Agricultural “Killing Fields”: The Poisoning of Costa Rican Banana Workers

Abstract

The poisoning of Costa Rican banana workers by multinational corporations' excessive use of pesticides is not a local issue; it is embedded in a dominant ideology expressed by the phenomenon of globalization. This ideology seeps into every aspect of our social institutions—economic, political, and legal. The practice of this ideological perspective is evident in the industrialization of global agriculture and the shift from “develop-mentalism”—liberal welfarism, industrialization, and urbanization—to a dominant, undemocratic, global financial elite with “economism” and a neoliberal political agenda overriding the nation-state polis. A specific effect is to transform the agricultural workers of developing countries, such as Costa Rican banana workers, into politically superfluous flesh-and-blood human beings.