Burning Sugarcane

Here was the view from school on Thursday:

The culprit? Burning sugarcane. Acres and acres of burning sugarcane. Molly and I drove on a motorcycle through the fields of burning cane that afternoon - I felt a little like I was in the forest fire part of Bambi!

On a more serious note, the burning cane is an indicator and reminder of why life is the way it is here in Montellano. The sugarcane factory in Montellano used to be the sole source of employment for Montellano and the surrounding villages like Caraballo. After the government privatized the factory, it went bankrupt and has been shut down for 8 years or so (from what I've been told). The result is a town that has the feel of an old mining town in the US - no jobs, people walking around in a daze because they still think the factory might open, men sitting around playing dominoes all day, idle because there literally is no work. Awhile back I journaled about it:

      They're burning the sugarcane tonight. I saw the telltale column of brown smoke today, and now, in the dark, the red haze. I have not, nor do I think I ever will, gotten used to the sweet smell. The smell of unemployment. Of poverty. Of empty wallets and empty bellies. The smell, the ash, the smoke - they should be coming from the factory, not the fields. But the factory sits idle, empty, rusting in the salty humidity. It sits in the center of town as if to mock the people, a constant reminder of what used to be and an unfulfilled promise of what still could be. Rumors fly, year after year, that someone in an air-conditioned office far away wants to reopen the factory. But feeding Haitians and employing the poorest of the poor is hardly a profitable venture. No one wants to buy sugar from Montellano. So they burn the cane. They burn it out of anger, desperation, indignation. And with it they burn a piece of their hope for the restoration of the factory, of jobs, of life. What else can they do?
      While they burn, I contemplate. My blessings, my fortune, that I was born in the "right" country. The country that my neighbors dream of, yet equally the country whose policies are forcing those same neighbors to burn the cane. So what do I do, torn between my privileged citizenship and my new-found solidarity with my neighbors? I don't know. But tonight, I will join my neighbors in falling asleep to the smell of burning cane, dreaming that the smell is coming from the factory, and praying that someday soon it will.