On June 10, 2011, Martinez was assigned to cut four rows of cane. His task was to strip off the leaves, chop them into pieces, and tie them into bundles. About forty pieces make up a bundle. For this labor, he earned one cordoba per bundle – less than a nickel. (5 cents)
By 8:30 in the morning, he had cut two rows. He was starting to feel sick, but continued to cut in the sweltering heat. “The sun was too strong, and I had sweated through my shirt like someone had thrown water on me,” Martinez recalled.
By the time he finished his rows, at about 11, Martinez was feverish and nauseous. He rested some 15 minutes, but still had to tie his pieces into bundles. Another worker came to help.
Martinez said they finished about 1 p.m., and the bus came to bring the workers home about half an hour later. When it arrived, Martinez felt desperately ill. “I got onto the bus and I couldn’t walk anymore,” he said.
Since Martinez was a contract worker, he could not go to the company hospital. He took the bus toward home and on board began to vomit. The bus did not stop. “The guys gave me a chance to stick my head out the bus window,” he said.
The road where the bus left him is separated from his home by a shallow river. His mother and brother carried him across the river to bring him to his bed.
Soon after his collapse, Martinez learned that his creatinine levels were up. He had gone for days with no appetite, wanting only cold drinks to soothe the sensation of fever.
“If death is coming, we have to resign ourselves to wait for it,” Martinez said. “Resigning yourself means waiting for what the disease is going to give you. Because you look at me and I look normal now, but inside I feel like I’m burning."
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