Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
labor-saving technologies. Efforts to shift production to non-company
farms actually began prior to the 1954 strike, coincident with the Gál-
vez administration's labor reforms. In 1952, the Tela Railroad Company
established an ''associate growers' program'' that provided one hundred
formercompanyemployeeswithtwentyhectaresof landeachinElHigue-
rito, an area that lay to the south of the company's La Lima headquar-
ters.The associate growers, who assumed responsibility for managing the
labor-intensive tasks of planting, weeding, and harvesting, consented to
selltheirbananasexclusivelytotheTelaRailroadCompanyatpricessetby
the latter. Under the terms of the contract, the company agreed to install
drainage, irrigation, and road infrastructure; operate irrigation and Siga-
toka control systems; and coordinate dailycultivation activities through a
centralo
ceinLaLima.Thecompanypromisedtotransfertheproperty
titles to individual growers upon recovering its investment.
45
Former Tela Railroad Company District Superintendent Camilo Ri-
veraGirónrecalledthatthenationalpressgenerallyopposedtheElHigue-
rito project because it provided the company with the means to ''allevi-
ate itself of its responsibilities [to the workers].''
46
Aspartofaneffort
to sway public opinion, Rivera Girón led newspaper reporters on a tour
of El Higuerito in order to demonstrate the project's merits. But, news-
paper editorial boards were not the only ones with reservations about
the associate grower projects. SITRATERCO ocials argued that the pro-
gram would depress wages. In October 1957, a group of Bordeaux sprayers
and other workers from the El Higuerito farms joined SITRATERCO in
order to defend themselves against what the union's newspaper termed
''wide-spread and capricious firings.''
47
Four months later, SITRATERCO
representative Pastor Zúniga Ramírez complained that the company was
unjustly dismissing workers in El Higuerito. Company management de-
nied the accusation, stating that those fired were employees of associate
growers. However, the El Higuerito growers contended that they only
hired harvesting and weeding crews. In 1958, SITRATERCO declared that
the company ''directly contracted'' the laborers who worked in irrigation,
Sigatoka control, and fertilizer application on the associate grower farms.
On paydays, the union asserted, ''these workers present pay stubs created
intheo
cesofthecompanytotheassociategrower...often,thisisthe
only contact that the grower has with the workers.''
48
Union opposition failed to deter the company from expanding its as-
sociate grower programs. In May 1958, four former mandadores signed
leases with theTela Railroad Company for 120-hectare lots in San Manuel,
a municipality that lay to the south of the company's La Lima headquar-
