Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site im4u.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!ut-sally!im4u!riddle From: riddle@im4u.UUCP Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: The role of America in world hunger & red spread Message-ID: <424@im4u.UUCP> Date: Thu, 15-Aug-85 14:38:08 EDT Article-I.D.: im4u.424 Posted: Thu Aug 15 14:38:08 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 19-Aug-85 07:48:58 EDT References: <295@SCIRTP.UUCP> <10996@rochester.UUCP> <143@unc.unc.UUCP> Reply-To: riddle@im4u.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) Distribution: net Organization: U. of Tx. at Houston-in-the-Hills Lines: 22 Cash-Crop: "Bob" >> When the 3rd-world plantations grow bananas, sugar, and coconuts, >> the plantation owners can sell the crop for money, which they then >> keep for themselves, spending it on luxuries, or depositing it in >> Swiss banks. The peasants get none of it and thus starve. It can get even more blatant than that. Many of the plantation crops (coffee, for instance) require only seasonal labor. In order to guarantee a sufficient supply of willing labor at harvest time, plantation owners in many places (notably in Central America) have been known to use force, legal trickery and any other means at their disposal to make sure that peasants remain landless. Otherwise, the peasants might prefer to attend their own subsistence crops at harvest time rather than work at starvation wages for the big boys. Large plantation economies based on cash crops for export not only encourage mass poverty, they often *depend* on it. Not that you have to go Central America to find examples of this principle; the migrant farmworkers who do so much of the harvesting in this country often suffer from the same principle. --- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.") --- {ihnp4,harvard,seismo,gatech}!ut-sally!riddle riddle@ut-sally.UUCP --- riddle@ut-sally.ARPA, riddle%zotz@ut-sally, riddle%im4u@ut-sally