L. Emiko Soltis, an Emory University Ph.D. candidate working with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, discusses issues faced by local migrant workers with visitors to the mobile Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum, which made a stop Tuesday at the Rock on UM’s Coral Gables campus at the invitation of Father Frank Corbishley, of the St. Bede Episcopal Chapel at UM.

A museum unlike any other opened its doors to members of the University of Miami community on Tuesday, November 2, when the Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum, housed in a produce truck similar to the one used to enslave farm workers in 2007, rolled onto the Coral Gables campus, showcasing exhibits that raise awareness about cases of human trafficking and servitude that, remarkably, still exist today.

Inside a semi-truck displaying chains, police reports, news clippings, and other hard evidence of abuse some Florida migrant workers have suffered at the hands of employers is a single shirt, covered in grime and faded, dried blood. Viewers learn that this frayed piece of clothing, now preserved inside a glass frame, was worn by “a 17-year-old farm worker brutally beaten by a supervisor after stopping work to take a drink.”

Father Frank Corbishley, chaplain of St. Bede Episcopal Chapel at UM, arranged the visit after recently learning that abuses like these have been occurring for decades in Southwest Florida, just a couple of hours from his church on campus, as well as in other parts of the state’s agricultural core.

In fact, there have been nine documented slavery cases in Florida during the past decade or so, reports the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), which adds that it has been instrumental in uncovering most of them.

After hearing CIW was touring the U.S. East Coast with this exhibition, Corbishley said, “Why not bring it to UM?”

During Tuesday’s event at the Rock, Rudy Cortinas, national coordinator for the Immokalee-based Student/Farmworker Alliance, translated a conversation with Oscar Otzoy, a 26-year-old farm worker and CIW member originally from Guatemala.

Otzoy learned from fellow workers about the community-based organization of mainly Latino, Mayan Indian, and Haitian immigrants working in low-wage jobs throughout the state. He said CIW has helped him gain tools to fight discrimination, and he has seen firsthand how sharing his story can create change. Otzoy now shows other workers how to file grievances against bosses regarding low wages and wage theft, currently the biggest issues these workers face, he said. However, he noted, before CIW’s activism paved inroads, physical abuse was a much more frequent and grave concern.

Because farm and domestic workers were excluded from the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, Cortinas explained, they lack many protections and benefits afforded other classes of U.S. workers, “ensuring farm workers powerlessness vis-a-vis their employer. Unsurprisingly, forced labor, not far removed from the sort practiced before the Emancipation Proclamation, took hold in this climate.”

Their wages have remained virtually the same since 1978, when they were 40 cents per bucket. At that rate workers had to gather more than two tons of produce to make $50 in a day, he explained. Today, added Cortinas, the wage is just 50 cents per 32-pound bucket, less than half of the $1.06 it would be if adjusted for inflation.

Cortinas also cited the example of bosses who acquire visas for workers and then take possession of those papers so the workers remain effectively trapped, but he pointed out that the abuses seen in Florida transcend legal status to affect a range of vulnerable populations.

In addition to CIW’s anti-slavery and fairer wages campaigns, it advocates for fair food practices, raising awareness about corporate policies it deems detrimental to worker and human rights.

For Corbishley, educating others about CIW’s cause goes hand in hand with his role as a religious leader. “A lot of people, Christians, think the Bible is all about sex,” he said. “But the Bible discusses poverty and social justice much more.” From both the Old and New Testaments, it’s clear issues of economic injustice and society’s relationship to money and possessions “are at the core of Jewish and Christian values,” he added. “It is part of our faith. I try to raise that in people’s minds through these kinds of efforts and in my sermons. It is not a marginal issue.”