Museum Takes on Slavery in Tomato Industry

by Hanna Raskin, Posted Mar 11th 2010 @ 11:00AM

Tomato fields. Photo: Getty Images

A labor advocacy group has transformed a cargo truck, similar to the vehicle in which two Florida tomato growers kept their enslaved work crews captive, into a mobile museum.

"We're touring the state to educate people about the persistence of slavery in the agriculture industry here in Florida," explains Marc Rodrigues, a member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

The 24-foot truck houses exhibits chronicling the history of slavery, from the government-sanctioned system that thrived after European colonization to 20th-century sharecropping. The chronology offers little respite for abolitionists: The timeline ends with the seven confirmed forced labor cases the Department of Justice has documented over the past decade.

"For a lot of people, it's been a really eye-opening experience," Rodrigues says. "I've seen people come out of the museum with tears in their eyes."

Rodrigues says the museum's gathered a diverse audience on its six-week trek from Cape Coral to Lakeland. "We've had everyone from Catholic schoolchildren to retirees," he says.

A 63-year-old museum visitor in Naples deemed the exhibits "more than surprising," adding, "when you go into a supermarket to buy produce, you don't think that it's coming from this kind of labor. "

Rodrigues believes the wheeled museum conveys the coalition's message in ways other media cannot.

"The reason we don't just have a gallery of pictures on the Internet is so people can get up close and personal with these stories," he says. "It's a way of people having that direct experience. It's going to get warm in Florida -- you can imagine the door closed and locked."

On Apr. 16, the mobile museum will take its place at the head of a march designed to pressure the Publix supermarket chain to adopt a zero-tolerance policy on slavery. Restaurants including McDonald's, Burger King and Subway have already negotiated with the coalition to improve conditions for fieldworkers.

"They've agreed to pay a little bit more for their tomatoes," says Rodrigues, who hopes the museum project will help persuade other sellers to follow their lead.

Filed Under: News
Tags: slave labor, slavery, tomato fields, tomato growers, tomato industry