NAME: Sarmiento, Anjanette B.

GRADE: BSAIS101

1. What is the video all about? Provide a summary.

The video is about a courageous and daring priest named Christopher Hartley, who
wants to better the lives of Haitian immigrants abused or exploited by the Vicini family
in the Dominican Republic. Each year, as the sugar harvest approaches, these Haitians
are recruited as many as twenty thousand (20,000) to work in the sugar cane plantation.
The company run by the Vicini family ensures that they will have steady work and higher
salaries than they can earn in their country, Haiti. But this promise is not true Haitians
only make one-dollar ($1), despite working for fourteen (14) hours a day, seven days a
week; this salary of the workers is paid in vouchers instead of cash, and they can only
redeem it in company-owned store with overpriced food.

2. Does this film teach you lessons? What are these lessons?
Yes, I learned a lot from the film, like the Dominican Republic’s sugar industry has a
preferential trade deal with the U.S. government. The agreement obligates Americans to
buy Dominican sugar at double the world price, the U.S. imports more sugar from the
Dominican Republic than any other country. I also learned that the Dominican people
hate Haitians because of their dark/bloody history. In this video, I also realized how the
lack of sustainable goals badly caused the Dominican Republic and Haiti, extreme
poverty, inequalities, hunger, and lack of education. This lack of sustainability causes the
people of Haiti to go to the sugar cane plantation even though they are undocumented
and illegally entered the country.

3. How can you relate yourself to those who are in the video?
The only thing that I can relate to myself in the video is being mistreated, but not how
Haitians are mistreated, as seen in the video. I experienced mistreatment in my life five
(5) years ago when I was just thirteen (13) years old when I was working in my auntie's
house. I'm working with my auntie because I want to accumulate money to have an
allowance for the next school year. Since I'm a worker for my auntie, there was a time
that I could hear a word that was rude and belittling which hurt my feelings.

4. If you were in their shoes, what would you do? If you are present or near the situation,
what do you think you can do as a person?

Being in that kind of situation is hard to imagine; just thinking that I'm one of those
Haitian people who abuse and exploit by the Vinci family and hated by the Dominican
people is frightening me to the core of my body. If I'm present in that kind of situation,
to be honest, If Father Christopher Hartley didn't come, I think the only thing that I can
do is to pray and hope that nothing's terrible happened to me. If Father Hartley didn't
come and seen what kind of life and situation the Haitians had in the sugar cane
plantation, I don't think that we stand a chance against a powerful family and the
people who hate the Haitian race; since we are undocumented or illegimmigrantsant.