America’s ‘walking dead’

Chichigalpa / DPA

Death lurks in the sugarcane fields. He reaps the strong young men, sometimes before they’ve even turned 30.
The ones who get away are marked for life, sick and unfit for work.
“We’re the walking dead,” says former sugarcane cutter Juan Salgado.
There’s a mysterious illness making its way around Central America. It has already claimed tens of thousands of victims, more than leukaemia, diabetes and AIDS put together. Those who are most likely to suffer from the chronic renal insufficiency which characterizes it are the cane cutters.
In the Nicaraguan town of Chichigalpa, 46 percent of men who have died over the past 10 years were killed by kidney failure.
It’s a disease which in developed countries is usually common among older people and it’s caused by being overweight, by diabetes and by high blood pressure.
But in Central America it’s primarily young men who are sickening, and they almost always work in the sugarcane fields.
The crops they harvest are made into sugar or ethanol for export to
Europe.
“It’s not yet clear what causes the illness, but it definitely has something to do with working in the fields,” says Salgado.
He cut sugar cane for 36 years and is now president of the La Isla foundation, which supports sick workers and promotes research into the causes of the illness.
“We’re dealing with a public health emergency but we still don’t know what’s actually wrong,” says biologist Rebecca Laws of the University of Boston in the US.
A study she helped write failed to find any clear cause for the illness.
“Most researchers believe there are several causes and they have at least partly to do with working conditions,” she adds.
One hypothesis is that pesticides used on the sugarcane fields are responsible. But others point to the tough working conditions.
The men often work 12-hour days in the fields amid temperatures of up to 40 degrees C. There is little shade and not much to drink.
In Cuba, where sugarcane harvesting is mechanized, the disease hasn’t yet been recorded, whereas in neighbouring El Salvador it’s rampant too.
Doctor Ricardo Leiva has been watching the number of his patients at the Rosales Hospital suffering from kidney failure steadily climb over the past 15 years.
“By the time they come to us in hospital there’s often not much we can do. We have to work on prevention and diagnose the illness earlier,” the kidney specialist says. A 2010 study by the University of Boston funded by the sugar industry came to the conclusion that there was no scientific evidence for the theory that the chemicals or the working conditions were causing the renal failure, though it did say a connection was plausible.
More research was needed, it said.
Roberto Alfredo Valdivia doesn’t want to have to wait any longer. The 34-year-old is very ill and is demanding financial support from his former employer or the government.
He throws up frequently, has pains in his limbs and joints and can’t carry out physical labour any more.
“I get 2,800 cordoba (94 dollars) per month in social security, but that’s not enough to feed a family,” says the father of two.
In Chichigalpa almost everyone works in the sugar industry. The biggest sugar producer in the region, Ingenio San Antonio, and rum producer Flor de Cana both belong to the wealthy Pellas family.
Neither company pays compensation to those who become ill, nor
are the victims offered any other
employment.
The police have been called out in the past to deal with protests organized by former workers. It’s well known that the head of the Pellas family, Carlos Pellas, is close to the ever more authoritarian President Daniel Ortega.
“The government doesn’t want it to become common knowledge that people here are dying like flies,” says Valdivia.
In Chichigalpa the mysterious kidney disease is destroying the social fabric. Because most men are ill, they can no longer look after their families.
La Isla – the village in the middle of the sugarcane fields which gave its name to the foundation – is now known as the “Island of Widows.”
“Many sick people would rather die than become a burden to their families,” says Maria Eugenia Cantillano, whose father died of kidney failure.
Expensive medications are bankrupting the townspeople and most can’t afford dialysis treatments in the capital Managua.
“Now the women are working in the sugar cane fields to make ends meet,” says Cantillano. And they’re sickening too. Chichigalpa is gradually being depopulated. “We’re always burying people, sometimes several a day,” says Cantillano.