WEBVTT - The Secret History of Chocolate: Spooky Week #1 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:14.520 Also media. It's spoky week that can happen here. It's 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:18.319 spooky week, the week where things are spooky. I'm your host, 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:25.920 Mia Wong, and with me is Garrison. Hello, and today 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:29.400 all right, right, we've gotten we've gotten, we've gotten the 0:00:29.720 --> 0:00:34.520 preliminary spooky out and so today we're gonna be talking 0:00:34.560 --> 0:00:37.400 about one of the sort of key elements of Halloween, 0:00:37.479 --> 0:00:40.800 and that is chocolate and so on. On a very 0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:44.879 basic level, we're going to ask what is chocolate? And 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:47.600 the answer, and it pains me to say this to 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:52.320 someone who really loves chocolate is really really bleak. Yeah, 0:00:52.320 --> 0:00:55.840 but before we get into exactly how bleak it is, uh, 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:01.760 we're gonna look at sort of the early history of chocolate. 0:01:02.280 --> 0:01:06.240 So most so, okay, there's there's a lot of disagreement 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:09.679 about exactly how old chocolate is. I've seen sources that 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:13.880 say three thousand BC. I've seen sources that say seventeen 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:15.960 hundred BC. The seventeen hundred BC is the one that's 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:21.520 pretty consistent. It seems like the Olmecs had something like chocolate. 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:23.840 That's it. It's a sort of bitter drink that they 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:26.040 sometimes to put vanilla or red pepper. 0:01:25.760 --> 0:01:27.720 In Yeah, it was, it was. It was. It was 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:31.320 like a bitter slurry that you from what I hear, 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:35.679 not very enjoyable, but it got you like really high, 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:39.520 like not high like like like weed, but like kind 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:41.680 of like cocaine. It was. It was like it was 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:43.080 it was a massive stimulant. 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:43.720 Is yeah. 0:01:43.800 --> 0:01:46.480 Yeah, from what I hear about these kind of early 0:01:46.720 --> 0:01:48.480 gross bitter chocolate slurries. 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:51.120 Yeah, And you know, I mean this is a thing 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:54.520 that's this is not a regular consumption drink. Basically everyone 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:58.640 he uses this and this and chocolate is consumed by 0:01:58.800 --> 0:02:03.880 a bunch of different civilisations, like across like most of 0:02:03.920 --> 0:02:07.480 South America. There's something sort of like the Mayans obviously, 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:09.919 the Mayans and the Aztecs too. There's a lot of 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:13.040 places where where this is being used, and it's everyone 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:15.760 seems to use it for ritual purposes. Yeah. I think 0:02:15.760 --> 0:02:18.760 at some point the I think it was the the 0:02:18.760 --> 0:02:23.240 Olemex at some point we're doing these like they were 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:28.200 making fermented alcohol out of so so normally with with chocolate, 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:30.600 you're using like the cocoa beans, right, but there's like 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:32.919 a flesh and the flute fruit around the beans and 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:34.680 they were making like a fermented thing out of that, 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:37.679 and I don't know, I leave as an exercise to 0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:40.680 the reader with you count that as chocolate. But the 0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:44.160 sort of conventional story goes okay. So like several thousand 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:46.600 years after the Olmes, the Assex and the Mayans using 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:50.360 it for ritual purposes and the story basically is okay. 0:02:50.400 --> 0:02:55.440 So Herman Cortes drink chocolate with stick King Maktazuma. Cortes goes, 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:57.520 this is bitter as shit and sucks ass, but he 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:01.680 brings it back to Europe anyways, and in Europe they 0:03:01.720 --> 0:03:03.560 mix it with sugar and also with honey, but mostly 0:03:03.600 --> 0:03:07.919 with sugar, and it becomes, you know, it becomes very 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:10.720 very popular drinking Europe. And at some point, this is 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:13.760 like the eighteen forty so like like takes some about 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:17.560 like three hundred years to figure out how to make 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:20.799 cocoa powder. But once you have cocoa powder, you can 0:03:21.160 --> 0:03:23.440 It's not it ceases to be bitter like it in 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:26.679 the in the way that it sort of is naturally. 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:31.000 You can you can process it with like like like 0:03:31.320 --> 0:03:36.240 basic solutions, which which neutralizes some of the acidic and 0:03:36.280 --> 0:03:39.200 bitter bitter tastes, which is why you should always buy 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:41.800 a Dutch process cocoa powder, which is unfortunately hard to 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:44.920 find these days. But it is, it is, it is, 0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:45.640 it is the shit. 0:03:46.960 --> 0:03:49.440 Yeah, so that's let's that's actually yeah, so the that's 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:52.440 that's Dutch cocoa. And then twenty years later someone figures 0:03:52.440 --> 0:03:54.000 out how to make them into a chocolate bar, and 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:56.880 you know, sort of a law, you have chocolate. Now. 0:03:57.000 --> 0:04:00.920 The conventional histories are missing something very, very imp which 0:04:00.960 --> 0:04:03.840 is something that defined has defined the production of chocolate 0:04:04.880 --> 0:04:07.360 since Europeans got a hold of it and continues to 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:13.960 define it today. And that thing is slavery. Yeah, yes, yeah, 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:16.960 And you know this is slavery is a very sort 0:04:17.000 --> 0:04:19.560 of important part of the history of chocolate because slavery 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:23.080 is what transforms the older ritual chocolate used by a 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:26.440 bunch of different indigenous societies for several thousand years, into 0:04:26.520 --> 0:04:29.320 modern chocolate. And this is this is a point that 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:32.760 I want to make because most most histories of chocolate tend, 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:34.760 you know, when they're trying to find the origin of 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:37.680 modern chocolate, they go, oh, it's chocolate bar. And I 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:40.640 think they're wrong. I think they're very wrong. I think 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:44.760 the distinct European innovation of chocolate is to add sugar 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:49.280 to it. Yes, and this raises the very bleak question 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:53.240 where does sugar come from? And the answer, of course 0:04:53.360 --> 0:04:56.760 is slavery. Sugar is one of the primary crops of 0:04:56.800 --> 0:04:59.680 slave economies in both the colonies and the West Indies. 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:01.680 It is one of the key elements of the so 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:03.720 called triangle trade where you know, you may have you 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:07.240 probably have learned this in school, but you know, for people, 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:09.039 for people who've been out of school for a long time. 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:12.480 So the triangle trade is Europe. Since manufacturer goes to Africa. 0:05:12.600 --> 0:05:15.480 It trades that fruit enslaved people and slave people taken 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:19.720 from Africa to the colonies and sometimes to America, sometimes 0:05:19.800 --> 0:05:23.400 to the colonies in the West Indies. Uh. And then 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:26.719 they take you know, the products of slavery from plantations 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:31.520 back to Europe. And that's you know, rice, indigo, tobacco, cotton, molasses, rum, 0:05:31.600 --> 0:05:35.120 and critically sugar back to Europe. Actually, wait, did did 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:36.679 they Did they teach you the triangle trade? 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:41.600 Yeah? Yes, I mean I I I did learn. My 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:46.440 Christian Homescholling curriculum wasn't the best, but we did, we did. 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:49.240 We did cover some basic things. 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:53.760 It's interesting because the triangle trade as a model, like 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:56.200 isn't that old, even though even though like this is 0:05:56.200 --> 0:05:59.359 the way that we all understand, like Tyler sort of 0:05:59.360 --> 0:06:03.080 colonial trade work, it's a kind of recent thing. Yeah. 0:06:03.120 --> 0:06:05.200 So sugar. Sugar is a very very key part of 0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:07.840 this entire thing. And there's a very very famous this 0:06:07.920 --> 0:06:11.960 sort of classic study of sugar and slavery is Sydney W. 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:15.160 Mintz's Sweetness and Power, which is a fundamental tax and 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:18.599 a lot of sort of uh a lot of the 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:21.680 sort of fields around the study of slavery. And one 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:24.880 of his arguments is that the British industrial proletariat is 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:27.960 fueled by slave sugar because the sugar is a stimulant 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:30.479 that you know, they're putting it in tea, which another stimulant. 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:32.240 They're putting it in whatever they drink, and this is 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:36.080 a thing that allows them to keep working for longer 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:37.560 than they otherwise would have been able to. 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:41.000 Yeah, and this also was the origin of Britain's probably 0:06:41.080 --> 0:06:43.000 largest cultural trait, bad teeth. 0:06:48.279 --> 0:06:49.840 Yeah. And you know, so so this is this is 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:53.280 this is a many aspects of British culture I've are 0:06:53.400 --> 0:07:00.080 descended from from slavery and you know, but the the 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:02.320 other the other important thing for our stories that sugar 0:07:02.480 --> 0:07:06.440 is what makes chocolate sort of palatable to Europeans. And 0:07:06.440 --> 0:07:09.280 and this isn't a sort of interesting thing that Europeans do. 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:13.480 You know they do this with tobacco too. You haven't 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:15.680 you have something that you're only supposed to use in 0:07:15.760 --> 0:07:19.200 fairly small amounts for ritual purposes, right, And the Europeans 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:21.760 are like, okay, but what if we purified the shit 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:23.800 out of it and they just ate it literally every day? 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:29.320 Yeah? Have you ever tried like unsweetened on like chocolate liquor? 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:33.400 Fucking sucks? I hate it. It's not good. 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:37.520 You can certainly nibble, it can be a fun novelty 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:39.120 to nibble, but you certainly wouldn't want to eat like 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:40.000 a whole bar of it. 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:44.400 Yeah, it's it's some real hope boy. Yeah. So, like, 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:46.200 I mean, it makes sense that they added sugar to it. 0:07:46.240 --> 0:07:50.040 But the consequence of this is that we can ask 0:07:50.160 --> 0:07:52.600 we can finally ask the question right now now, now 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:54.840 that it's been transformed by sugar into this object a 0:07:54.920 --> 0:07:57.960 sort of popular consumption, we can ask the question what 0:07:58.240 --> 0:08:01.840 is chocolate? And the answer is that chocolate is colonialism 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:04.120 plus slavery. It is a fusion of coca, which is 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:06.280 an indigenous ritual drink sees is a part of the 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:09.560 wages of colonialism by the European empires, and sugar a 0:08:09.600 --> 0:08:14.000 slave crop that drove the colonial prontation economy. And you know, 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:16.560 you might say me, you know you're being harsh here, right, 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:19.120 even if we accept your argument about chocolate and the 0:08:19.160 --> 0:08:25.160 sixteen hundred, surely, surely that's not sure. Now, wasn't wasn't. 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:28.120 Wasn't slavery abolished in the eighteen hundreds, And now I assume, 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:33.880 I assume Nestle's barving practices are totally above fort see. 0:08:34.120 --> 0:08:35.960 And this is I think the interesting part of the 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:39.520 story is gare like our readers is assuming a thing 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:42.120 I'm about to launch into here is the Mars Nestley 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:45.000 Child slavery lawsuit. And we will because that is a 0:08:45.080 --> 0:08:50.439 critical elements of slavery and chocolate production. But there is 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:55.840 also still slavery and sugar production capitalism. And not only 0:08:55.920 --> 0:08:58.120 is there slavery and sugar production, there is slavery in 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:00.880 sugar production in the exact same place there were slavery 0:09:00.960 --> 0:09:04.640 in sugar production five hundred years ago. And this is 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:06.480 one of the sort of stunning things about you know, 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:11.160 the miss of capitalism, right, which is that, Okay, capitalism 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:14.240 has had four hundred you know, I'm gonna give them 0:09:14.280 --> 0:09:17.800 a bit of credit and be like, Okay, I don't know, 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:20.880 like I'm gonna I'm gonna give capitalism a little bit 0:09:20.880 --> 0:09:23.160 of credit and give it only was being responsible for 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:25.080 four hundred years of this and not five hundred years 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:28.480 of this because you know, whatever complicated arguments about whether 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:30.880 the capitalist transition is in the fifteen hundred and sixty hundreds, 0:09:30.920 --> 0:09:34.280 but you know, they have had four hundred years to 0:09:34.360 --> 0:09:38.840 solve the problem of slavery on Hispaniola. Has it done that? No, 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:42.040 it is there is still slavery on the island of 0:09:42.040 --> 0:09:47.120 Fifthpaniola four hundred years later. We're going to be discussing 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:51.760 in a second. Still the best possible thing here is 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:57.840 that maybe and this is it is arguable, maybe last 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:02.040 year they're stopped being slaves there. Now I don't even 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:03.320 think that. I don't think that's true. And we're going 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:06.920 to get into that, but you know, before before we 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:09.040 sort of launch into you know what, like whether or 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:11.160 not there are so slaves on Tecker replantations, in the 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:15.920 Dominican Republic. If you have had four hundred years to 0:10:16.080 --> 0:10:19.600 solve a problem and you have not solved it, you 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:21.280 are never going to solve it. 0:10:21.920 --> 0:10:26.640 Hey, hey, let's not let's not visionhole ourselves here. There's 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:28.079 a lot of things that have been around for four 0:10:28.120 --> 0:10:30.200 hundred years that ought not to be. 0:10:31.320 --> 0:10:35.640 That's true. But if you are an economic system and 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:39.000 your economic system has been you are supposed to have 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:41.319 you are supposed to have dealt with this at least 0:10:41.360 --> 0:10:45.680 two hundred years ago. But you know, we've arrived here, 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:47.480 and this is something we've talked about before in the 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:50.720 show at least a bit. We've arrived here at one 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:53.000 of the real weaknesses of both sort of liberal and 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:57.680 radical accounts of how the capitalist economy works, because both 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:02.400 sets of accounts as their starting point the fact that 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:05.199 capitalism is based on free labor, that it's free people 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:07.520 who enter into contracts to sell you their labor, and 0:11:07.559 --> 0:11:09.559 that forced labor is this sort of like hauled over 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:10.840 from older economic systems. 0:11:11.000 --> 0:11:11.040 No. 0:11:11.160 --> 0:11:13.520 I actually just saw a thing today on the dying 0:11:13.760 --> 0:11:16.800 Remains of Twitter about how capitalism is the only economic 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:20.240 system that's not based on exploitation of violence. 0:11:20.600 --> 0:11:25.079 It's based on free trade between markets. It's like people 0:11:25.400 --> 0:11:29.200 really believe this shit. It's like I don't know, Like 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:32.000 I don't know. So at some point I'm going to 0:11:32.080 --> 0:11:34.120 do an episode about really good. 0:11:33.960 --> 0:11:36.240 Book whose name I'm forgetting right now because I didn't 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:38.800 look this up beforehand. But there's a really good book 0:11:38.800 --> 0:11:41.560 on the sort of dueling forced labor systems driving the 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:43.559 tea economy in the late eighteen hundred, so that there's 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:46.400 there's one forced labor system in China and a different 0:11:46.440 --> 0:11:48.640 forced labor system in India that are both warring in 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:50.240 each other to control the tea market. 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:55.880 It is certainly interesting how much tea has impacted like geopolitics. 0:11:56.200 --> 0:12:00.800 Oh yeah, yeah, we'll do an episode on that one day. Yeah, 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:01.559 tea's not. 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:03.800 That great, guys. I'm sorry, it's fine. 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:07.080 Not ta rips. I would not we just don't have 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:07.679 good tea here. 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:10.400 I would not do as much killing as people have done. 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:12.800 It's not worth killing anyone over the number of people 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:16.120 who've been killed over it is like early. 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:18.880 Gray is fine on like a rainy afternoon, but come on. 0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:25.280 Yeah, it's not. It's not worth like conquering continents for huh. 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:27.520 But okay, so well, back back back to this sort 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:29.760 of main plot that is not tea, that is in 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:32.360 fact chocolate. So one of the things that we can 0:12:32.400 --> 0:12:34.240 learn that we learn from this is that, you know, 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:36.720 forced labor is not just a holdover. It's been a 0:12:36.800 --> 0:12:38.880 It's been a central part of capitalism for as long 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:42.280 as capitalism has existed, and given its current track record, 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:44.240 it will be a part of capitalism for as long 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:48.600 as it exists. And you know, so, there's always been 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:50.920 a racial component to this, right And this is like 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:53.880 trivially obvious, right, Like, there's a racial component of slavery, Like, 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:57.200 holy shit, it's mostly about race. But I think, you know, 0:12:57.760 --> 0:12:59.800 we can we can expand this a little bit and 0:12:59.840 --> 0:13:03.040 it gets you to a some sort of interesting things, 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:05.920 which is that race is one of you know, so 0:13:06.000 --> 0:13:08.800 like obviously capitalism is supposed to be based on wage labor, 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:12.400 but race is what mediates your access to wage labor 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:15.480 in the first place. So, you know, white, like if 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:18.040 you're an American, right like, white Americans have basically always 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:20.640 been able to get access to to wage labor, you know, 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:24.680 And as shitty as wage labor is, it's it's not 0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:27.280 as bad as the other things you can get forced 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:29.920 into you know. But yeah, so like if you're black, 0:13:29.960 --> 0:13:32.160 like you know, you get as successive forms of slavery. 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:35.240 If you're indigenous, they tried to enslave you and then 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:38.120 either sort of kept doing it or gave up and 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:44.559 just killed did the genocide Asian people like who came 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:46.560 to this continents and also sort of the West Indies 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:48.800 largely get debt pion engine and entered service to you 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:50.559 and you can you can sort of work this out 0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:53.000 so on and so forth. There's there's different like modes 0:13:53.040 --> 0:13:56.199 of stuff that are the normal sort of like what 0:13:56.320 --> 0:14:00.800 you by default have access to if you are ex race, right, Yeah, 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:03.200 And obviously this this sort of racial access to wage 0:14:03.280 --> 0:14:05.080 labor is spread across the world. You know, your your 0:14:05.120 --> 0:14:07.280 access to wage labor is dependent on sort of your 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:10.280 subject position as colonizer colonize as well as you know, 0:14:10.320 --> 0:14:13.160 your sort of global and also you're like local racial 0:14:13.200 --> 0:14:17.720 hierarchies because oh boy, can that shit be really fucked up. 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:23.000 But the upshot of this is that many of the 0:14:23.000 --> 0:14:26.800 descendants of enslaved Haitian people are still effectively enslaved today 0:14:26.840 --> 0:14:31.080 on sugar plantations than making republic. And so we're gonna 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:36.560 we're gonna tell that story. But first word, oh god, 0:14:36.800 --> 0:14:40.440 do you know what doesn't know? I cannot guarantee that 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:42.960 our products and services are slave free like I wish 0:14:43.000 --> 0:14:43.440 I could. 0:14:43.720 --> 0:14:49.280 But well, do you know what is also here for 0:14:49.320 --> 0:15:01.840 a spooky time this Halloween. That's right, these products and services. 0:15:06.440 --> 0:15:07.560 Okay, we are back. 0:15:07.640 --> 0:15:13.480 I'm drinking my not mocha coffee, drinking my regular unsweetened coffee. 0:15:13.560 --> 0:15:15.280 Is therefore totally fine. 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:20.440 Yeah, I'm everything. Nothing bad, nothing bad has ever happened 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:21.600 in the history of coffee. 0:15:21.840 --> 0:15:26.680 No, I'm here, no tea, no chocolate. I'm safe. I'm good. 0:15:28.480 --> 0:15:32.280 Anyway. So unfortunately, the people who are not safe is 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:36.840 uh a Haitians in the Jamaican Republic. So we are 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:39.720 not going to do an entire history of slavery in 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:41.600 the Jamaican Republic because. 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:44.440 Because this is a chocolate episode, and yeah, we have 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:45.120 so much time. 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:49.000 Yeah, you know, for many reasons. But one of the 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:52.560 things that happened in in So we're gonna we're gonna 0:15:52.560 --> 0:15:54.720 look at sort of the like the modern history of this, 0:15:54.840 --> 0:15:56.720 and by modern, I'm starting it in I'm starting it 0:15:56.760 --> 0:16:00.440 in the eighties because I have to pick up place now. 0:16:00.560 --> 0:16:04.080 One of the things that happens in the nineteen eighties 0:16:04.240 --> 0:16:09.200 is that the Dominican Army effectively so goes into Haiti 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:11.760 or just recruitation people who are in the Dominican Republic 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:13.680 and are like, hey, you're gonna okay, we have like 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:16.440 jobs for you, like come like do this work. And 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:18.560 so a bunch of people get in like these like 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:22.280 army vans and then they get there and they get 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:23.920 worshed out of the van. A bunch of guys point 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:25.560 guns at them and go, you're gonna work for free 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:27.320 or we're gonna or like or we're gonna kill you. 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:32.440 So this is really bad. And this is this is 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:36.280 how a lot of like through the eighties and kind 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:39.320 of early nineties, this is how a lot of sugar 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:42.720 production worked in the Dominican Republic. And you know, it's 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:45.120 it's very notable here that Dominican Republic produces a lot 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:46.840 of sugar, and it produces a lot of sugar that 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:51.160 specifically the US uses. Now, this is like state run 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:53.920 slavery right on, sort of like state run plantations. So 0:16:53.960 --> 0:16:57.560 then we had neoliberalism and so the state run plantations 0:16:57.600 --> 0:17:05.240 get privatized. However, come they still run on slave labor. 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:08.520 So there's a very good Mother Jones report about this. 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:11.960 I'm gonna read some of it here. Kakata is one 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:14.959 of about one hundred, according to a local missionaries estimate, 0:17:15.400 --> 0:17:18.560 isolated camp scattered around Central roman. Central Romana is a 0:17:18.560 --> 0:17:23.159 giant sugar plantation. Central Romana's one hundred and sixty thousand 0:17:23.200 --> 0:17:25.800 acres of sugar cane attract almost as big as New 0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:29.240 York City. Most of the workers and their families live 0:17:29.240 --> 0:17:31.760 in these battaiyas, rising in the morning to work the 0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:35.040 cane and the punishing heats, clearing weeds, slashing and spraying 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:38.640 the stalks. Nearly all are men of Haitian descent. Some 0:17:38.680 --> 0:17:41.359 were traffic back in the day of the journalist is 0:17:41.359 --> 0:17:44.359 doing this was the guy who basically uncovered a bunch 0:17:44.400 --> 0:17:47.240 of the original armies like the military slavery program in 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:50.280 the nineties, and so he went back like a couple 0:17:50.280 --> 0:17:54.119 of years ago. So he's talking himself of Some of 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:56.720 the people were traffic back touring the military slavery program. 0:17:57.240 --> 0:17:59.480 Others were born and lived stateless, and others came from 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:03.960 hating Moore recently paying smugglers to sneak them across the 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:07.560 border for years, the government has resisted providing legal status 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:09.800 to people of Haitian heritage in the country, even though 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:13.480 born there and estimated two hundred thousand people who for 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:16.520 generations have been to mean by race and class are stateless. 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:20.399 For the men in the camps, Sentra Romana is the state. 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:24.960 Their villages are patrolled by armed company police empowered to evict. 0:18:25.280 --> 0:18:27.879 Centraro Romana owns the land or the Haitians work the 0:18:27.960 --> 0:18:30.400 railcars where they wigh and load the can and stocks, 0:18:30.440 --> 0:18:33.280 and the dwellings where they sleep. They are miles from 0:18:33.320 --> 0:18:37.320 the nearest Dominican town not controlled by the company. So 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:43.600 things going great here and the conditions you know, okay, 0:18:43.400 --> 0:18:47.560 so the sort of the capitalist reforms and ioliberalism has 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:52.560 brought to this system are the number of child slaves 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:55.280 has decreased dramatically, because that was a big thing when 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:58.160 the first reporting, when everyone was like, holy shit, there's 0:18:58.200 --> 0:19:01.320 a bunch of child slaves. This is a terrible Yeah, 0:19:01.359 --> 0:19:05.800 so we have less child slaves, right, and you know, 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:10.240 so instead of the child slaves, right, it's now mostly adults. 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:14.880 But the conditions here are still effectively slavery. Even even 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:18.600 after this sort of child slavery stuff like is driven under. 0:19:19.040 --> 0:19:21.800 On a good day, these workers make three dollars a 0:19:21.880 --> 0:19:27.440 day and they are effectively and sometimes literally unable to leave. Now, 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:29.760 there are a lot of reasons for this. One of 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:32.320 the big ones is that most of the workers there 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:35.320 are most like basically all like you might find a 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:38.160 worker somewhere who isn't stuck in this, but they're caught 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:41.800 in these debt traps by Central Romana, who and these 0:19:41.840 --> 0:19:44.720 are like classic company but they're not. They're worse than like, 0:19:45.080 --> 0:19:47.840 you know, the classic American company town because at least 0:19:47.840 --> 0:19:50.520 an American company town, you can go to another town 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:53.200 that is not controlled by the company, whereas these people 0:19:53.280 --> 0:19:56.240 like cannot, and so they're caught in these debt traps 0:19:56.320 --> 0:19:59.719 by Central Romana, which is the company that owns these plantations. 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:04.080 And because they're so in debt, they're constantly forced to 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:05.720 work for the company in order to pay off their debt. 0:20:06.200 --> 0:20:08.159 But you know, they never actually make enough money to 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:09.400 pay the debt off, and so they have to take 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:12.600 on more debt to survive until you know, and largely 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:15.200 what happens is these people work there in debt until 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:18.520 they die. This is classic debt Pia nine where it 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:21.200 sort of debt transforms people into the effective property of 0:20:21.240 --> 0:20:23.840 the debt holder, who exacerbate the debt by denying them 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:26.080 the ability to live without taking on more debt. A 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:28.480 very common way this happens is with medical debt, which 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:30.800 is something you know, I think we're familiar with to 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:37.040 some extent here, but is egregiously worse. And the other 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:39.600 thing that I was realizing about this is that this 0:20:39.720 --> 0:20:43.680 is actually really eerily similar to the way that Cortez 0:20:43.720 --> 0:20:47.200 and the Conquistadores and slaved indigenous people during the genocide. 0:20:47.480 --> 0:20:49.280 They would do the same thing of like, well, okay, 0:20:49.280 --> 0:20:50.680 now you're in debt to me, and because you can't 0:20:50.680 --> 0:20:53.200 pay the debt, you have five hundred percent interest per week, 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:55.119 and so you know, that just accumulates, and now you 0:20:55.200 --> 0:20:58.040 work for me for the rest of your lives. And 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:00.600 this is you know, this, this is one of the 0:21:02.240 --> 0:21:04.479 one of the sort of ways in which this the 0:21:04.520 --> 0:21:08.480 long shadow of Spanish imperialism like looms over the Dominican Republic, 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:11.040 even in what has really been about two hundred years 0:21:11.119 --> 0:21:16.119 of the age of the American Empire. You know, and 0:21:17.320 --> 0:21:19.800 as you know, obviously like as much of an effect 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:23.920 as the Spanish empire has had here and oh god, 0:21:24.040 --> 0:21:27.159 it's not good today. It is the American empire that 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:29.440 lines the pockets of the slavers of the Dominican Republic. 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:33.600 So such a Romana is owned by this this family 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:38.200 called the Funjewel family, who are these Cuban expats who 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:42.680 run this like enormous resort in shit where they live 0:21:42.760 --> 0:21:46.879 in Florida and are handed. This is really fun. One 0:21:46.960 --> 0:21:50.120 hundred and fifty million dollars for the American state every 0:21:50.240 --> 0:21:54.320 year in the form of price supports for sugar. So like, 0:21:54.359 --> 0:21:57.800 you're an American, right, Like obviously your tax money very 0:21:57.840 --> 0:22:01.320 obviously goes to support slavery because we have prisons, and 0:22:01.359 --> 0:22:04.400 so your taxes are paying to enslaved people, but your 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:09.880