The Human Cost of Your Mother's Day Flowers

All photos by Juan Arredondo. All names (apart from Beatriz Fuentes) have been changed to conceal identities

Lorena never wanted to work in the cut-flower industry. But when she gave birth to the first of two daughters at the age of 19, she understood she needed the money. In the region of Colombia where Lorena has spent her entire life—known as the Bogotá Savanna—cut flowers are king. “There’s no other work, no other industry here,” she told me when I visited her this spring. As a single mother, Lorena had few alternatives but to enter the vast farms and factories, where she cut, trimmed, and arranged carnations, alstroemerias, and roses for export to flower-hungry US consumers.

Almost 20 years later, Lorena’s two daughters have managed to avoid working with flowers—one is a student, and the other does missionary work—but Lorena still works in the same plantations, pulling a minimum-wage salary of $333 per month. Years of difficult and dangerous work have wracked Lorena’s body, leaving debilitating injuries in their wake. Lorena traded her youth and health to support her family. “I don’t want the same for my daughters,” she told me.

The National Retail Federation estimates that this Mother’s Day weekend, Americans will purchase more than $2 billion worth of flowers. Almost 80 percent of those flowers come from Colombia, where impoverished mothers like Lorena toil long hours to produce tokens of affection for more fortunate mothers elsewhere. While the provenance of the peonies we buy last minute at gas stations, supermarkets, and corner store bodegas remains a mystery for most Americans, for the women that produce these bouquets the cut-flower industry is a harrowing reality, and Mother’s Day is a cruel joke.

The Elite Flower, a major plantation on the outskirts of Facatativá

Work in the cut-flower industry is notoriously dangerous. Flowers are fickle and sensitive to pests and disease. To protect their investments, companies pump highly toxic pesticides and fungicides into the greenhouses where flowers are grown. Twenty percent of these chemicals are so toxic and carcinogenic that they’re prohibited in North America and Europe. As a result, workers often suffer from rashes, headaches, impaired vision, and skin discoloration. Women, who make up 70 percent of the cut flower workforce in Colombia, report substantially higher instances of birth defects and miscarriages.

In the high season between Valentine’s Day and the summer wedding season, work conditions deteriorate as companies cut corners and rush to get their flowers to market. During these months, women oftentimes wake at three of four in the morning in order to finish chores and prepare meals for their families. By dawn, they are already at the plantation, where a workday can last from 16 to 20 hours. After a few hours of rest, the marathon starts over again.

In early March, I traveled to Facatativá, Colombia, to meet Lorena and others workers responsible for our Mother’s Day bouquets. Located an hour and a half outside Bogotá, Facatativá is a sprawling, dusty city that sits in the heart of the Savanna. Thousands of acres of flower farms, blanketed under gray plastic tarps, stretch from the city’s borders like spider webs.

Discarded bouquets in the Facatativá cemetery

When I met Lorena in front of her home, she was visibly nervous. If her employer found out that she’d spoken out against the industry, she said, there could be serious consequences. Just over five feet tall, Lorena has the petite build of a young girl. But her body, she laments, has been broken by countless hours of huddling over flower beds, trimming stem after stem. Years of cutting, bunching, and arranging bouquets in massive factories. She rattles off a list of injuries: tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, a spinal column disability, a torn rotator cuff. Though the company provides minimal health care, Lorena has to fight to see a doctor. “Every time I go they say there are people with more serious problems, and they push me to the back of the line.”

Does the company where she works offer any precautions to protect her and her colleagues from the dangerous pesticides sprayed on the flowers? “Yes, they give us masks and gloves,” she told me as we sat in the living room of her cinder-block home. “But you can still feel it on you when you come home. Whenever anyone falls sick, the company investigates it thoroughly, attempting to shift the responsibility from the company to the workers.” Lorena recounted the story of a co-worker who’d recently collapsed in the middle of his shift, his face turning purple. “The company says that it was just a heart attack. But there’s a rumor that he’d succumbed to the chemical sprays.”

Carlos, Alejandra, and their daughter at home

Given the arduous conditions I asked why she continued to work in the industry. Lorena nodded toward her daughter, flitting between other parts of the house. “The most important thing,” she said, “is to have a home for my family.”

A week later, I attended a meeting to discuss the role of women and labor rights within the industry. “What we’re looking for is to form and organize the flower workers' sector,” Beatriz Fuentes, one of the event’s organizers, told me afterward. Fuentes worked for years in the cut-rose plantations before becoming a union leader.

Workers listen to speakers during a meeting to discuss the rights and roles of women in the cut-flower industry.

“Women are chosen to work in the flower industry because they have agile hands—they can go through the motions smoother and more efficiently,” Fuentes explained. “Their hands aren't as heavy, and so they can manage the flowers and arrange the bouquets faster.”

But in exchange, they’re often taken advantage of. “Women are regularly paid less than men for the same jobs,” Fuentes said. Because of limited alternative employment—Colombia regularly has the highest unemployment rate in Latin America—female workers are hesitant to assert their rights. Companies commonly require female employees to take pregnancy tests in order to weed out workers who might be eligible for maternity leave. A 2008 International Labor Rights Forum report suggested that more than half of all women in the industry have suffered from sexual harassment.

As the meeting wound down, I struck up a conversation with Alejandra and her husband, Carlos. Between the two of them, they’ve spent almost 50 years on the plantations. Like Lorena, both Carlos and Alejandra have torn rotator cuffs—Carlos in both arms. Because of her injury, Alejandra can no longer work. Carlos, only 53, walks with a cane. He can only work sitting down.

Carlos, Alejandra, and their daughter at home

The next day, I came to their home for a cup of coffee. The couple have two daughters—Camila, who’s just a child, and Mariana, who’s of high school age. Mariana wants to escape the industry and go to college in Bogotá, but the family can’t afford the $5 it costs for her to travel to the capital and back each day. Now she’s picking up spare shifts on the plantation.

Carlos and Alejandra are involved in an effort to unionize flower workers for better conditions. It’s an uphill battle, they say. Increasingly, companies are veering away from permanent employees in favor of temporary, three-month contracts brokered by employment agencies. Known as tercerización (or third-party hiring), the practice is illegal but rampant.

“With an indefinite contract, you have much more security—I can plan on taking care of my family,” Carlos said. Unlike the younger generation of hires, he still has a permanent contract.  “If my job wants to get rid of me, they need to do it for a just cause, like showing up to work drunk. But with these temporary contracts, they can work you to the bone and toss you aside.”

A dumpster's worth of discarded flowers and wreaths in the Facatativá cemetery

Carlos called his 25-year-old neighbor, Sofía, to come over and testify to life as a temporary contractor. “In the farm where I work,” Sofía said, “no one works for the company—everyone works on contract. The companies keep track of whether we’re good or bad workers. If you’re bad, they won’t hire you. And if you’re part of a union, they won’t hire you either.”

Without stronger labor rights and greater visibility, Carlos and Alejandra believe the conditions in the cut-flower industry are unlikely to improve. Meanwhile, the backbreaking work and long hours are having a destructive ripple effect throughout the community.

Flower beds in the Elite Flower plantation

“There are so many mothers in this industry who have to work all day and can’t take care of their children,” Alejandra told me, her young daughter cradled on her lap. “Kids go to school and get out at 1 or 2 in the afternoon, and their parents don’t come home until 1 in the morning. So what do these kids do during that time? How can our kids grow up and be cared for when their parents are gone?”

“In the United States,” Carlos added, “people love flowers. But they have no idea what goes on here. A husband might give his wife a bouquet of flowers, and it’s a beautiful gesture. But he doesn’t know about the pain it took to get it there. People in the United States just don’t think about all this.”

Source: Vice.com

The Devil's Carnaval Returns to Colombia

The devil is everywhere in Riosucio, Colombia. He walks the streets in broad daylight, his pink-tipped dreads falling over a blood-red cape. At night, she sits barefoot on a corner, playing her Andean flute and sipping chica—a murky, artisanal corn liquor—from a two-liter Coca-Cola bottle. And in the lower plaza, next to the church La Señora de la Candelaria, he looms 20-feet high astride a black, serpent-tailed bull, presiding over his subjects with a great golden trident.

It's Tuesday night, and for another day, at least, the devil will enjoy total dominion over this small town on the eastern slopes of the Andes' Western Mountain (or Cordillera Occidental). This, after all, is the Carnaval del Diablo—the Devil's Carnival—and from the menacing, toothy look on his face, His Majesty the King very much likes what he sees.

Locals assure me that tonight marks a low point in the biannual, six-day festivities. Much of the crowd has left, returned to their mundane, God-fearing lives in Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, and beyond. Those still remaining are drained from countless hours of music, dance, and almost perpetual excess.

"Before, the rumba never used to stop—ever—not even so that people could sleep," one elderly resident told me disapprovingly.

Photos by Mcleoud unless otherwise noted

Maybe so, but an off night in the Devil's Carnival still drags on until after the sun has come up the following morning. The cuadrillas—extravagantly costumed carnival troupes—are still out and up to no good, albeit in reduced numbers. Craftsmen and street vendors from across the country still line the main plazas, selling books, popcorn, bead jewelry, knit clothing, paintings, toys made from scrap parts, chorizo sausage, flower seeds, and, in one case, baby rabbits and chickens. Musicians still lead salsa and cumbia parades down the dim side streets. The guarapo—made from fermented sugar cane—and chicha—from fermented corn—still flow with abandon. And public fornication, if not altogether encouraged, is at the very least not frowned upon.

"That spirit, which is pure love and joy, you have to obey it, you have to serve it, you have to live it in your soul and in your body," Nicolas Lerma told me. "That's the only way to please His Majesty and bring His peace to the people."

Lerma would have good reason to know. As a matachín—a carnival jester—he is one of a host of mortal servants enlisted to ensure the continuance of this sacred and time-honored tradition. The carnival itself involves six months of ceremony and ritual preparation before the actual six-day festival, and a central organizing body—including a president, mayor, and other functionaries—and small army of round-the-clock cleaning and logistical personnel are all called on to pull off what has become one of the more famous cultural spectacles in a country whose calendar is overflowing with them.

The Devil's Carnival traces its roots back to 1819, before there was such a thing as Colombia, according to the organizing council's website. At the time, Riosucio consisted of two distinct, antagonistic mining communities, one descended from Africans and one indigenous. As a result of a peace accord negotiated by the communities' respective priests, the two towns built their main plazas within one block of one another and began hosting an early version of the carnival, which loosely coincided with the Spanish Día de los Reyes Magos (Three Kings' Day).

Riosucio—comprising the city itself, the dozens of informal settlements that surround it, and the Cañamomo y Lomaprieta indigenous reserve—has maintained much of its ethnic makeup and traditions. In its fusion of African, indigenous, and Spanish myth and custom, the Devil's Carnival is a celebration of "brotherhood, peace, and happiness" and of the unique history of this tiny corner of Colombia's impossibly diverse cultural landscape.

It is also a sweeping sacrament to the universal magic of booze. Traditionally used as a drinking instrument, the gourd, or calabaza, is the carnival's other major symbol. At the closing ceremony, it's laid to rest alongside its master in the hopes that both will soon return. Presiding over the rite, the vice president of the organizing committee eulogizes, among other things, the "exquisite, celestial taste" of the "burning, aromatic, and sensual" cane liquor that is guarapo, legendary for its exuberant drunk and proportionally demonic hangover.

The Spanish influence is most obvious in the correlajas, or bull-runnings. Unlike in Spain or parts of the Colombian Caribbean, where the bulls for the Devil's Carnival are shipped from, there is no official matador. (The bulls don't die or suffer serious injury, either.) Instead, residents come down with their families to the makeshift bamboo arena on the outskirts of town to drink aguardiente and jeer while successive bulls are unleashed, one at a time, on anyone brave or stupid enough to jump in the ring with them.

Photo by the author

A 24-year-old was killed on one of the first days after a bull impaled him through the groin. But that didn't stop the town from showing out for the next two days. The Riosucio gentry, many of whom, I'd been led to understand, are big in the local gold-mining industry, held prime seats in the shaded upper deck, fanning themselves in the mid-afternoon heat and throwing empty beer cans at the bulls when they passed while offering up harsh critiques of the runners' bravery. The rest of the town picnicked on the neighboring hillside or crowded behind the cage walls, which runners climb desperately whenever the prospect of lethal goring seems imminent.

Nicolas Lerma, the carnival jester, was there, decked out in full matador garb as he was led, stumbling, through the rink by fellow jester Hector Mario Ramírez and shouting slurred proclamations to his adoring public. The two of them, Ramírez being the straight man to Lerma's buffoon, would be back in new costumes later that night, this time in the upper plaza at the front of the devil's funeral procession.

Satan's reign on Earth, or the small patch of it that is Riosucio, Colombia, is a brief and tragic one. The carnival, ushered in with pomp and lavish frenzy, ends with a somber, if drunken, parade through the streets.

"Devil, how could you leave us?"

"Devil, stay with us. Please, stay with us. We beg you."

" ¡Que dolor tan hijodeputa!"

These are some of the cries that punctuated the steady chorus of salsa emanating from the plaza. Behind the ceremonial calabaza marched a hooded sect of apparent Satan worshippers and weeping "widows," chanting dark prayers into the warm night. At the head of the line, ringing a large funeral bell carried on a post by two satanic minions, Lerma and Ramírez called out to heavens, accepting occasional shots from onlookers impressed by their performance (as judged by the jesters' ability to produce genuine tears).

"Why, Devil? Why? Does it seem fair to you that after five nights with us, you leave us for no reason? Why?"

The devil didn't offer an explanation for his sudden, albeit not unexpected, departure. But he did deliver a lengthy closing speech reinforcing the values of joy and love just before his likeness—along with that of one of his wives, a 30-foot yellow demoness—went up in a billow of flame and black smoke in the heart of the town square.

"I may be gone," said the devil, speaking through yet another vassal. "But I inhabit each of you. And I will return."

Source: Vice.com

Aphrodisiacs in Cali, Colombia

Photo via Flickr user Mario Carvajal

I meet Guillermo at a pizza parlor in San Antonio, the colonial part of Cali, Colombia, popular with young gringos and Europeans. As we get to talking, it turns out Guillermo lived in NYC for four years, he's into heavy metal, and he's a dealer. After finishing our pizza we walk over a few blocks to his apartment in El Centro where we enter through a small dry goods store. While he opens up drawers and pulls out different-sized plastic envelopes containing acid, ecstasy, cocaine, pot, and opium, Guillermo's mother walks back and forth, attending to customers who've come to buy sugar, chocolate milk, beer, and cigarettes.

I buy a gram of near-pure coke for $5 dollars, though it's mostly out of politeness. The fact is, I'm after another drug that's a lot harder to come by, and Guillermo is one of the only dealers in Cali who stocks it.

After Guillermo packs up the recreational drugs, he reaches over, grabs a knapsack and starts pulling out dozens of exotic little pillboxes. He gives me the lowdown on the effects of each of them and in the end I choose a black bottle (for $20 dollars) with its brand name written in Chinese, Korean, Arabic, and Russian and illustrated with silhouettes of two golden kangaroos. Inside, there are ten golden pills in the shape of Australian boomerangs. The instruction pamphlet in the box explains that these pills "...trigger love fire through expanding and comfortable swelling...."

It's not that I need "love fire" in a pill (I'm still a hard-working man with plenty of piss and vinegar in me), but I'm up to giving it a run with my local lady friend just for kicks. According to Guillermo, when he first started selling sex stimulants there was a stigma attached to the pills that only sexually inadequate men needed them, but now men of all ages and sexual preferences are popping pills in front of their lovers as part of a normal, healthy sex life.

It's hard to generalize about cities and cultures, but there are several reasons why caleños might very well enjoy more, better sex than people in most cities around the world. The fact that Cali enjoys intense year-round tropical heat, allowing locals to strut around in their skimpiest clothes; that even strangers call each other papi, mami, and amor; that most everyone learned to dance salsa when they were children and are thus great movers and shakers; that the cocaine produced here is pure and cheap; the fact that prostitution is legal and there are dozens of whore houses for all wallets; and that there are affordable, extravagant love motels all over the city, surely ups the level of sexual activity in this town.

In addition to the traditional places where people make love, sex in and around the city is so common that there is a name, desnucadero, for the myriad places, such as abandoned buildings, construction sites, dark alleys, etc, where people sneak in for a quick hump; a local term for quickies in public places, bluyinear, which means fucking with your blue jeans on; and a new trend called dogging, where young people agree on the internet to meet in local parks for sex.

These natural sex pills are mostly made in Asia, but they also work wonders for the racially diverse men in this tropical, sexually-saturated city. Caleños have long consumed their own local aphrodisiacs including natural products such as bananas, coconut, a fruit named borojol, and the homemade sugarcane alcohol named viche (one variety of which is called tumba catres, bed-breakers). In addition, local markets sell magic products, such as powders, sprays, lotions, and candles (one in the shape of a large black dick with balls) designed to help both men and women dominate their lovers and give them superpowers in bed.

Nonetheless, these days, global corporations peddling pharmaceuticals engineered to increase blood circulation in male genitals have penetrated sexual activity across the globe, including way down here in the southwestern corner of Colombia. Men in Cali increasingly look to modern corporate chemistry to give their sex life a lift.

Although men in the West seek help from pharmaceuticals, in the East there are hundreds of products that claim to be composed of natural ingredients that traditional healers have been prescribing for thousands of years to keep men and women happy, healthy, and sexed-up. China's ancient herbal and animal aphrodisiacs repackaged in modern pill form have recently become a huge export industry, and in the last decade sales of natural sexual enhancers have tripled.

Photo via Flickr user Julian Fong

Nearly every drugstore in Cali sells Viagra and half a dozen cheaper generic varieties over the counter. While local sex shops in the city sell some alternative Viagra, few sell natural sex products from Asia, leaving Guillermo a window of opportunity. In the 90s, inside an upscale mall, Guillermo tells me he ran one of the city's only sex shops in Cali, selling inflatable dolls, handcuffs, and remote controlled vaginas (there are sex shops all around town servicing the city's population of two million). Although he no longer has a sex shop, Guillermo still sells a long line of lubricants, delayers, dilators, and dildos, as well as more than a dozen varieties of Asian sex stimulants he says are smuggled in from Hong Kong through the coastal town of Buenaventura.

Asian sex pills claim to be made from natural products that include a wide variety of plants, such as wolfberry and saffron, though ginseng, which often grows in exotic seductive shapes that resemble curvaceous women and worth their weight in gold, tends to be listed as the main ingredient. My gold pills, however, announce that they contain not only plants but also powder derived from some very sensitive parts of some very exotic animals, including "testicle of yak, sea horse penis, sea dog penis, snow deer penis, tiger penis, snake penis, Tibetan mastiff penis, Tibetan goat penis, and Tibetan donkey penis."

It's hard to know what these pills really contain since there is no industry oversight of herbal treatments. Many of them start working their magic in under half an hour, basically the same as Viagra and other pharmaceutical stimulants. Pfizer, the manufacturer of Viagra, has long accused Asian natural sex stimulants of being laced with sildenafil, their wonder pill's main ingredient, and the powerful pharmaceutical lobby applauds when the FDA bans or recalls "herbal" pills containing active substances found in patented sex products.

According to NBC, a study by Pfizer estimated that 69% of more than the 3,000 Asian sex pills they tested were laced with patented lab compounds, but it's hard to swallow such statistics knowing that pharmaceutical corporations will go to great lengths to crack down on competition, especially natural, lower-priced alternatives.

Even when they are not adulterated, laboratory-produced chemical compounds that enhance the functioning of the male sexual organ are known to produce such side effects as headaches, flushed faces, nasal congestion, nausea, irregular heartbeat, tremors, changes in blood pressure, visual disturbances (such as difficulty distinguishing between green and blue), chest pain, and can lead to more serious complications when used in conjunction with other pharmaceuticals or stimulants.

With so much uncertainty surrounding the ingredients of both over-the-counter and under-the-radar pills, and with so many cultural, social, and economic concerns, what's a man to do? Obviously, go for the cheapest ones in the coolest bottles designed with the most potent images (one box has an image of Godzilla and Mothra going head to head in battle), accompanied by the most evocative results ("to quicken blood flow to cells in male cavernous body").

In the end, despite possible health risks and risks to endangered species, for me it boils down to whether these pills work. The golden pill I pop has me up and ready in about 20 minutes, and keeps my member standing at attention for hours of great sex. It's exciting to achieve the much announced "bigger, stronger, harder, longer," though I'm quite aware that a big boner doth not a great lover make. Although I've probably just consumed some form and quantity of pharmaceutical substance along with other ingredients of unknown origin, I am grateful that by merely swallowing a miniature golden boomerang from a bottle decorated with kangaroos and beautiful Chinese characters I was able to achieve what my pills' instructional and poetical pamphlet guaranteed in five different languages, the "infinite tremendous."

Source: Vice.com