‘Blood, sweat and tears’ is the title of the first episode, but that cliché sums up the sugar industry very well. In Big Sugar travel the world with journalist Celeste Headlee, from the Oval Office to nightclubs in Havana, to get a sense of how addictive and destructive the sugar industry is. She starts on the sugar cane fields, where young people from Jamaica, among others, are lured to with an expensive plane ticket and ‘the American dream’ in their sights. For example, Victor and Selvin feel “supremely powerful” when they hear that they can go to the US to work in the sugar industry. But once there… A documentary full of major themes such as: violation of human rights, abuse of power, secret money flows and environmental pollution.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper on July 15, 2023.