They actually made a movie out of Father Chris' crusade, The Price of Sugar! reviewed by the NY Times. A month long exhibit in France highlighted the problem.
The Christian Science Monitor mentions Father Chris' work in its 2006 ariticle Haitian cane-cutters struggle.
The DR's PLD political party wrote a rebuttal letter to a pastoral letter issued by the Catholic Church in the DR.
Capsule Movie Reviews says:
'The Price of Sugar'
starstarstar Here's one for audiences who think there are no fresh outrages left in the world, or no heroes worth rooting for: This doc travels to the Dominican Republic, where not far from tourist-friendly beaches an entire industry rests on what is practically slave labor. Sugar plantations draw workers from Haiti with the promise of good jobs, then strip them of their ID documents so they're stuck working for 90 cents a day (in credit at the company store, no less). As narrator Paul Newman tells it, the sole challenger to this system is Father Christopher Hartley, a man who has defied taboos to bring food and doctors to workers' squalid villages and help them organize against the employers who keep them under armed guard (employers, by the way, who reportedly enjoy a sweetheart trade deal with the U.S., getting twice the world-market price for their sugar). 5 p.m. Tuesday, Dobie. - John DeFore
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