Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
When she was still a child, Gladys left the camp and resettled in the de-
partment of Comayagua only to return to the North Coast at the age of
eighteen. A girlfriend helped her find work with apatrona(spouseofcon-
tractor) cooking and washing clothes forabout 20 men. Gladys continued
to cook for workers after she married a fieldhand. Ángela Coto-Moreno's
introduction to the camp kitchen also came at an early age. Her single
mother brought her to a Tela Railroad Company camp near El Progreso
whenshewasonlyseven.Bytheageoften,shewas''workinghard''grind-
ing corn and fetching water for her mother who cared for some thirty
or forty men. Ángela left the camp kitchens after marrying a man with
whom she operated a small farm on the periphery of the plantations.
24
Women who married labor contractors often set up kitchens to provide
mealsfortheirhusband'sworkcrew.Insomeinstances,contractorsmain-
tained ''houses'' that provided meals for 20-30 workers. Isabel Mangandí
de Duarte considered cooking for her husband's workers to be less of an
obligation than a necessity since the work site lay a considerable distance
from area villages. Serving a satisfying meal was a source of great pride for
Isabel who recalled that she and her husband did not profit much from
providing meals due to the costs of serving ''extras'' such as bread, oat-
meal, fish and eggs.
25
José María Lara confirmed that the quality of the
food served was a consideration when male workers assessed the merits
of individual labor contractors.
If finding a plantation job was not particularly dicult, holding onto
one was nearly impossible because most farm work was done on a short-
term contractual basis. As Charles Kepner wrote in 1936, ''Much em-
ployment in banana districts is intermittent. Fruit is not cut every day,
longshoremen are needed only when ships are in port, task workers are
busy as long as their tasks last.''
26
The observations of a US diplomat re-
corded fourteen years later reveal that short-term stints of employment
remained the norm through mid-century: ''Each of the fifty farms in the
[United Fruit] company's Honduran division has frequently hired and
fired laborers as needed. This frequently has meant that workmen dis-
charged at one farm, for whatever reason, moved on to other farms where
theywerehiredifneeded.''
27
Thisinstabilityresultedlargelyfromseasonal
variations in annual production and consumption cycles. For example,
employmentlevelstendedtobehighestduringthefirsthalfofthecalendar
year when exports and U.S. market demand both peaked. By contract-
ing out most farm tasks, the fruit companies benefited from flexible pay-
roll obligations. As one former Standard Fruit Company worker recalled,
when a particular task was completed, ''three-quarters of the employees''