By Raechel Tiffe, who recently visited Guatemala with STITCH's Women's Leadership Delegation

The air in Morales, Guatemala is hot. More than hot, the air in Morales Guatemala would be more suitably compared to how it must feel to camp out in a 150 degree oven, wrapped up in a wet woolen blanket. But amidst this rural Central American landscape also rests a town owned by the transnational
banana corporation, Del Monte. It is here where many of the Del Monte workers live, leaving them always in the palm of Del Monte's clean, unlabored hands.

The shacks that line the dirt road are not in unblemished condition, but they are all brightly colored, and bloom like flowers along the way. Clothes lines of chemical-laden work gear hang to dry while Guatemalan families sit beneath the awnings of make-shift porches in a fairly vain attempt to seek refuge from the heat, only to find that it is not so much the sun as much as the inescapable humid air.

I am here, bouncing down the uneven path on a “chicken bus” (as they call it here), with two women—Carmen Molina and Selfa Sandoval—from SITRABI, the union that organizes the workers on the Del Monte finca (farm). As we travel down closer to the plantation, Selfa describes life in the town,
citing the victories attained by the union in terms of their civic life.

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