‘Accompanying’ Padre Melo or Why I Wear ‘GILDAN’ Religiously

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‘Accompanying’ Padre Melo or Why I Wear ‘GILDAN’ Religiously

Phil Little, Ladysmith

Volume 28  Issue 7, 8 & 9 | Posted: September 18, 2014

A few months ago for my birthday I was gifted with a lovely “hoodie” – dark blue and warm, ideal for the damp cool weather of Vancouver Island where I now live. This sweatshirt with hood was and is gratefully received. However it comes with a twist – it is made by GILDAN. If readers looked in their closet at their collection of hoodies, sweats, or T-shirts, possibly many would be made by GILDAN.  
    So what?
    A year ago it would have made no difference to me that “GILDAN” made my hoodie. A search through my closet also revealed that many of my favorite Tai Chi T-shirts were also made by GILDAN. But things happen that cause us to see differently and at times to be uncomfortable with what we learn.

A few months ago for my birthday I was gifted with a lovely “hoodie” – dark blue and warm, ideal for the damp cool weather of Vancouver Island where I now live. This sweatshirt with hood was and is gratefully received. However it comes with a twist – it is made by GILDAN. If readers looked in their closet at their collection of hoodies, sweats, or T-shirts, possibly many would be made by GILDAN.  
    So what?
    A year ago it would have made no difference to me that “GILDAN” made my hoodie. A search through my closet also revealed that many of my favorite Tai Chi T-shirts were also made by GILDAN. But things happen that cause us to see differently and at times to be uncomfortable with what we learn.
    Towards the end of 2013 I went to Honduras at the invitation of a dear Jesuit friend, Reverend Ismael Moreno, who is known as Padre Melo. He is the director of a Catholic radio station (Radio Progreso) and a Human Rights Center (E.R.I.C.) that are apostolates of the Jesuit community. 
    Because of his work Padre Melo has received death threats. In April 2014 the manager of the radio station who was also a human rights lawyer, Carlos Mejía, was assassinated. Many of the people who work for the Jesuits have also received death threats. 
    This is nothing new in Honduras, known as the murder capital of the world. Since the U.S.-directed overthrow of the democratic government in 2009, over 40 journalists have been murdered. 
    The current “elected” dictatorship of military officials, trained at the infamous “School of the Americas”, has turned up the heat against environmentalists, human rights workers, journalists, peasant and native leaders and organizations, and church workers identified with the poor. 
    Last year Melo invited me to “accompany” him. To “accompany” is to be an active presence: to shadow him when he goes out to the radio station, to the prison, to visit peasant communities and even to celebrate the Eucharist. Other groups have also traveled to Honduras to provide this international presence to help protect Padre Melo. 
    I wore an identification card with my passport and religious affiliations clearly marked so that police or military would see that I was there as a witness to whatever was happening. The working theory is that an internationalist presence makes it more complicated to threaten Padre Melo. 
    I knew very little about Honduras before my six-week accompaniment project. When I arrived in Honduras, I asked for some current reading material about the country and received a package that would take many months to read. I had many opportunities to converse with persons I met through the radio station or the center. 
    I traveled when Padre Melo traveled and learned from him as we passed through foreign owned plantations or foreign owned sweat-shop factory belts near San Pedro Sula. 
One of those factories was GILDAN which I was informed was a Canadian company. It is easy to Google this company and to find very critical and reliable articles. 
    GILDAN closed its Quebec factory in 2007 and relocated to Honduras. There the company has done exceedingly well and has expanded its operations so that in four factories it now employs 24,000 workers.      The Canadian government in the past ten years has redirected its foreign aid focus away from community development projects and now prioritizes assisting Canadian corporations to establish in Honduras with favorable conditions. A long negotiated “free trade” agreement was recently ratified, with Canada providing “encouragement” to Honduran officials to make generous concessions to Canadian companies. 
    Canadian corporations can operate factories or mines, paying little or no taxes to Honduras, and they do not have to worry about inconveniences such as labour laws, environmental restrictions, human rights, trade unions, or compensation for injured workers. 
    GILDAN’s workforce is comprised mainly of young women, clamoring for any work in a country with high unemployment and a poverty level that is better only than Haiti in the Western hemisphere.  They work long shifts in assembly line type work where there is little effort to rotate the workers to prevent injury from the repetitive nature of the work. 
    In some factories women must wear diapers so that they don’t lose time for bathroom breaks. Production quotas are very demanding. Workers who begin to experience physical difficulties are given cortisone shots by company employees, and when they can no longer meet their quotas they are dismissed because there are hundreds of new workers at the gates looking for their chance to have a salary, even if it is below the official minimal wage. 
    Women who get pregnant are threatened and sexual harassment is common. Workers who are discarded often have permanent physical injuries that prevent them from doing other work, even normal house work chores. Under the dictatorship there is no social safety net, no “workers compensation” and virtually no “public health” provisions. 
    Despite a CBC investigative program which uncovered many problems with GILDAN (Disclosure, “Sewing Discontent,” CBC Television, January 22, 2002), there has been little interest among Canadians to understand where our clothing is manufactured. We read about the tragic deaths of workers in Bangladesh who produced clothing for the Loblaw’s brand “Joe Fresh” and there was great indignant outrage that lasted for about two weeks. 
    The bottom line is that our clothing remains very reasonable in cost, Canadian companies working the sweatshops report healthy dividends to their investors, and the near slave-like working conditions of sweatshop workers is conveniently forgotten. 
    In social theory, “cognitive dissonance” is used as a way to understand the conflict that arises when behaviour is in conflict with a value or belief system. Christian workers at the Nuclear Bomb factory in Los Alamos were faced with such a dilemma. 
    Their beliefs said to kill is a mortal sin but their job was to build nuclear bombs whose sole purpose was to kill millions of people, if not everyone on the planet. Elaborate justifications had to be constructed, and supported by the churches, so as not to leave these good Christian folk in mental or spiritual agony.
    Wearing my GILDAN hoodie and T-shirts created such a situation of “cognitive dissonance” for me. Life on Vancouver Island is very casual, and the T-shirt is definitely the “in” garment of choice. I like my Tai-Chi T-shirts with their clever logos. The hoodie that was gifted is a token of friendship, and besides it is very comfortable and cozy. 
    The fact that these are produced by women who endure great suffering because of their work for GILDAN, who face harassment while at work and life-long injuries concerns me. I have driven by their factory in Honduras and I will again soon. Is this one of those inequalities that we just have to accept as “normal”? 
    We can’t all be born in Canada? Or have abundant educational opportunities? Or have good paying jobs and the right to organize in unions or political parties? And few of us in Canada know someone who has been murdered, whereas in Honduras everyone knows someone who has been murdered or disappeared? 
    Is that just “luck” or “destiny”, what some might even call “God’s will”? 
 
Crucified Woman
 
    When my family was young we lived very near Emmanuel College of Victoria University, the United Church campus, part of the University of Toronto. In 1986 we attended the dedication of a controversial statue titled “The Crucified Woman” created by Almuth Lutkenhaus (see front cover image). The statue was considered to be offensive or shocking because it depicted a naked crucified woman, so it was relegated to a garden outside of the main building where it has since remained. 
    When I contemplated the situation of my little sisters in Honduras working at GILDAN and other sweatshops, this image of the “crucified woman” came to me repeatedly. Indeed they are the crucified of today, despised because they are women and exploited because they are “poor”. The poverty they share comes not from a lack of effort or lack of a desire to do better. 
    Their poverty is what is mandated for them by international politics mixed with national and global economic interests that converge to strengthen traditional oligarchies. 
    These are rural and urban women beaten down in a ‘macho’ world, and denied opportunities that would permit them to move forward. 
    They compete among themselves for minimal employment at the bottom, in a country of great unemployment and extreme poverty. They are treated with contempt, beaten, harassed and sexually exploited, and then tossed out when they are no longer useful. 
    I will wear my GILDAN “religiously”. I wish I could transfer the logo with the “crucified woman” to the front of my garments. I have no need for any shiny golden cross or medallion of a favorite saint. The GILDAN logo, even if unseen, is sufficient to remind me that crucifixion and death is with us daily. 
    As Christians we affirm that the reign of justice and peace is the reality that must come on earth as it is in heaven. We commit ourselves to solidarity until our sisters work in conditions that are safe, with compensation that allows for dignity and security, and the right to associate and organize. 
    As Canadians perhaps we need to learn more about what Canadian corporations such as GILDAN and GOLDCORP are doing in Honduras and other third-world countries. As well, when we learn that Canada’s foreign policy promotes the exploitative practices of Canadian companies such as GILDAN, maybe – perhaps – our compassion needs to become political advocacy.
    Suggested reading or viewing:
GLIDAN – 
Padre Melo – interview in 2013
 Article in “America”
USA and Honduras:
Church and the poor in Honduras  
 
This talk was given at the 2014 Annual General Meeting of Vancouver Island’s Basic Christian Communities Association in Qualicum on Saturday, August 9.This talk was given at the 2014 Annual General Meeting of Vancouver Island’s Basic Christian Communities Association in Qualicum on Saturday, August 9.

   

Phil Little, Ladysmith