A new museum is mak­ing the case that slav­ery has not ended in Amer­ica. The Modern-Day Slav­ery Museum is mak­ing stops across Florida to show the story of cap­tive farm-workers in the state. The museum con­cen­trates on the con­di­tions of tomato farms in Florida, where some of the work­ers are held cap­tive against their will, fed drugs instead of a pay­check and beaten into staying.

From this arti­cle from “The Nation” that we found at NPR, writer Kat­rina Van­den Heuvel describes what is in the museum curated by the Coali­tion of Immokalee Workers.

The bulk of the museum is housed inside of a 24-foot box truck — a replica of the one used by the Navar­rete fam­ily in Immokalee to hold twelve farm­work­ers cap­tive from 2005 to 2007. The work­ers were beaten, chained and impris­oned inside of the truck, and forced to uri­nate and defe­cate in the cor­ners. US Attor­ney Doug Mol­loy called the oper­a­tion “slav­ery, plain and simple.”

Inside of the truck vis­i­tors learn about seven cases of farm labor servi­tude in Florida suc­cess­fully pros­e­cuted by the US Depart­ment of Jus­tice over the past 15 years. Work­ers were held against their will through threats, drugs, beat­ings, shoot­ings, and pistol-whippings. These cases meet the high stan­dard of proof and def­i­n­i­tion of slav­ery under fed­eral laws and resulted in the lib­er­a­tion of over 1000 farm­work­ers — CIW worked with fed­eral and local author­i­ties dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tion of six of the seven cases.

Barry Eastabrook described his expe­ri­ence in the truck for The Atlantic: “Inside, the vehi­cle was stacked high with card­board tomato car­tons. The floor was chipped and scuffed. There was a ply­wood sort­ing table — which dou­bled as a ‘bed’ for the work­ers. But what stays with me was the heat. Out­side, the day was chilly and over­cast, but inside the truck, even with the cargo door all the way open, the tem­per­a­ture became bor­der­line unbear­able. The stale air was uncom­fort­able to breathe. Sweat soaked the back of my shirt. And I was in there for less than five min­utes, not two and a half years.”

But it’s not just the con­tem­po­rary slav­ery exam­ples one finds inside the box truck that edu­cates the vis­i­tors. The museum is designed to look at the his­tory of slav­ery and forced labor — the evo­lu­tion of it — and the fact that there has never been a period in Florida agri­cul­ture when there wasn’t some form of forced labor. The exhibit was vet­ted by his­to­ri­ans, slav­ery experts, econ­o­mists and other aca­d­e­mics, includ­ing Nation edi­to­r­ial board mem­ber Eric Foner who said, “A cen­tury and a half after the Civil War, forms of slav­ery con­tinue to exist in the world, includ­ing in the United States. This Mobile Museum brings to light this mod­ern tragedy and should inspire us to take action against it.”

Before enter­ing the truck, the muse­um­goer is given a book­let and sees two large exhibits which pro­vide his­tor­i­cal con­text — exam­in­ing slav­ery from Span­ish set­tle­ment through Edward R. Murrow’s acclaimed CBS doc­u­men­tary Har­vest of Shame in 1960. Forms of slav­ery include chat­tel slav­ery, the convict-lease sys­tem through 1923, and debt peonage.

Another dis­play plays a 1993 60 Min­utes piece on Wardell Williams, a for­mer crew leader in Florida who kept work­ers in debt while also sup­ply­ing some with drugs and alcohol.

Inside of the truck the seven cases are described pow­er­fully through the use of pri­mary sources — court doc­u­ments, indict­ments, crim­i­nal com­plaints, tes­ti­mony. Miguel Flo­res and Sebas­t­ian Gomez held 400 work­ers under the watch of armed guards and assaulted — even shot — those who tried to escape. Abel Cuello held more than 30 tomato work­ers in two trail­ers in the iso­lated swamp­land west of Immokalee. Once out of prison, Cuello was able to resume sup­ply­ing labor to Ag-Mart Farms in Florida and North Car­olina. Michael Lee recruited home­less US cit­i­zens to har­vest oranges, cre­at­ing debt through loans for rent, food, cig­a­rettes, and cocaine. Ramiro and Juan Ramos had a work­force of over 700 farm­work­ers and threat­ened with death those who tried to leave. They also pistol-whipped and assaulted at gun­point van ser­vice dri­vers who gave rides to farm­work­ers leav­ing the area. Ronald Evans also recruited home­less cit­i­zens through­out the south­east with promises of good jobs and hous­ing, then kept them in a labor camp sur­rounded by a chain link fence topped with barbed wire. He also made sure they were per­pet­u­ally indebted to him, deduct­ing money from their pay for food, rent, crack cocaine, and alco­hol.
…

“The museum has made it pos­si­ble to lay out our argu­ment about slav­ery from A to Z, in a sort of irrefutable pack­age of com­pletely doc­u­mented and totally unim­peach­able facts,” says CIW staff mem­ber Greg Asbed. “And when you can see the whole his­tory and evo­lu­tion of four hun­dred years of forced labor in Florida’s fields assem­bled in one place, then all the false assump­tions about what dri­ves modern-day slav­ery just fall away. It’s not work­ers’ immi­gra­tion sta­tus today, or a few rogue bosses, but the fact that farm­work­ers have always been Florida’s poor­est, most pow­er­less work­ers. Poverty and pow­er­less­ness is the one con­stant that runs like a thread through all the his­tory. In short, you see, it’s not about who’s on the job today. It’s about the job itself.”

Sourced from: Poverty News Blog

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