Growers were not charged in a single case of employing
bosses convicted on slavery prosecutions
The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating 120 slavery cases, most involving
migrant workers and women forced into prostitution. Labor-blind
politicians all the way into The White House hope to keep this from the public
The vast majority of America's farm laborers are immigrants, many of them undocumented.
Growers insist that they need a plentiful supply of immigrants because Americans aren't
interested in hard work.
A more accurate statement is that few Americans will perform hard work for $150 a week. A
vicious cycle emerges: Growers rely on economically desperate immigrants, who are forced
to accept meager wages, and workers in marginal situations are unable to organize and
force the industry to normalize its relations with workers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abel Cuello Jr., operator of the Immokalee shack, was one of the criminals, employed by
one of the state's growers.
Antonio Martinez was one of the slaves. He knew that, he said, when he saw Cuello pay the
''coyote,'' or smuggler, who transported him from an Arizona border town to Florida. ''At
that point,'' Martinez said in an interview, ``I realized I had been sold.''
Two dozen people were crammed into the Cuello mobile home at 1365 Sanctuary Rd. in 1999,
court papers show. There were mattresses on the floor and just four or five dishes to
share. The water, supplied from a well, was foul. The floor had holes and snakes in plain
view. Roaches crawled everywhere.
Workers found no relief in the fields, with crew boss Cuello docking their pay for their
travel from Arizona to Florida.
Two dozen people were crammed into the Cuello mobile home at 1365 Sanctuary Rd. in 1999,
court papers show. There were mattresses on the floor and just four or five dishes to
share. The water, supplied from a well, was foul. The floor had holes and snakes in plain
view. Roaches crawled everywhere.
Workers found no relief in the fields, with crew boss Cuello docking their pay for their
travel from Arizona to Florida.
The trek was tortuous, with 18 Mexican immigrants ordered to sit on a van floor so they
wouldn't be detected during the nearly four-day journey. They shared two bags of chips as
sustenance. For this, each was billed $700, to be worked off.
''During the trip, the men in the group were made to urinate in plastic jugs, and the
woman . . . did not urinate until two days into the trip, when the van had to stop to
repair a flat tire, because she was unable to use the jug,'' senior patrol agent Jose M.
Lopez of the U.S. immigration agency wrote in a criminal complaint.
``When the jugs were full of urine, the smuggler would empty them by pouring them out the
window while the van was moving.''
After arriving in Immokalee, they labored under Cuello at Manley Farms North Inc., a major
Bonita Springs tomato supplier that paid Cuello $24 for every 1,000 pounds of tomatoes
harvested. Smuggling fees were docked from workers' checks written on the Manley account,
court papers show.
Company President J. Kent Manley Jr. did not respond to four requests for an interview,
nor did he reply to written questions.
Picker Martinez said his four months inside 1365 Sanctuary were filled with little food,
long work hours and scant pay. He said a co-worker awakened one night with a scorpion
sting on his neck.
''I thought I was going to die there, because I didn't eat well,'' Martinez said. ``And I
knew if I escaped, he would beat me. But when I escaped, I felt liberated.''
After escaping in 1999, he bumped into Cuello, who chased him in a Chevy Suburban, yelling
obscenities and demanding his coyote fee back.
A PLEA OF GUILTY
Sentence of 33 months given to labor boss; he's out now
Cuello, born in Brownsville, Texas, pleaded guilty to one count of involuntary servitude
and went to prison in 1999 for 33 months, his contractor's license revoked at the time.
Two co-defendants, both relatives, also were convicted.
Cuello, 39, is out now. According to corporate records, he has created another harvesting
company, E&B Harvesting & Trucking Inc., based in Naples.
Yet even that is curious. In his 2002 corporate papers, Cuello listed two addresses on
Redbird Lane in Naples. Neither could be found. A mail carrier on duty one day said they
don't exist.
Local newspapers sought an interview with Cuello through his father, who lives near the
Immokalee trailer. Cuello didn't reply.
His return is a case study showing how, even with a handful of slavery
prosecutions brought against corrupt crew bosses, little has changed.
Growers employing the criminal bosses were not charged in a single case.
It's not that the growers themselves were suspected of enslaving workers. But watchdogs
say the industry fosters an atmosphere that allows renegade bosses to rule with
criminality.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Tomato workers make a lot more than other farm laborers," said Larry Lipman of
Fort Myers, an owner of Six L's, one of the biggest growers in a region whose abundant
fields have led 2,500 migrants to make their home base in Immokalee, the most of any town
in Florida.
The U.S. Department of Justice is now investigating 120 slavery cases,
most involving migrant workers and women forced into prostitution. In southwest Florida
alone, five slavery cases have been prosecuted since 1997. Four years ago a Mexican labor
contractor was caught holding at least 27 illegal Mexican aliens against their will.
Federal agents were alerted by farmworkers who had fled the run-down trailers where they
were held until their debts to smugglers were paid.
In 1997, Miguel Flores of LaBelle, Fla., and his assistant, Sebastian Gomez of Immokalee,
were arrested on charges of involuntary servitude. Flores, a labor contractor, controlled
thousands of workers in labor camps between Florida and South Carolina, charging his
laborers exorbitant prices for food and housing and thus ensuring their continued
indebtedness. Workers were forced to work six days a week, netting only $12 to $15 a day.
Women camp residents were occasionally raped by crew bosses. Flores warned his workers
that if they complained, he would cut their tongues out.
Flores and Gomez were eventually caught, but what's impressive is that they were allowed
to operate in the first place. Flores had an arrest record in Florida and South Carolina.
The Caloosa Belle, the newspaper serving his hometown, regularly printed letters from
citizens complaining about daytime shootouts occurring at a downtown bar between Flores
and ex- or alienated guards who had worked with him. Moreover, rumors persisted from the
late 1980s to the mid-'90s that Flores and his crew had committed numerous murders,
dumping bodies into the Caloosahatchie River to make the deaths look like accidents.
Charges were never brought, but, as one local police officer put it, "When Flores
left the area, the rash of drownings stopped occurring." Despite this reputation,
however, Flores had been permitted by the state to run his business for years and
entrusted to handle payrolls worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for enormous private
and public firms.
Why do such flagrantly and cartoonishly abusive characters as Flores and Gomez operate at
all? Because they can. In the face of disproportionate political power wielded by
agribusiness and business-friendly, labor-blind politicians, existing
labor laws are weak and their enforcement weaker.
Back
to Illegal Aliens Immigration Main Page |
