PESTICIDE USE AND WOMEN WORKERS IN CHILE

Saar Van Hauwermeiren -- IN ABSENTIA

Instituto de Ecologia Politica
Casilla 16784, Correo 9
CHILE

Telefono: (56-2) 2746192
Telefax: (56-2) 2234522

iep@ax.apc.org

Recently, during September and October of 1993, the widespread misuse of pesticides in Chile was revealed to the public with all its dramatic aspects. Starting with the media interest in the birth of another baby with serious malformations, [it] appeared that the mother was a temporary worker in the fruit-sector, and that more than 50 similar cases in that region alone were reported this year. The IEP (Instituto de Ecologia Politica), an ecological organization, has taken the forefront in denouncing and investigating the effects of the misuse of pesticides on women's working conditions and on the sustainability of these agricultural practices.

The direct causes of this pesticide problem are very clear. The fruit-sector is on of the greatest contributors to Chile's "12.7% GNP-growth" success story. The extensive monocultures that generate economic competiveness through advantages of scale result in growing quantities of fruit exports, but also in ecological disequilibriums. These can be noticed, first of all, in soil degradation and the appearance of plagues that are more and more pesticide resistant. This leads to a vicious circle because of the progressive and growing need for agro-chemicals with growing toxic levels. The disastrous effects of this can be illustrated by the large scale use in Chile of pesticides such as Parathion, Paraquat, Lindano and Pentachlorophenol. All of these are already banned in Europe, Japan and the U.S.

There exists growing evidence of the serious impact that this abuse of pesticides has on the persons first affected: the temporary workers, mainly women who are very poorly paid. These include chronic and irreversible damages to the health of these women, such as genetic deformations, spontaneous abortions, infertility, destruction of the nervous system, loss of eyesight, skin diseases, etc. The problems even reach to those who are not directly in contact with the pesticides but, who live in those areas with an extensive fruit-sector.

The solution to these problems can be found in the following four points:

  1. The government should immediately ban the production and importation of pesticides already banned in Europe, Japan and the U.S.
  2. There should be installed an 'ecological tax' on the sale of pesticides in order to discourage the use of pesticides and to finance all the costs that result in their irrational use.
  3. The revenues of the eco-tax can also be used to support the development of an ecological and sustainable agriculture.
  4. A society will never be sustainable if the exploitation of women continues.
Ecological demands must contain the demands for better labor conditions for women.

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