SANTO DOMINGO.- Dominican Republic’s second biggest sugar producer is the target of sustained attacks from quarters as far as Ethiopia and as close as Miami, as a Catholic priest in the former and the Haitian community in the latter say the 150 year old consortium mistreats its around 11,000 strong non-Dominican work force.

The Grupo Vicini plans to boost sugar production to as high as 90,000 tons this year and take advantage of rising prices in world markets, said its president Felipe Vicini recent interview. It’s a sweet harvest expected to counter the damaging effects of recent documentaries of similar names.

Although Corporate Communications director Eduardo Valcarcel agreed to an interview, he made it clear at once that current litigation in Washington DC keeps him from commenting on the recent uproar caused by an alleged campaign by catholic priest Christopher Hartley, currently in Ethiopia, against Dominican Republic and specifically against that company.

He then asked Institutional Relations director Fernando Ferran to take part in the interview given his knowledge of the relations with the various entities which deal with situation with Haitian immigrants.

Varcarcel affirms that the Vicini group of companies is looking to remain at the forefront in corporate responsibility of the country, in the dawn of its fourth generation since founded. “We are constantly looking for ways to modernize.”

Vicini’s array of interests range from cash to fruit, with the Progreso bank, a steel mill and the stalwart sugar and the export of pineapples and mangos. “Right now we are the country’s biggest mango and pineapple exporter.” He also mentioned the Parmalat milk company, real estate properties in Guayacanes, and the Don Juan hotel in Boca Chica (east), the Fiat auto dealership, the Sans Souci Port development project and a growing beef operation.

But back to the nagging problem; Vicini’s relation with its workers of Haitian origin, and why they are targeted by even Amnesty International, and by the producer Bill Haynes in the award winning documentary ‘The Price of Sugar’. “You have to look at it as the Cuban Independence leader José Marti said it: “The sun also has dark spots, if you so desire to gaze at them,” Ferran notes.

But a bright spot is Vicini’s production from the around 22,000 tareas (almost 1,400 hectares) planted with sugarcane from San Cristobal in the west to San Pedro in the east, where its facilities mill it to make sugar, the stuff controversy is made off.

Ferrand said the conflict has historical as well social roots and cited the massacre of Haitians ordered by the dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1937, when, risking their own lives “many Dominicans hid Haitians to keep them alive, such as the well known case of Jose Francisco Peña Gomez,” in reference to the late leader and president of the opposition PRD party.

Played out as a ‘good cop bad cop’ routine, Varcarcel tempers Ferran’s analysis with more positive aspects of the group founded by the Italian Juan Bautista Vicini who came to the country in 1859. “We are reforesting the Nizao river in San Cristobal…we have the initiative Inicia to eliminate illiteracy amongst our workers…we have perhaps the most modern public school in the country.”

But Ferran again brings the controversy to the fore by noting that “no other country extends its solidarity to the Haitians as much as ours,” as evidenced by the thousands of nationals from that country who work for “La Casa” Vicini.