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48
In my vagabond years, 1970–76, Florida’s Attorney
General charged the owners of sugar plantations with slavery. A few were
imprisoned for actually chaining the workers, but a
short time later such slave owners simply weren’t prosecuted. After an
exhausting day’s work, the men were driven in trucks like cattle to slave
camps, often enclosed by barbed wire. Just before my visit, two such trucks
overturned, killing one and injuring 125 others. Instead of receiving
compensation, the men were fired. Inside the camps, often with over 100 to a
room, only one worker dared talk with me. We hid in a bathroom since they
were fired for talking to whites. These slave camps are owned by Gulf &
Western, but the real slave holders are the government and the public, who
pay up to half the operating costs to avoid cheaper imported sugar.
52
Today, I find more and more of these slave camps and often take my
shocked university students to visit them. In North Carolina, I found bars
where “slave-catchers” kidnap drunk men to take to their camps. These camps
separate and destroy the black family, as slavery has always done. Wives and
children are not allowed in the camps. Several men I talked to had not seen
their families for up to eight months. A bloodstained black hitchhiker I
picked up after a lecture late one night had been so beaten up by the guards
during his escape attempt that I had to treat his wounds. He told of another
whose legs were crushed by the guards after an escape attempt and who now had
to walk on crutches. “Welcome back to the free world,” I said. But he shook
his head. He was on his way up to North Carolina’s camps,
and voting with his feet was not a real choice for someone imprisoned
by indifferent American voters in this gulag. Elsewhere, I saw migrant camps
where whole families could live together but were so dependent on each
other’s earnings that they couldn’t afford to let their children leave work
to go to school. Even today much of America’s fruit is picked by children
under the age of 16. It’s worth remembering when we in Europe are bombarded
with cheap American fruit products that these are not only the result of
wages only half as high as in Scandinavia, but also the “grapes of wrath” of
farm workers, whom we have chosen not to provide with any social safety net
like ours. They have no unemployment benefits, no free medical care or
education, rent subsidies, child supplement, nurseries, or kindergartens.
When they get sick, they starve and are evicted like Sonny, on the right, in
2009 in Belle Glade. The cheap fruit we enjoy makes us guilty of de facto
slavery.
55
One day I saw the Coca-Cola name on the trucks that drive orange juice
from the camps to the northern states and found out that Coca-Cola, under the
name Minute Maid, owns quite a few of these slave camps. Coca-Cola’s slave
camps aren’t the worst in Florida although many children suffer from
deficiency diseases and anemia, which makes them exhausted and emaciated.
When my book first came out, Coca-Cola sent me a letter, admitting how
terrible the conditions were, but also stating they’d now embarked on reforms
and offered to fly me down there so that I could testify that they’d improved
conditions. I was delighted that my social critique was rewarded with a
vacation in Florida. But when I came back a few years later, the only visible
change was a name change on some of the chimneys.
56
In South Florida, I came to live with a white tomato grower who told
me he earned nearly a million dollars a year on migrant workers. I got kicked
out when he discovered my photographs of “niggers”:
- Now what is your main purpose? It isn’t just touring. I wasn’t born
yesterday. I tell you the truth, you’re from that civil rights stuff up
North.
- No I’m just studying agriculture for a book
...
- Well, if you stay with these slummy people, that’s the kind of
slummy book you gonna have, ain’t
that right? It depends on what kind of people you talk to. You say you talk
to both whites and colored.
- I trust everybody.
- You will find colored people treated better here than anywhere in
the United States. They are happy.
I always tried to respect the honesty of these southern racists, so
when my tape recorder later revealed that I, in the heat of the argument, had
told him a (white) lie, I felt a bit depressed. I had at that time no idea
that my photos would one day end up in a book.
57
Later I got to live with some of his field workers, who were blacks
and fugitive Mexicans. Their situation is depressing, to put it mildly. Many
are too destroyed to talk about their situation, but this woman, who was one
of the few poor whites in the fields, told me, in her little rented shack,
about the conditions:
-Have you ever been on welfare or food stamps? - If I could get it I would, because I really need it. -How much does your
husband make a week usually? - Not much, thirty-five or forty dollars a week,
maybe. That don’t hardly pay the rent and for something to eat. -And you work
seven days a week?
- Seven days a week for 40 dollars, yes!
-Was there times where you had nothing to
eat?
- There’s been times where I had nothing, not even a cigarette. I’ve
been down where I just had sugar, water and bread
for three weeks. The people who ain’t got it, they
really suffer.
- But who would you blame for it all?
- The government. It is trying to starve us out. -You don’t blame any
of the people around here?
- No, I don’t blame my people. I blame my government.
- I’m glad you don’t blame the blacks or the Mexicans for it. A lot of
people do, you know.
- No, this comes from the government itself. That’s the reason there
has been all the rioting and all this stuff... I’ve had my clothes
and everything burned out three times.
59
It was a pleasant surprise to find a poor white who didn’t indirectly
blame the blacks for her own misfortune since it’s common among poor whites
to turn them into scapegoats. In her town, Immokalee, several of the white
owners of slave camps were imprisoned by Florida’s attorney general.
But conditions have gotten far worse since my first visits, when armed
guards fired at all intruders. When NBC arrived, the journalists were shot at
and failed to film anything. Even white rednecks inclined to violence warned
me not to go there and didn’t dare drive me even in daylight. I ended up
living there for a week with some poor migrant workers, but to this day I’m
amazed I escaped with my life. Somehow I managed to
make friends with one of the black guards, who gave me a little food and
followed me at a distance in the streets to “protect” me. Both he and the
police chief told me that 25 dead bodies had been found in the streets in the
last half year in this town of only 3,000 inhabitants. Every single night I
could hear gunshots.
60
I saw more blood there than anywhere else in
America but only dared to photograph a few things. This Mexican was stabbed
while I was sitting next to him. Every morning there was a row of shabby
individuals along the road who’d been knocked down and robbed of everything
the night before and were now trying to hitchhike out of town. But many never
got out of this slave camp. What came to interest me most was not the dead
bodies but the live ones—people in whom everything was extinct. These
exhausted wretches, who’d managed to survive by working hard seven days a
week, had slowly succumbed and were now just lying around waiting to die. At
night they slept in the streets. One of them is squeezed in between the Pepsi
and the Coca-Cola machines.
Twenty-five years later, the picture hadn’t
changed. In 2008 the Immokalee Worker’s Anti-Slavery Campaign won its lawsuit
against what the US Attorney General called “outright slavery.” When I drove
a hitchhiker home to Immokalee in 1996, my fellow traveler, Eli Saeter, a Norwegian,
wrote about the trip in her book: “Outside the house where we are now, the
hiker found two people killed. One had his head shot away. The other was
stabbed. I’m scared. I dare not sleep. Jacob is exhausted, has driven far too
far. He sleeps like a rock.”
61
I soon received so many death threats because of
my photography that I, like the runaway black slaves of long ago, found
refuge with the Indians outside the city. I lived here with this Seminole
woman. I found it romantic to live in a palm-leaf hut, but the romance wasn’t
to last only a couple of days. One night I was awoken by shouts ordering me
out of the hut. I felt my last hour had come, but
had no choice other than to step out into the headlights of a pickup truck
from which men with guns shouted to me in Mexican accents: “You be out of
town before sunrise. If not, you will never see another sunrise!”
I knew they were deadly serious, and the woman
didn’t dare to harbor me any longer, so I slipped out of town like a shadow,
grateful that the Seminoles had given me shelter as they once had done for
blacks.
That I had indeed lived outside the law I saw
years later when I returned and found that the Seminoles had set up the
United States’ first Native American casino, laying the groundwork for a
multibillion-dollar industry to replace alligator wrestling and their
previous types of gambling. Yet I wouldn’t be surprised if whites long ago
took it over in the same way they took over so many black businesses.
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48
I mine vagabondår, 1970-76, anklagede Floridas justitsminister
ejerne af sukkerplantagerne for slaveri. Nogle få blev fængslet for
rent faktisk at lænke arbejderne, men kort tid efter blev sådanne slaveejere
simpelthen ikke retsforfulgt. Efter dagens trættende
arbejde kørtes de som kreaturer hjem til en slavelejr omgivet af pigtråd og ”Adgang
forbudt” skilte. Lige før mit første besøg væltede to sådanne lastbiler,
hvorved en blev dræbt og 125 såret. I stedet for at modtage erstatning, blev
mændene fyret. Inde i lejrene, hvor de boede op mod 100 i hvert rum, turde
kun én tale med mig, skjult på et WC, da de øjeblikkeligt blev fyret for at tale
med hvide. Skønt disse slavelejre ejes af Gulf & Western, er den
egentlige slaveejer regeringen og skatteyderne, som betaler halvdelen af
driftsomkostningerne for at undgå billigere importeret sukker.
52
I dag finder jeg flere og flere af disse slavelejre, og tager ofte mine
chokerede universitetsstuderende
med på besøg i dem. I Nord Carolina har jeg fundet barer, hvor "slavefangere" kidnapper
fulde mænd for at tage dem med
til deres lejre. Disse lejre adskiller og ødelægger den sorte familie,
som slaveriet altid har gjort det. Hustruer og børn må ikke komme i lejrene. Flere af de mænd, jeg talte med,
havde ikke set deres familier i op til otte måneder. En blodplettet,
sort blaffer, jeg samlede op efter et foredrag en sen nat, var blevet så
gennembanket af vagterne under sit flugtforsøg, at jeg måtte behandle hans
sår. Han fortalte om en anden, hvis ben blev knust af vagterne efter et
flugtforsøg, og som nu måtte gå på krykker. ”Velkommen tilbage til den frie
verden,” sagde jeg. Men han rystede på hovedet, da han nu var på vej op til
North Carolinas lejre. At stemme med fødderne var ikke et reelt valg for ham
– spærret inde af ligeglade amerikanske vælgere i dette Gulag-lejrsystem.
Andre steder så jeg migrantlejre, hvor hele familien kunne bo samlet, men var
så afhængige af hinandens indtjening, at de ikke havde råd til at lade deres
børn forlade arbejdet for at gå i skole. Selv i dag bliver meget af Amerikas frugt plukket af børn under 16 år.Det er
værd at huske, når vi i Europa bombarderes med billige amerikanske
frugtprodukter, at disse ikke blot er resultatet af lønnin
- ger kun halvt så høje som i Skandinavien, men også ”vredens druer” fra
landarbejdere, som vi uden for sæsonen har valgt ikke at give noget socialt
sikkerhedsnet. De har ingen dagpenge eller understøttelse, ingen gratis læge
- hjælp eller uddannelse, ingen boligsikring, børnetillæg, vuggestuer, eller
børnehaver. Den billige frugt, vi nyder, gør os i realiteten skyldige i en
form for slaveri.
55
En dag så jeg Coca Cola-navnet på de biler, som kører appelsinjuice fra
lejrene til nordstaterne, og fandt ved den lejlighed ud af, at det er Coca
Cola, som under navnet Minute Maid ejer en hel del
af disse slavelejre. Coca Colas slavelejre var vel ikke de værste.... selv om
børnene led af blodmangel, som gjorde dem trætte og udmarvede. I et brev til
mig indrømmede Coca Cola, hvor forfærdelige forholdene havde været, men at de
var gået i gang med reformer og tilbød at flyve mig derned, for at jeg kunne
bevidne, at de havde forbedret forholdene. Det glædede mig, at min
samfundskritik blev belønnet med en ferie i Florida. Men da jeg kom tilbage
nogle år senere, var den eneste synlige forandring et navneskift på nogle af
skorstenene.
56
I
Sydflorida kom jeg til at bo hos en hvid tomatavler, som fortalte mig, at han
tjente næsten en million dollars om året på disse migrantarbejdere. Senere
blev jeg smidt ud, da han opdagede mine fotografier af, hvad han kaldte
»niggere«: – Hvad er dit formål med at komme her og fotografere? Jeg ved
udmærket, hvad du er. Du er en af de borgerretsfolk oppe nordfra. – Nej, jeg
studerer bare landbrugsforhold til en bog.....Jeg
har tillid til mennesker... – Jeg skal sige dig en ting. Hvis du er sammen
med disse ”slummede” folk, får du ikke andet end en slummet bog ud af det.
Det kommer jo an på, hvad slags folk man snakker med. Du taler med både hvide
og farvede? – Jeg har tillid til alle. – Glem ikke, at vi behandler de
farvede bedre her er noget andet sted i landet. De er lykkelige. Jeg prøvede
altid at respektere ærligheden hos disse sydstatsracister, så da min
båndoptager senere afslørede, at jeg havde fortalt ham en nødløgn, følte jeg
mig lidt nedslået. Jeg havde på det tidspunkt ingen idé om, at mine fotos en
dag ville havne i en bog.
57
Senere kom jeg til at bo hos nogle af hans landarbejdere, sorte og
landflygtige mexicanere. Deres forhold er mildt sagt fortvivlede. Mange er
for ødelagte til at udtale sig om deres situation, men denne kone, som var en
af de få fattige hvide i markerne, fortalte mig i sit lille lejede skur om
forholdene:
– Har du nogensinde fået socialhjælp eller fødevarekuponer? – Nej, jeg kan
ikke få det, men har virkelig brug for det. – Hvor meget tjener din mand om
ugen? – Ikke ret meget, 35$ om ugen måske, det rækker knap nok til husleje og
mad. – Og I arbejder syv dage om ugen?
– Syv dage om ugen for kun 400 kr., ja!
– Har der været perioder, hvor I ikke havde mad?
– Der har været tider, hvor vi intet havde, intet. Ikke engang en cigaret.
Jeg har været så langt nede, at jeg kun havde sukker, vand og brød i tre
uger. Det er de fattige, der kommer til at lide.
– Men hvem mener du har skylden for det hele?
– Regeringen. Den forsøger at udsulte os.
– Du giver ikke befolkningen her omkring skylden?
– Nej, jeg bebrejder ikke folk. Det er regeringen.
– Jeg er glad for, at du ikke skyder skylden på de sorte og mexicanerne. Det
gør mange hvide, ved du.
– Nej, det er udelukkende regeringen. Det er derfor, der er alle de oprør og
mord hele tiden. Jeg har fået mit hus brændt ned 3 gange, mistede tøj og alt….
59
Det var en glædelig overraskelse her at finde en fattig hvid, som ikke
indirekte bebrejdede de sorte sin egen ulykke, da det ellers er normalt
blandt de fattige hvide at gøre dem til syndebuk. I hendes by, Immokalee,
blev flere af de hvide ejere af slavelejre fængslet af Floridas
justitsminister. Men forholdene er blevet langt værre siden mine første
besøg, hvor de bevæbnede vagter skød mod alle indtrængende. Da NBC ankom,
blev journalisterne beskudt, og det lykkedes dem ikke at filme noget. Selv
hvide »rednecks« af den hårdtslående type advarede mig mod at tage til
Immokalee og turde end ikke at køre mig dertil om dagen. Jeg boede den første
gang kun en uge hos fattige landarbejdere, men er den dag i dag overrasket
over, at jeg slap levende fra det. Det lykkedes mig at blive venner med en af
de sorte, bevæbnede vagter, som gav mig lidt mad og fulgte mig på afstand i
gaderne for at ”beskytte” mig. Både han og politichefen fortalte mig, at der
det sidste halve år var fundet 25 lig i gaderne i denne by på kun 3.000
indbyggere. Hver eneste nat kunne jeg høre skyderier.
60
Jeg så mere blod dér end noget andet sted i Amerika, men kun de færreste ting
turde jeg fotografere. Denne mexicaner blev stukket ned, mens jeg sad ved
siden af ham. Hver morgen stod der en række forhutlede mennesker, som var
blevet slået ned natten før og frarøvet alt og nu forsøgte at blaffe ud af
byen. Men mange vil aldrig komme ud af denne slavelejr. Det, der hurtigt
interesserede mig mest, var ikke de døde, men de levende lig – mennesker i
hvem alt var udslukt. Disse udmattede mennesker, der lå og sov på gaden,
havde tidligere overlevet ved hårdt arbejde syv dage om ugen, men var
langsomt bukket under og lå nu blot og ventede på at dø. Om natten lå de og
sov på gaden. En enkelt sidder klemt inde mellem Pepsi- og Coca
Cola-automaten. 25 år efter havde billedet ikke ændret sig. I 2008 vandt
Immokalee Worker’s Anti-Slavery
Campaign sin retssag mod det, som USAs justitsminister kaldte
»slet og ret slaveri«. Da jeg i 1996 kørte en blaffer hjem til Immokalee,
skrev min norske medrejsende Eli Saeter i sin bog om turen: »Udenfor huset
der vi er nå fant haikeren
to drepte mennesker. Den ene hadde
hodet skutt vekk. Den andre var knivstukket. Jeg er redd. Jeg tør ikke sove. Jacob er utslitt,
har kjørt alt for langt. Han sover som en stein.« Jo, med årene havde jeg selv vænnet mig til
volden.
61
Snart fik jeg så mange dødstrusler på grund af min fotografering, at jeg
ligesom tidligere bortløbne sorte slaver fandt et fristed hos indianerne uden
for byen, hvor jeg kom til at bo hos denne pige fra Seminolestammen. Jeg
fandt det romantisk at bo i disse palmebladshytter, men romantikken varede
ikke længe. Efter blot et par dage vidste man i byen, hvor jeg var, og en nat
blev vi vækket af råb om, at jeg skulle komme ud af hytten. Jeg følte det,
som om min sidste time var kommet, men havde intet valg og trådte lige ud i
skæret fra lygterne på en pick-up truck, hvori der
sad nogle bevæbnede mænd, som råbte til mig med mexicansk accent: »Du er ude
af byen før solopgang. Hvis ikke, kommer du aldrig til at se en solopgang
igen.« Da vidste jeg, at det var dødelig alvor, og pigen turde heller ikke at
have mig boende længere, så jeg forsvandt ud af byen som en skygge. At jeg
virkelig havde boet uden for lands lov og ret, så jeg seks år senere, da jeg
vendte tilbage og så, at seminole-indianerne på reservatet havde oprettet USAs første indianerkasino og
derved lagt grunden til en multimillarddollarindustri
som erstatning for deres tidligere hasardspil og alligatorbrydning
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