Media Credit: Jon Huang Speaking through a translator, Lucas Benitez opens the 2008 Student Conference on Latin America, hosted by the Institute of Latin American Studies Student Association. Benitez is co-director of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, an immigrant field worker's association that battles to improve wages and working conditions.

Practices of Burger King and Austin-based Whole Foods Markets were targeted in the keynote address at the 28th annual Student Conference on Latin America hosted by the Institute of Latin American Studies Student Association.

Floridian farm worker and human rights activist Lucas Benitez, co-director of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, delivered the address Thursday, initiating the three-day event.

"Farm workers in Florida would have to pick two-and-a-half tons of tomatoes a day just to make minimum wage," Benitez said.

He focused on the two corporations for employing practices that unfairly squeeze the profits of produce companies, leaving laborers making less than $10,000 a year, among the lowest in America.

Meghan Cohorst, co-coordinator of the Student/Farmworker Alliance, cited a lawsuit in a Florida court that accuses employers of holding laborers against their will overnight in moving vans, when describing Whole Foods' policies. The corporation has policies protecting animals from cruelty, but not humans, she said.

Student speakers from the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Japan, Mexico and Puerto Rico will address immigration, social movements, indigenous rights and social

policy issues at the conference.

"The conference is an opportunity for students to present their research. It is specifically designed as a space for students," said conference co-coordinator Sean Sellers, a graduate student studying at the institute.

Sellers said the event is unique in that it is organized by students for students. The conference is the oldest and largest in the U.S.

"I had heard of the program at UT. I was looking for something interesting on the Internet, and found it by chance," said Kaori Baba, a student from Japan studying at Yale University.

Baba studied Latin American politics in Tokyo and is now focusing on civil-military relations in Mexico.

The conference ends Saturday with a presentation by Carlos Gaviria, a central figure in modern Colombian politics. Gaviria was one of the drafters of Colombia's landmark 1991 constitution, Sellers said.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools