Friday, October 22, 2010
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Una pega nueva (y más liviana).
In the past few days, I’ve changed jobs. I’m no longer working with lemons. No more long days jerking buckets full of lemons around, no more thorns, no more siestas on the hard ground. Now, I’m working with damascos (apricots) and, next week, we’re supposed to start working with duranos (peaches). In general, this job is a lot easier, although it requires more skill and attention from the workers. Right now, the damascos are small and green, about the size of a mature almendra (almond). And the duranos, well, they’re only about the size of a fingernail (even smaller). But already in the past three days, I’ve seen them grow, in some cases, doubling in size. Obviously, this isn’t the season for picking either (and for this, we don’t have to work on Saturdays, which is a plus). Rather, the job is this: on each branch of the plant, there are many, many small fruits, clustered together, which, if all allowed to mature, would interfere with each other, and result in lower quality fruit. Also, I presume, that if the excess fruit is removed, more of the energy of the tree will be diverted into growing the remaining pieces of fruit, also resulting in higher quality. So the job is to remove the excess fruit, all deformed pieces, “gemelos” (literally twins – I don’t know the word in English – but two conjoined pieces of fruit), and those pieces with characteristic red circles, which are signs of a virus.
Damascos are simpler than duranos, I’m told, so the work goes pretty fast. The workers are paid per mata (plant). The price for the damascos is $350 (that’s Chilean pesos, obviously) per plant. That’s about 0.8USD. Because the workers are paid per mata, there has to be someone to oversee, and make sure that quality of the work remains consistent, as there is constantly the temptation to cut corners, to move faster (and sloppier) in order to make more money. That’s my job. I’m a supervisor, un jefe.
And to be honest with you, at first, I hated it.
For me, this is how I saw it. I’m this little gringo upstart, just 18 – that’s younger than anyone else out there – and I don’t speak Spanish well, and here I am telling these people what to do. And, like all of them, I only learned to do the job three days ago too. Furthermore, la pega me caga mal. I mean, picking lemons, that was something I could feel proud of, in a way. I was doing something that had to be done, and doing it the same as any of the others around me. I was no more and no less than any of them. It’s not a good job, and it left me tired as shit every evening, but that’s how it was. Now here I am, with a job I didn’t even ask for, telling people what to do, and getting paid for walking around all day, pointing out people’s errors. Well, to be honest, so one has to do it, has to keep all of it straight and to keep track of all of the numbers. But I don’t like it because I’m a part of a system that I can see is unfair.
At least that was my first impression. Now I’m realizing a few things. Unlike the field over in Ranchillos (with the lemons), the workers here are given more respect. There are toilets, a place to eat with a sunshade, trashcans, signs about the dangers of pesticides and how to protect yourself from them, etc. Still, I’m sure there is a dueño and that he makes a hell of a lot more than any of the peons who man his fields, but I guess he’s not like the filthy rich dueño over at Ranchillos.
And as far as the work goes, it’s nice for me in a lot of ways. Even though it irritates my egalitarian sensibilities, I know I can and will get used to the job. I mean, it’s a job that Marcela needs me to do. Usually her son (the other one, Esteban) does this job, but right now he’s working with his father (actually on the house of the dueño of Ranchillos). And this job doesn’t leave me dead in the evenings (besides, it’s getting to be more work than I thought at first, as more workers arrive). But perhaps the best benefit is that I probably speak more than 5 times as much Spanish in a day than I did at cutting lemons. I’m learning and practicing far more.
This way, furthermore, I’m experiencing all facets of production, and realizing how it feels to be peon, a nobody, but also how it feels to be jefe, and realizing how important it is to do that job with compassion. Even if I don’t like it, I am realizing that this pega too is a valuable experience.
Damascos are simpler than duranos, I’m told, so the work goes pretty fast. The workers are paid per mata (plant). The price for the damascos is $350 (that’s Chilean pesos, obviously) per plant. That’s about 0.8USD. Because the workers are paid per mata, there has to be someone to oversee, and make sure that quality of the work remains consistent, as there is constantly the temptation to cut corners, to move faster (and sloppier) in order to make more money. That’s my job. I’m a supervisor, un jefe.
And to be honest with you, at first, I hated it.
For me, this is how I saw it. I’m this little gringo upstart, just 18 – that’s younger than anyone else out there – and I don’t speak Spanish well, and here I am telling these people what to do. And, like all of them, I only learned to do the job three days ago too. Furthermore, la pega me caga mal. I mean, picking lemons, that was something I could feel proud of, in a way. I was doing something that had to be done, and doing it the same as any of the others around me. I was no more and no less than any of them. It’s not a good job, and it left me tired as shit every evening, but that’s how it was. Now here I am, with a job I didn’t even ask for, telling people what to do, and getting paid for walking around all day, pointing out people’s errors. Well, to be honest, so one has to do it, has to keep all of it straight and to keep track of all of the numbers. But I don’t like it because I’m a part of a system that I can see is unfair.
At least that was my first impression. Now I’m realizing a few things. Unlike the field over in Ranchillos (with the lemons), the workers here are given more respect. There are toilets, a place to eat with a sunshade, trashcans, signs about the dangers of pesticides and how to protect yourself from them, etc. Still, I’m sure there is a dueño and that he makes a hell of a lot more than any of the peons who man his fields, but I guess he’s not like the filthy rich dueño over at Ranchillos.
And as far as the work goes, it’s nice for me in a lot of ways. Even though it irritates my egalitarian sensibilities, I know I can and will get used to the job. I mean, it’s a job that Marcela needs me to do. Usually her son (the other one, Esteban) does this job, but right now he’s working with his father (actually on the house of the dueño of Ranchillos). And this job doesn’t leave me dead in the evenings (besides, it’s getting to be more work than I thought at first, as more workers arrive). But perhaps the best benefit is that I probably speak more than 5 times as much Spanish in a day than I did at cutting lemons. I’m learning and practicing far more.
This way, furthermore, I’m experiencing all facets of production, and realizing how it feels to be peon, a nobody, but also how it feels to be jefe, and realizing how important it is to do that job with compassion. Even if I don’t like it, I am realizing that this pega too is a valuable experience.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
All photos were taken on September 22, 2010.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
I see the strings that control the system.
Dramatic title, but honestly, if we are talking simply about the system of the production of fruit in Chile, it’s true. The field I work in is called Los Ranchillos (which is actually the name of the neighborhood). It’s huge. Incredibly large. There are the lemons, of course, but also narajas (oranges), almendras (almonds), mandarinas (mandarins), papas (potatoes), paltas (avocadoes/abacate), maybe some other stuff. It fills half of one entire valley, expanding up the sides of the hills around. And it’s still growing.
In one corner of the valley, there is a parcela, a plot of land, with this giant house, the workers call it the chalet. It’s the house of the dueño, the owner of all this land. He’s a farmer, in the medieval sense of the word; only in that he owns land, and makes his profit off of the sale of its produce. I haven’t seen the house myself (I would like to, to complete the picture), but I know quite a bit about it because the man hired Sandro (my host father) and his crew (which includes Sandro’s son Esteban) to repair some things that were damaged during the earthquake. The house (more like a mansion) has a pool and a garden and many floors. The man doesn’t live there, rather living in Santiago. Sandro and his crew have to work quickly because there are plans to film a telenovela in the house, later this spring.
Even today, the system functions like it has throughout the history of Latin American encomiendas. The system is always like this, like one of my co-workers said: the dueño makes millions, while the peons who work for him work there asses off to scrape by. But it’s not a system I’m used to seeing up close. When I return to the US, I want to visit the fruit plantations that exist there, to establish a comparison. It is my impression that most fruit production in the US is owned by companies, rather than individuals, granting a different "flavor" to the business. And I would say that fruit production in the US is more in a more "developed" stage that production in Latin America, on different levels, from the corporate structure of ownership to the machinization of production. It occurs to me, looking at this single example of "the stages of development" that certain questions arise. Talking to people here, I am developing an understanding that the workers, though they realize they are making nothing compared to their counterparts in the US, know that they are filling an essential role in international production, and they take pride in that. Furthermore, for example, the fact that procution here is NOT machinized means that there is a relatively infinite means of employment for the large number of unskilled labor that exists. These people have very little education and few skills. Most are appropriately employed (with a few notable exceptions of underemployment that I have encountered) and all have their own personal motivations, which is one of the most interesting things that I am learning from my conversations with them.
Still, I'm left wondering, in the larger picture of development, what is the better method? I can see that the corporate model of production in the US has its advantages when competing in the international market (or at least it seems it does, although it is difficult to make any judgment call when the situation is complicated by the large agricultural subsidies that exist in the US). But I'm wondering, is it better to arm those means of production in developing countries with the goal to make them equal to their competitors in the US and in other developed countries, or to seek out another, more innovative model of development? I guess what I'm saying is, already, what I have seen is underlining, in my mind, the textbook question, is it better for developing countries to follow a similar route of deveolpment that developed countries took, in this case, complete with corporate production, protectionism and mechanization? Perhaps this is the easiest route to follow although still difficult, due to opposition by the powers at be. But maybe that's just the quick fix, as ironic as that sounds. What I'm saying is, I question that the route of development taken by today's developed countries is the desireable route.
Surely not an original thought, but it occured to me, one day while I was filling my bucket with lemons.
I hope I have clearly presented my thoughts here. It's a bit disorganized.
In one corner of the valley, there is a parcela, a plot of land, with this giant house, the workers call it the chalet. It’s the house of the dueño, the owner of all this land. He’s a farmer, in the medieval sense of the word; only in that he owns land, and makes his profit off of the sale of its produce. I haven’t seen the house myself (I would like to, to complete the picture), but I know quite a bit about it because the man hired Sandro (my host father) and his crew (which includes Sandro’s son Esteban) to repair some things that were damaged during the earthquake. The house (more like a mansion) has a pool and a garden and many floors. The man doesn’t live there, rather living in Santiago. Sandro and his crew have to work quickly because there are plans to film a telenovela in the house, later this spring.
Even today, the system functions like it has throughout the history of Latin American encomiendas. The system is always like this, like one of my co-workers said: the dueño makes millions, while the peons who work for him work there asses off to scrape by. But it’s not a system I’m used to seeing up close. When I return to the US, I want to visit the fruit plantations that exist there, to establish a comparison. It is my impression that most fruit production in the US is owned by companies, rather than individuals, granting a different "flavor" to the business. And I would say that fruit production in the US is more in a more "developed" stage that production in Latin America, on different levels, from the corporate structure of ownership to the machinization of production. It occurs to me, looking at this single example of "the stages of development" that certain questions arise. Talking to people here, I am developing an understanding that the workers, though they realize they are making nothing compared to their counterparts in the US, know that they are filling an essential role in international production, and they take pride in that. Furthermore, for example, the fact that procution here is NOT machinized means that there is a relatively infinite means of employment for the large number of unskilled labor that exists. These people have very little education and few skills. Most are appropriately employed (with a few notable exceptions of underemployment that I have encountered) and all have their own personal motivations, which is one of the most interesting things that I am learning from my conversations with them.
Still, I'm left wondering, in the larger picture of development, what is the better method? I can see that the corporate model of production in the US has its advantages when competing in the international market (or at least it seems it does, although it is difficult to make any judgment call when the situation is complicated by the large agricultural subsidies that exist in the US). But I'm wondering, is it better to arm those means of production in developing countries with the goal to make them equal to their competitors in the US and in other developed countries, or to seek out another, more innovative model of development? I guess what I'm saying is, already, what I have seen is underlining, in my mind, the textbook question, is it better for developing countries to follow a similar route of deveolpment that developed countries took, in this case, complete with corporate production, protectionism and mechanization? Perhaps this is the easiest route to follow although still difficult, due to opposition by the powers at be. But maybe that's just the quick fix, as ironic as that sounds. What I'm saying is, I question that the route of development taken by today's developed countries is the desireable route.
Surely not an original thought, but it occured to me, one day while I was filling my bucket with lemons.
I hope I have clearly presented my thoughts here. It's a bit disorganized.
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