Report Example on Guatemala Child Labor

Introduction

There are about fifty thousand workers in Guatemala coffee fields. The fields accommodate many families, each of whom inhabits a small shack within the confines of an encampment (Wagner & Stull, 2001). Some encampments are known to have no less than a hundred families. Guatemala coffee production began in the 1850s. Guatemala was the top coffee producer in Central America in the twentieth century. The initial growth of coffee in the region was slow due to lack of mechanization and enough finances to boost growth; hence depended on family loans. The plantations have been increasingly owned by foreign companies who have the financial power to provide investments for coffee planting. There is a scarcity of laborers in the region due to the rapid increase in coffee production (Wagner & Stull, 2001).

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Guatemala's Coffee Sector

Guatemala's coffee sector has had a history of violence and forced labor making the workers vulnerable to abuse. Coffee is tied to a long history of colonialism and slavery. Coffee growing in the region came with the Spanish, who disturbed the people's indigenous way of life (Kutschbach, 2019). Throughout the colonial period and after the Central American countries' independence, various laws concerning land tenure made the indigenous people either concert their land into plantations or moved away from the land. With the invention of chemical dye in Europe in the 1800s, the market for Guatemala indigo and cochineal, which was their main export, collapsed. Farming coffee replaced the export crop to become the new export and source of living for residents (Wagner & Stull, 2001). The local government supported it through trade and tax treatments. By 1859 more than half a million coffee trees had been plated around Antigua, Coban, and San Marcos, which, when harvested, were exported to European countries (Wagner & Stull, 2001).

Guatemalan dictator Justo Rufino Barris made coffee export the backbone of the country in the 1870s. In 1880, coffee comprised a total of 90% of Guatemalans export. In 1950 the populist Jacobo Arbenz was elected for president and began implementing land tenure reforms, which saw a wroth for coffee plantation owners and the Americans (Wagner & Stull, 2001). Labor relations in the agricultural and coffee sectors have not changed much in the region since the last century. Coffee harvest depended much on the migrant workers who traveled to supplement the meager income generated by their small land plots. In the twenty-first century, coffee production in Guatemala reached five million quintiles. Over half of the coffee produced in Guatemala is exported to united states companies and represents eight GNP countries. With the large amount of money produced from coffee farming, only a small percent of the income goes to the laborers(Wagner & Stull, 2001).

Most coffee workers are effectively enslaved through debt peonage, which is forced labor to repay debts (Gibbings, 2016). Large coffee plantations and coffee producing present areas workers with the permanent workforce. Inside the estates, the source of essential goods is usually in the plantation shops owned by the landowner. Workers are prevented from shopping from other shops because of their long hours of work and lack of transport to the outside estate. Since workers earn very low wages and pay inflated prices for goods from the shop, they end up with nothing to show for their hard and long hours of work. Most workers borrow from the company again and always remain indebted to the plantation (Kutschbach, 2019).

Sometimes, families and their generations work and live in the plantations due to the debts and cost of renting, interest on loans, and health care plans. The majority of Guatemala coffee workers were paid less than the minimum wage (Gibbings, 2016). There is also discrimination against women, bad living environments, child labor, and lack of legally required health and safety initiatives and access to education in Guatemala.

Harvesting

During the harvesting seasons in Guatemala, there is a positive hive of activities. Harvesting is normally done in august and the mid- Decembers. Not all beans are located at the same location; hence some ripen earlier than others. Successful harvesting of coffee requires a large workforce. An average of fifty people is required to harvest a hectare. The plantations require the plantation to use all its permanent workers and casual workers. During the harvesting period, women, like men, are paid according to the quality of beans picked (Gibbings, 2016).

Women and children are sometimes included in the harvesting of the coffee on top of other domestic duties. They accompany the head of the house that is the man, and are paid as reserves. Children in the coffee plantations are regarded as infants or youths. The infants are the young children who can pick the coffee beans without damaging the shrubs. When the children damage the shrubs, their parents are heavily fined by the plantation owner. During the harvesting season, children abandon their schooling (Kutschbach, 2019).

Infants and small children also are used to picking the fallen coffee beans off the ground. The youths also pick up coffee, with each gender having different roles. Girls are used to emptying wicker baskets while boys are used to dreg along the rows of coffee shrubs and are supposed to keep up with the pickers. Most of the children pickers are paid nothing for the labor they supply. The situation is encouraged by the men and women who are very insecure and entirely depend on the plantation for everything; hence, they cannot take a stand against the plantation owners.

The current law in Guatemala provides the legal ground for the coffee plantation owners to justify their children's employment without pay. Coffee planters and owners do not see a problem with children picking up a few beans for free. They believe that they are giving children a chance to prove themselves and become more socialized within the plantations' confines. The plantation workers do not see child labour as a problem because it is already an established system and order of the plantations and jeopardizes their positions if they saw it as a problem (Kutschbach, 2019).

Countries like stsrbucks and Nespresso export coffee beans produced in Guatemala. The companies have a huge history of using child labor across the globe for production. Slavery and child labor are happening on the farm on behlf of these companies to make more profits instead of using the fair and appropriate trade to get coffee (Tucker, 2017).

Starbucks, owned by Nestle used children who work for over forty hours a week under very harsh environmental conditions such as rain and pay them a low wage of under-five euros, which is only slightly more than one coffee cup. The company is violating the international laboe organization's set standards, a specialized agency of the united nations, by permitting and fueling child labor in Guatemala (Tucker, 2017). The company values profits and cost efficiency more than it values human rights and condones the amounts of children slaverly in their coffee plantations. They employ children to harvest coffee beans. Children who work in their plantations experience physical violence and the supervisors' threats, especially if they try to leave the farm to escape. It is estimated that children who are not paid are double that of paid (Tucker, 2017).

Child Labor and Human Traffickin

Child labor and human trafficking prevent children in Guatemala from getting an education, threaten their physical and mental, and psychological growth. It also makes children have stunted growth due to starvation and an unbalanced diet(Tucker, 2017). Starbucks distanced themselves from the child labor and stated that they made no coffee from firms identified to use child labor. They also promised to increase the frequency of third party audits on their coffee and farmer equity practices verified farms. They also claimed to send relief funds to Starbucks farmers in Guatemala to invest in social services resources and manage the community and childcare center, but they did not keep their promises.

After giving all these promises, Starbuck used child labor on the next occasion to harvest coffee where children joined their parents. Children as young as eight years were working eight hours a day for six days a week. Starbucks did not practice fair trade like other small coffee shops worldwide, thus earning high profits(Tucker, 2017).

Poverty levels in Guatemala are very high. Over half of the people living in Guatemala live in poverty. Poverty levels in Guatemala are higher than in other countries in Central America. Statistics show that Guatemala's poverty levels have been increasing, with 64% of the population living and poverty and over 30% of the population living in extreme poverty (Schreiner & Woller, 2016). Families in Guatemala are unable to afford the minimum daily caloric intake of food. About two-thirds of the children living in Guatemala live in poverty. Due to the high fertility rate in the region, 63% of children under 18 years live below the poverty line. The poverty line is defined as the yearly cost of food necessary to meet the body's minimum caloric requirement and other basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter, and education. Poverty in Guatemala is specifically worse in rural areas. 81% of the rural areas' population are poor, meaning that over three-quarters of the rural areas fall below poverty lines (Schreiner & Woller, 2016). The indigenous community poverty levels are significantly higher than in other communities. The communities mostly live in the northern and the northwestern region of the country.

Conclusion

Guatemala is among the countries in the world where income and wealth distribution is almost equal. A low-income majority primarily characterizes the Guatemala population, and only a small percentage of the population are high earners. About 1% of the population controls over 65% of the countries wealth (Grech, 2017). Malnutrition among Guatemalan children is extremely high and among the worst in the world. Malnutrition in the country is related to the extreme levels of poverty (Grech, 2017). The factors contributing to high poverty levels in the country include forced labor, debt servitude, vagrancy laws, and the civil war due to the ethnic communities.

Education in Guatemala is free and compulsory for primary education. On education matters, Guatemala's literacy is below average in Latin America. Women, the poor, and the indigenous and rural community are the most illiterate people (Grech, 2017). Enrolment in schools is low among girls, the poor, and the people living in rural areas. There is low availability of education at the secondary level and above due to biasness against the disadvantaged groups than the primary level.

Primary school coverage in the country is still low by both regional and world standards. The reason for low literacy levels in the country is the low government spendings on education. Teachers in the country also have low experience and inconsistent salaries, which is a great inconvenience. Insufficient funding that forces parents to invest in textbooks, salaries, and other bills also leads most parents not to take their children to school. The average years for education in Guatemala are 4.28 years per person (Grech, 2017). Twenty-five percent of the population is illiterate, with the rate going up to 60% of the indigenous population and 42% of the people living in rural areas (Grech, 2017).

References

Gibbings, J., 2016. "The Shadow of Slavery": Historical Time, Labor, and Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. Hispanic American Historical Review, 96(1), pp.73-107.