The Bateyes

It was a Wednesday morning, the early morning coolness already steaming from the damp earth in a queasy layer of heat waves. Our group was accompanied by Doña Elsa, who works as a district supervisor in the Secretary of Education overseeing all the elementary and secondary schools in the area. Her main work lies with the poorer areas, and we were accompanying her on her visit to the local bateyes. Bateyes are the settlements of workers and their families that spring up amidst the sugar cane fields. Because El Seibo lies in the East, with a relatively flat landscape and hot summers, it is ideal ground for growing sugar cane. Sugar cane, caña, grows tall and willowy, like giant marsh reeds. The winding, paved highway cut a narrow swath in the undulating sea that seemed to stretch to the horizon as soon as we left the edge of town.
The first batey we came to was one of the more prosperous ones, with a community center, 2 schools—private and public—at least one church that I could see. Many of the houses were made of cinder blocks, much preferable to wooden ones. This one was Dominicanos and Haitianos. The poorest bateyes tend to be all Haitiano.
We stood in the shade of the small scale-shed as the scale man, Paco, explained the process of weighing, hauling and shipping. Paco is 70 years old, started cutting caña at 22. As he spoke, two men approached singing to their team of oxen, smacking the flanks with dried cane sticks to keep time. They pulled their slat cart bristling with freshly cut caña up under the scale frame, laced the bulky chains around the load, and hoisted it all into one of the rusted box cars waiting along the rail line in the sun. 95 pesos per ton, the scale man explained, which is about $2 American, about an hour to cut 2 tons.
The public school was an L-shaped building with about 10 classrooms. The students all wear light blue polo or button down shirts and khaki pants or skirts. Next to the school is a large garden, with all sorts of vegetables, herbs and even banana and orange trees. This garden started years ago when the schools were required to feed the students lunch and breakfast. The funding for that program dried up, but they were able to keep the garden alive, and now it functions as a community source for teachers and families that can’t get vegetables on there own from town. This school goes up to 8th grade; some only go to sixth, and some only the 4th. It just depends on space and available teachers. After the 8th level, the students must take the Prueba Nacional, the national exams to enter into the high school in El Seibo. To take this, they must have identification papers, and because many of the students are un-registered Haitianos, this is the end of the line for education.
The further we drove from the city the poorer the bateyes became. But every time we stopped and trooped out of our big white guagua, the kids would swarm us, clamoring for their turn to be in a picture. They were all gnawing on hunks of peeled caña, and because it’s basically like chewing on a stick and sucking out the sap, with all that fiber and polishing they have beautiful, gleaming teeth. At least for a few years, before the lack of dental care catches up with them.
We stopped at one field to talk with the cutters, and the man peeled a piece for us to try. Much sweeter than I expected…I guess it is pure sugar after all. Though some plantations have harvesting machinery, most cut the caña by hand, by machete. They spend day after day, dawn ‘til dusk stooped over, whacking and gathering. I felt very conspicuous, very American as we stood there gawking at the men as they made there living one machete blow at a time.
Apparently there have been a lot of changes over the last 10 or 20 years. Before, the workers would be paid in food tickets only, and were provided only minimal housing. Now they actually receive salaries, and there are housing projects being implemented so more people can have blockhouses (read: fewer rats, less mold, less upkeep). And the education is supposedly improving, but they still have problems with a scarcity of qualified teachers, overcrowding, and poorly built school buildings, like the rest of the country. Everyone we talked to said they were, if not optimistic about the changes, at least surviving. And surviving on far less than we would have thought possible only 2 months ago. Definitely the most eye-opening experience so far for me.