Immokalee coalition debuts
modern-day slavery
museum

By AMY BENNETT WILLIAMS • awilliams@news-
press.com • February 28, 2010

11:46 A.M. — The white truck's cargo space is dark,
cluttered and hot - walls lined with stained p
lywood, cardboard boxes stacked head-high, a
clanking steel roll-down door that locks from
outside.

This is what home looked like for some of the
Navarrete family's slaves.

It's best not to imagine what it smelled like - the 24-
square-foot truck's corners were the locked-in
captives' toilets.

This ordinary-seeming produce truck is the
centerpiece of the Florida Modern-Day Slavery
Museum, which begins touring today.

It's a replica of the one the Navarretes used before
they went to federal prison in 2008 for keeping 12
slaves they forced to pick tomatoes on some of
Florida's biggest farms. After promising the Mexican
and Guatemalan men work, Navarrete family
members confiscated their IDs, tied, chained and
beat them if they tried to leave. Although they
advanced their victims "credit" for necessities, they
didn't pay them for their work, all of which added up
to slavery "plain and simple," according Chief
Assistant U.S. Attorney Doug Molloy.

Slavery? Didn't slavery end in 1865?

Not in Florida's agriculture industry, say the
farmworkers who are putting the mobile museum
together.

In fact, the U.S. government has freed more than
1,000 slaves in Florida since 1997.

The idea is to educate people about how this
scourge persists and how to end it, according to the
Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which is putting it
together.

In addition to trying to improve pay and working
conditions, the grassroots nonprofit is recognized
as a leader in the fight against contemporary
slavery. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement
asked the group to help create its slavery
investigation curriculum; FBI director Robert Mueller
has lauded it; and its new museum has earned
praise from human rights groups like Amnesty
International.

Visitors to the free museum can climb into the truck
as well as view other grim exhibits.

In one glass case is a wrinkled shirt, blotched with
blood. In 1996, it belonged to a 17-year-old worker n
amed Edgar, explained coalition member Lucas
Benitez. When the teen paused in the field to get a
drink of water, the boss beat him savagely "to make
an example of him," Benitez said.


But the young worker fled, eventually making his
way to the coalition. That night, hundreds of
workers marched to the boss' house. The next
morning, the boss could find no one to work for
him. Afterward, the boss changed his ways.

"You can talk about slavery intellectually, but to be
able to actually see (artifacts) creates a whole
different, visceral response. To look at that box
truck, to think about people living in there - you
experience it to get it," said Nola Theiss, executive
director of the Human Trafficking Awareness Partnerships.

Museum-goers also can see coverage of slavery in

Florida over the years and learn what the group is
doing to end it. Key to its efforts is the Campaign for
Fair Food to increase wages for harvesters and
improve their working conditions.

The coalition has forged Fair Food agreements with
the three largest fast-food companies (Yum Brands,
McDonald's and Burger King); Compass, the world's
largest food-service company; and Whole Foods,
the largest natural food chain.

The group has asked Publix to join, too - and to
stop buying tomatoes from Pacific Tomato Growers
and Six L's, where the Navarretes took their slaves to
work. Publix has said it will not sign on.

After its tour of the state, on April 16 the truck will
be at the head of the coalition’s march from Tampa
to Publix’s Lakeland headquarters.