Child Labor| The biopolitics of tobacco and the erasure of worker exploitation
Mesoamerican youth in an American tobacco field. Photo credit: RT Moderator’s Note: Human Rights Watch (HRW) just released a report on children in the tobacco fields of the USA. Dorinda Moreno sent a set of insightful comments by a respected expert on the issue of tobacco and health. She notes that the conversation is shared for the purpose of extending questions passed forward for our consideration…[by] Dr. Robert Robinson. I am reposting an article about the HRW report, “Latino Immigrants: Thousands of Children Work in U.S. Tobacco Fields”, which led to Dr. Robinson’s comments. I have posted Dr. Robinson’s comments at the end after the Hispanically Speaking News article (re-posted below). I have questions: We all know that tobacco kills. What the public and elected officials seldom recognize is that tobacco has other types of victims as well – and I am not talking about nonsmokers exposed to secondary smoke. Most likely to be overlooked and erased from the public policy disc...