But these overworked, poorly paid workers are the lucky ones. In Immokalee, some migrant farm workers face far harsher conditions as slaves. Not “virtual” wage slaves, but actual slaves – kidnapped or tricked into captivity by slave traders, sold to field bosses as property, and confined at night in locked trucks or sheds, threatened or beaten if they try to escape, and sometimes even chained. Their wages, paid by tomato farmers, are confiscated by the subcontractors who supervise slave workers and bring them to and from the fields.
In Tomatoland, Estabrook profiles one such slave, Lucas Mariano Domingo, a migrant Guatemalan worker who had come to the United States seeking farm work with the hope of supporting a sick parent back home. Instead, he was tricked by an Immokalee slave boss, Cesar Navarette, who promised good pay, good food and a safe place to live, only to hold Domingo captive for two years in a slave camp where Domingo was forced to work all day in fields under Navarette’s direction and live in the back of a box truck with three other men, no heat or air conditioning and no toilet. Navarette’s slaves were regularly recaptured and beaten if they tried to escape.
Domingo finally escaped his captors in 2009 and reported them to the police; they were prosecuted for violating the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits slavery. But according to District Attorney Douglas Malloy, other slavers continue to operate in Immokalee.
Modern day slavery in the West
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