believe it was a mother and at least three kids. I think we were on our last day and we decided to give them all the left over lunches (unfortunately it only happened to be one sandwich left). The little boy of the family came up to the bus and we gave him a sandwich. The eyes on the boy grew so big that it was really quite moving to see. Such a mundane food item, as a sandwich, would seem like gold to someone who lives on nothing.

Bill Haney’s The Price of Sugar could do without its close-ups of sugar being poured onto a spoon, and would benefit from providing more information about the United States’s close relationship with the Dominican Republic’s sugar trade, which this eye-opening doc vividly illustrates is predicated on ruthless slavery. Nonetheless, the director’s investigation has a clear-sighted persuasiveness, as well as a formidable, complex central figure in the person of Father Christopher Hartley, the son of Spanish aristocrats who—after years working with Mother Theresa in Calcutta—moved to the Caribbean island and promptly began upsetting his parish’s wealthy and powerful sugar barons, the Vicinis. Tagging along with Hartley, the film (narrated by Paul Newman) captures sights of concentration camp-level subjugation and abuse suffered by Haitians whom the Vicinis (and their industry brethren) illegally import, imprison at filthy outposts known as bateys, and force to work until their deaths. Hartley’s aggressive efforts to bring these heinous practices to light is given vivid life by Haney’s inquisitive camera, as is the priest’s staunch conviction in the face of mounting Vicini-sponsored smear campaigns aimed at compelling him to leave the country. An authentically benevolent man of the cloth (and people), Hartley nonetheless also proves politically cunning, organizing strikes within the bateys and bringing American doctors and media to his parish’s overworked, malnourished Haitian cane workers. However, he’s perhaps not quite as cunning as the Vicinis themselves, whose response to Hartley’s tactics involves effectively stirring up Dominican nationalistic (read: racist) hatred for the “poorer and blacker” illegal immigrants, and then blaming their presence in the country on Hartley. The Price of Sugar‘s motive is to open American eyes by illustrating where domestic sugar originates, yet the efficacy of such intentions are somewhat weakened by the director’s focus on Hartley rather than the close commercial ties binding the two nations. Nonetheless, as an exposé of corporate and state exploitation of the poor, his doc is nothing short of blistering. source of text