Documenting Modern-Day Slavery in the Dominican Republic: An Interview with Amy Serrano

Abstract

While slavery is distinctive in human history, its enduring legacy and practices in the modern world are manifest in the “disposable” labor that provisions the brothels, sweatshops, and agricultural plantations in the global economy. This interview with filmmaker Amy Serrano examines the laboring conditions and practices tantamount to slavery in the sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic (DR). It also addresses the complicity of state governments in human trafficking of Haitian migrants to the DR. The film also illuminates a global trend in which migrants, unable to emigrate to first world metropolises, cross borders to less poor ones.