Rural Home stay -- Coffee Cooperative

As Central American style would have it our expected 2 hour journey to Estelí on Tuesday morning ended up taking about 5 hours.  Ex-military personal set up a tronke  blocking the road leaving Managua—so we had to turn around, head back to Managua, and  leave town heading the other way. As I have learned you never know what you are going to find when traveling here; it is always an adventure of some sort. We only spent one night in the town of Estelí (which is one of Nicaragua’s largest tobacco producing towns) and headed the next day on the second half of our journey further up into the mountains of Nicaragua.

 Our last home stay was in a community called Santule. This community, as many other Nicaraguan and Central American families, has a long history of coffee production.  In this sleepy little town of only about 200 people, there are about 12 small coffee cooperatives. Each cooperative’s members have coffee trees on their land to harvest and sell the beans; mostly organically produced. When it is time to harvest each cooperative member pools their crops together to sell to the buyers who buy the “green beans” as they call them. The beans are then roasted, packaged, and exported around the world.  

During these three days we spent up there we had the opportunity to stay with the farmers and their families. As we have been here for three months now, done a fair bit of traveling and stayed with a variety of different families; I have seen varying levels of poverty. However, the poverty in Santule, struck me. My family and all of the families had kitchens that consisted of dirt floors, a wood burning stove and maybe a dining room table. None of the families had running water; all of the water they used had to be carried in buckets from hand crank wells—there were two in the community. There was mostly no electricity. A few families, through international aid, have managed to buy solar panels to have a little bit of power to use in the nights. I say that I was struck by the poverty because going into the homestay I was very excited to see how an organic, fair trade coffee cooperatives worked and how they have improved the lives of the families.

 The farmers of the fair trade organic coffee get certified as an organic farmer (which costs the farmer around 4,000 US dollars) and this insures the farmer a certain minimum price for their crop even if the international market for coffee drops. I don’t understand how it can be labeled “fair trade” when the farmer, who is doing the majority of the work, might make around 6,000 US dollars a year. Yet to buy a bag of whole bean coffee from Starbucks for example costs $11.95.  While if the farmers had access to money to buy the machinery needed to take the coffee from harvest, to roast, to packaging and exporting; they could reap the real benefits of their work. The main pillars of fair trade are to; pay a fair wage in the local context, provide equal opportunities for all people, particularly the most disadvantaged and to provide financial and technical assistance to workers whenever possible. This is not to discredit fair trade, because I think that fair trade and cooperative work has done wonders for many different communities, but is fair trade really fair trade?

Humanitarianism or Imperialism

            It is easy to think imperialism is a thing of the past. Manifest Destiny, the Louisiana Purchase, or the Mexican Cession: all things we learned about in history class that happened long ago. Presented simply as Western Expansion; we did it, we have it, it is over with. Countries (particularly the United States) no longer aspire to obtain more land and expand their national boarders, but this idea of imperialism is outdated. Imperialism doesn’t present itself in this clear cut form anymore. Today imperialism manifests itself under a disguise: “humanitarianism”. Though countries no longer quest to expand physically they want to gain subtle and even not so subtle control over resource; resources such as oil, minerals, metals, diamonds, and even newer and cheaper labor forces. All to support the massive machine that is consumerism and therefore the economy.  Once the “developing” world decided that they had reached their max capacity of expansionism, the rules of the game changed. It was no longer a matter of invasion and take over, but rather subtle coercion and control. We will support you (brutal dictator or not) as long as you implement economic policies and play the game under our terms; if not we will crush you. 

As Howard Zinn touched on in this article Empire or Humanity, he himself if a WWII veteran and claims guilt of his naïve idea of what the war he fought in was really about. This is true even today; the United States has been waging a war against ‘terrorism’ for eleven years now. As an American citizen myself, having had two brothers in the military; I never questioned the legitimacy of our war in the Middle East as imperialism, like the majority of U.S. citizens and solders of WWII did not. As Zinn put it very clearly,

In wars, there is always a difference between the motives of the soldiers and the motives of the political leaders who send them into battle. It was to defend fascism and create a more decent world, free of aggression, militarism, and racism.

In the case of the Middle East, we invaded Iraq under the pretenses of finding weapons, and  now Afghanistan claiming to be saving the Afghani people from a brutal leader. The truth of the matter is the United States does not care; our intentions are anything but innocent humanitarian intervention. We interfered in Afghanistan to “implement a democracy”, yet in the case of Rwanda for example Clinton (after once publicly calling it genocide) would not declare Rwanda a genocide. Therefore, allowing the U.S (and the UN) not to intervene. The slaughtering of the Rwandan people does not affect the United States economy; so we had no reason to intervene. However, in the case of Afghanistan and the Middle East we use the mask of “humanitarianism” but I think our intentions are clear; we control Afghanistan—we control oil.

The policies that the U.S implemented all throughout Latin America from the nineteen-sixties up until now have had directly negative effects on the nearly entire region. For example the United States has been interfering and intervening in Nicaragua since 1909. From that point on the U.S is spotted throughout Nicaraguan history with its’ military occupations in the country. Not intervening against the government, but rather supporting and providing financial and military aid to the brutal Samoza dictatorship; because the Samoza’s played the economic game that benefited the United States. The United States did not care that they were directly funding one of Latin Americas most brutal dictator; because they got what they wanted out of it. The central ideas of the Roosevelt Corollary demonstrate clearly what the intention of the United Sates was and arguably still is—even if you have to read a little bit between the lines. “If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social political matters, if it keeps order and pays is obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States.” However,

Chronic wrong-doing or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civil society, may in America as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power. …Our interests and those of our southern neighbors are in reality identical. They have great natural riches, and if within their borders the reign of law and justice obtains, prosperity is sure to come to them. While they thus obey the primary laws of the civilized society they may rest assured that they will be treated by us in a spirit of cordial and helpful sympathy. We would interfere with them only in the last resort, and then only if it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations. 

This passage from the Roosevelt Corollary demonstrates the intentions of the United States with its “southern neighbors” perfectly; we will not intervene as long as you let us do what we see fit to benefit our economy by exploiting your resources. This is the general approach that the United States still uses to approach particularly Latin America but the rest of the world as well.

             United States feels the right to “exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit, and by such means as we see fit” (Henry Luce). These Neo-Liberal, Capitalistic policies have never been more clearly demonstrated to me as in Central America. The United States during the time of the Revolution in the late eighties in Nicaragua funded the Contra War; because the Sandanistas were seen as a communist threat to their power. The United States gave millions and millions of dollars to put down the revolution; they were unsuccessful. Now thirty years later the United Sates has a seemingly decent relationship with the very government they were trying to put down in the seventies. One might ask why that is, but the answer is simple. Even though Ortega outright denounces the United States and talks of anti-U.S policy, he does everything the United States asks of him. The Free Trade Zone in Managua is a perfect example of his compliance.

            Walking down the streets of San Salvador the thought of imperialism couldn’t have been more prevalent. With Mc Donald’s, Quiznos, Pizza Hut, Subway, KFC’s and Wal-Mart lining the streets and the dollarization of the Salvadoran economy, the connection between the U.S and El Salvador could not be clearer. The United States does not need to expand its territorial boarders and make El Salvador “its own”, because it doesn’t have to. As long as El Salvador allows neo-liberal policies that allow for the entrance and growth of multinational cooperation’s without any barriers; the U.S in affect controls El Salvador. We are going to come in, use you land, steal business from you people, use your resources, pollute your water and air; but we are creating jobs so you will accept it. If not the U.S will, “exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit, and by such means as we see fit”.  

One could look just a few years back into history and see how the United States funded the Guatemalan and Salvadoran militaries to slaughter their own people. The U.S funding of these wars could not be further from humanitarianism. During the eighties the Regan Administration funneled 1.5 million dollars a day to the Salvadoran military; in the name of fighting communism.  In Guatemala the civil war that the U.S waged on the Guatemalan peoples accused of communism, raged on for thirty six years and left two hundred thousand innocent men, women and children dead. Not to mention the deadly games that the U.S government played to insure Europe would not construct a Nicaraguan Canal instead of the P anama Canal. More recently we can look at the signing of CAFTA in 2005; the policies that were enacted under CAFTA did not benefit Central America, they only benefited the big business, multinational cooperation’s.

The situation facing Central America, particularly Nicaragua is a very complicated one. Though they are their own sovereign states, they are so intermittingly involved with the United States and its unfair policies they are on a path to the seemly unknown, but deadly. Imperialism today presents itself as humanitarian intervention, and is ridden with capitalism and neo-liberalism.  As the question was posed in class, “Is it possible for the United States to have a real human rights foreign policy”?