A progressive interview with Lucas Benitez.

• Author: DiNovella, Elizabeth
• Position: Interview

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Lucas Benitez is one of the leading human rights activists of our times. He started working in the tomato fields in Florida when he was seventeen. Fed up with the exploitation of farmworkers, many of whom were immigrants like himself, Benitez and a few others formed the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. The coalition has been successful in improving the working conditions and winning decent pay for farmworkers.

Benitez, thirty-five, won the Robert E Kennedy Human Rights Award in 2003, along with coalition members Julia Gabriel and Romeo Ramirez. The coalition has been instrumental in ending slavery-literally--in the fields. In 2001, Benitez drove the getaway vehicle when four farmworkers escaped brutal conditions in rural Florida. The coalition's efforts have assisted federal agencies in prosecuting people for human smuggling, conspiracy, and extortion.

The coalition has successfully pressured many multinational corporations to pay a penny more for their tomatoes, with the extra penny going to the farmworkers who pick the fruit. The group is currently working on a Fair Food campaign that seeks justice all along the food chain.

Q: What do you think of protests happening on Wall Street right now?

Lucas Benitez: It's the frustration of the American people. It's a general discontent that exists in the country. It's unacceptable that the rich get richer and, well, we get poorer. It's a protest against corporate power.

Q: Strikes can be hard to pull off in the fields. How did the coalition decide to launch a boycott against Taco Bell?

Benitez: It's not that we didn't do strikes. In 1993, we started organizing ourselves. In 1995, we did the first general strike, with 3,000 farmworkers. Six workers did a hunger strike for thirty days. Then we marched from Fort Myers to Orlando--230 miles--in order to speak with the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association.

Q: How did you decide on the boycott strategy?

Benitez: We realized that the power to change our situation was in the corporations that buy the product. They dictate the standards to the industry. They have a responsibility to change the conditions of the workers.

Q: At the first rally outside a Taco Bell, there were only fifteen people.

Benitez: We announced that boycott in Fort Myers at a Taco Bell on U.S. Highway 41. Ina way, it seemed like a completely crazy idea because an organization so small was confronting one of the biggest industrial corporations.

It was there that...