Life and Debt. Available on netflix to watch instantly. From the documentary’s website:
Life & Debt is a woven tapestry of sequences focusing on the stories of individual Jamaicans whose strategies for survival and parameters of day-to-day existence are determined by the U.S. and other foreign economic agendas. By combining traditional documentary telling with a stylized narrative framework, the complexity of international lending, structural adjustment policies and free trade will be understood in the context of the day-to-day realities of the people whose lives they impact.
In one segment addressing the Free Trade Zones, we meet workers who sew five-six days a week for American corporations to earn the legal minimum wage of $30 U.S./week ($1200 - $1500Jamaican dollars/week). The port of Kingston is lined with high-security factories, made available to foreign garment companies at low rent. These factories are offered with the additional incentive of the foreign companies’ being allowed to bring in shiploads of material there tax-free, to have them sewn and assembled and then immediately transported out to foreign markets. Over 10,000 women currently work for foreign companies under sub-standard work conditions. The Jamaican government, in order to ensure the employment offered, has agreed to the stipulation that no unionization is permitted in the Free Trade Zones. Previously, when the women have spoken out and attempted to organize to improve their wages and working conditions, they have been fired and their names included on a blacklist ensuring that they never work again. Free Trade Zones are encouraged by the U.S. government, for example projects financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (U.S. AID) have used over $34,960,000 in U.S. tax dollars to target, persuade and provide incentives to American companies to relocate offshore in Jamaica. Yet now due to NAFTA, these dismal yet precious jobs are being lost to Mexico, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic.
The documentary also addresses how the subsidized U.S. farm industry makes it difficult for Jamaican farmers to grow crops, how the banana industry cannot compete with the South American banana industry, how the U.S. dairy industry depressed dairy prices in Jamaica. And more. Worth checking out.
