Posted by John Malloy on 02/25/2008
Slavery in America: 90¢ an Hour & -20°F Below ZeroColorado sheep-ranchers take advantage of immigrant workers in the Badlands of Wyoming
We had been on the road for hours, leaving the interstate and then digressing to smaller and smaller highways. Differing vistas of the Colorado landscape got wilder and more vacant the further north we drove. Driving through Maybell, we took a right and headed through Irish Canyon, on the road towards Rock Springs, Wyoming. Dropping down into Wyoming the sagebrush flats opened up on either side of the highway. Stretching into the distance and disappearing over the horizon, empty barren land devoid of anything but roads built by the gas companies and herds of sheep tended by imported slave labor.
With us on our journey were three Chilean men who had worked out here for anywhere from a year to three. Brought straight from their native land on work Visas, they had been promised food, clothing, shelter and a good paycheck to herd sheep on some of the roughest landscape in the west. Unfortunately for them, they did not receive adequate food, clothing, pay or medical attention. All they found was brutal winters with a constant wind that could cut to the bone and sweltering summer heat that would make a lizard pant.
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Posted by
John Malloy
on 02/25/2008. Filed under
International.
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