To make a Tax-Deductible Donation to Xochilt Project/Project Sonrisas:

Earlier this month we held a benefit, Viva Solidarity, to raise money for the clinic where Loren Speer and Frazer Lanier will be working in Nicaragua.

This is their first week where the two are already hard at work in the capital of Managua, documenting with their camera how the people of this country live and the issues they’re trying to overcome.

Their first interview was with former banana workers who have endured serious physical ailments at a result of working at various banana factories.

In addition to this footage, Frazer had this to say:

I found some information on chemicals that Chiquita, Shell, Dow Chemical, and Del Monte have used all over Central America and the Philippines. The chemical these corporations was using is called Nemagon, and is a pesticide that was outlawed in the US in 1979, but these corporations continued to export their left-over pesticide to the developing world for their partner plantations well into the 80s.

The chemical causes sterility in men, and uterus and breast cancer in women along with a myriad of other deadly or debilitating side effects. 22,000 Nicaraguans are said to be suffering from the chemical, and thousands of them have filed a lay suit in which a Nicaraguan court ruled that these multinationals has to pay $490 million, but the companies haven't paid a cent saying that the Nicaraguan court system is corrupt.

This situation is what led the women in the clinic we are working at to start a gynecological clinic in El Viejo with the banana workers union.

We will be visiting the banana plantation this weekend, and do interviews with the people working at the clinic as well.

Stay tuned.
Loren Speer and Frazer Lanier

lspeer@mscd.edu
frazer.lanier@gmail.com

To make a Tax-Deductible Donation to Xochilt Project/Project Sonrisas:

For more information on Project Sonrisas: http://www.oregonbio.org/news/post/87