Slavery

Theresa and I were driving to the supermarket and stopped at a red light. As we were waiting we saw this flatbed truck with an unusual load. It was carrying an old wooden boxcar from some railway company. Although we talked about it we never reached a conclusion as to what it was doing in Cape Coral.

We received the answer next day when we were riding our bikes past our local Middle School. There in the play yard was this boxcar. It was part of a display teaching the students about the holocaust. It was one of a few remaining railway cars used to transport people to the death camps in Poland. The boxcar was windowless and small by today's standards and if it were able to talk, think of the tragic stories it would tell.

Large posters were displayed telling the stories of some of the survivors and brought home the cruel realization of mans inhumanity to each other.Jews and other people were picked out to be slaves and worked until they were no longer of any use and then killed. Children seeing this display and hearing first hand the tragic stories were made aware of this horror from the past.

Exactly one week later Theresa and I cut through the local Catholic church yard to observe our eagles and saw a delivery truck in the parking lot. This truck was surrounded by many people who were reading posters and information articles about this particular truck. This truck was about eight feet wide and sixteen feet long with a metal roll up door at the back. There were no windows, bathroom or furniture in this delivery truck compartment. It was the home for slaves, not a hundred years ago but in 2008.

Here in Florida slavery was alive and well in the tomato fields of Southwest Florida. This truck box was the home for twelve migrant workers from Mexico and Central America. They came with a promise to work. Their papers were taken, passports destroyed and enslaved by greedy men who worked them without pay. Any attempt to escape was met by beatings and chains.

This display is making its way around Florida to educate people of this tragic situation. The people who kept these men in slavery were arrested and put in prison for a long time. Conditions have improved in the agriculture industry partially because of this incident.

In ten days we saw slavery and brutality from two different time frames. It was ugly then and is even uglier now. We were shocked when we read about this in the paper and saw it on TV but it is so much more tragic when you see it in the raw.

Slavery is an everyday occurrence in some parts of the world but we never expect to see it in our own back yard.