February
2006
LA and environs
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I like chocolate. I'll nibble on a piece once or twice a day. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure
since I'm diabetic and I really shouldn't, but on the other hand, didn't I recently hear that science
proved chocolate is good for you? Like red wine and coffee?
I like to get these blocks of Ghirardelli chocolate from Trader Joe's. I think it's about
$3.50/lb. I break it up with a cleaver and keep it in a bowl in the fridge. Including crumbs,
which I might use with fruit and sour cream for a nice little desert that's not too harmful.
Chocolate. Yum. And not only that, it's so American. It was even used as currency in Mexico
under the Aztecs. Down there, I've bought beans in the market and peeled and eaten them raw.
Kind of bitter. Not yet candy. Hot chocolate was a favorite of Moctezuma, and the Spanish colonial
aristocracy developed quite a taste for it as well
Last year, I worked on a project on American slavery, but I also did a quick survey of slavery
throughout history, and in the present. It was depressing. I read about child slavery in the
Ivory Coast, where a lot of the world's chocolate is produced. I guess I tried not to think about
it when I bought my chocolate.
Then a couple of weeks ago I half-heard a story on NPR. Did they really say that 70% of
the world's chocolate comes from Ivory Coast? Didn't they say that slavery is "rampant" there?
I think what happens is that poverty-stricken street kids are snatched up in the urban slums
and taken to work the plantation. Worked to death. No school, no health care. Not only slavery,
but slavery in one of its cruelest manifestations.
I decided that I couldn't buy chocolate any more unless I can be sure that it is not produced
by slavery. I searched online and found some very nice chocolates from Global Exchange. With
shipping, I think it comes to $40 for 10 bars. Probably three or four times what I've been paying.
Of course, it's not just chocolate. And there's a gradient from the most degrading and inhumane
slavery regime to the third-world sweat shop where people voluntarily come to work under abysmal
conditions for low wages because they have nothing else.
So this raises a question for me: Do I really want to know? How my chocolate is produced?
My green onions? My cheap clothes? Do I really have to worry about every buck I spend? Who has
been hurt in its production? How has the environment been damaged? Wouldn't it be easier to NOT
know that much about it?
You could make yourself crazy. You know what I think would be good? If we lived in a society
that was so committed to human rights and environmental protection that we could have confidence
in our way of life. That would be good.
A COUPLE OF WEEKS ago on NPR I heard an Israeli journalist from Haaretz. He
was saying, and I've heard this before, that most Israelis are really not aware of the oppressive
conditions imposed on the Palestinians in the West Bank by Israeli occupation. He implied that
their ignorance was willful.
And who can blame them? Do you really want to know what those prisoners in Guantanamo are
enduring, or what they did to get sent there? (Don't read "American gulag" by Thomas Wilner in
today's LA Times! http://www.latimes.com/news
I'm not being rhetorical. I'm really undecided. The chocolate made me think of it. What part of the good life, the ideal life, should be committed to healing the planet when there is so much that is worrisome, and so little we can really do about?
I don't know. For now, I guess I'll try to buy fair trade chocolate, and other fair trade
and organic items as well when it's convenient.
Big deal!
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