The Human Cost of Your Mother's Day Flowers — vice.com

All photos by Juan Arredondo. All names (apart from Beatriz Fuentes) have been changed to conceal identities Lorena never wanted to work in the cut-flower industry. But when she gave birth to the first of two daughters at the age of 19, she understood she needed the money. In the region of Colombia where Lorena has spent her entire life—known as the Bogotá Savanna—cut flowers are king. “There’s no other work, no other industry here,” she told me when I visited her this spring. As a single mother, Lorena had few alternatives but to enter the vast farms and factories, where she cut, trimmed, and arranged carnations, alstroemerias, and roses for export to flower-hungry US consumers.

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