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”? 

Nicaragua--Spring Break

Well, here we are nine weeks into our program. I cannot believe that we are on the last leg of our journey here in Central America with only six weeks remaining. In the wee hours of Sunday morning we started our journey to Nicaragua. We boarded a bus at three a.m. for a ten hour journey through Honduras and back down to Nicaragua to arrive in Managua in the late afternoon. As warned we were greeted by the sweltering heat here, with highs in the mid ninety degree range every day.  We have spent our first two days living in our student center that is also a hostel, and this afternoon we head out to the community that will be our home for the next six weeks: Batola. Batola is a very typical middle class barrio here in Managua, Nicaragua. Batola was actually one of the first housing projects erected after the FSLN Revolution; these houses were built to house the women who played role in aiding the revolution.  These are only things that we have been told; I am very excited get there this afternoon and find out for myself! We have been told that this is often the student’s favorite part of the semester, which is hard to believe because up until now it has been absolutely wonderful! I am really looking forward to being in a family-stay again, and have that aspect of family and Spanish in my life again. We have had a slow start here with our classes because after this week we all go our separate ways for spring break next week. We have just only started to touch on the topics and issues here in Nicaragua but I am really excited to fully delve in once we get back from break. Here in Nicaragua we will be taking two classes: Cultural Conflict and Change (In Latin America/ Women Context) and Citizen Participation in a Globalized Economy. Like Guatemala and El Salvador our classes will consist of a mixture of in class lectures from our professors, site visits, rural home-stays, and guest lectures from: government officials, non-governmental agencies and guerilla officers. Today was our first real class; but from what I’ve seen and learned so far the political situation here is a very unique and will be interesting to study. I cannot wait to get started on the last leg of this journey!

As excited as I am about getting started in our classes, I must admit I am just as excited to have a break next week. It has been a very busy nine weeks here, with only a few days of real down time. Spring Break plans were left up to each person to make. Myself and four other girls are heading to Leon, one of the old capital cities of Nicaragua. We will spend a few nights in Leon which has a lot of hiking opportunities and also a lot of historical sites and museums to take in, then we are heading for the second half of the week to a beach on the Pacific Coast. I plan to do some leisurely reading and lying in the sun all week! 

Suchitoto

We spent this weekend in Suchitoto. Suchitoto is situated about an hour away from the city of San Salvador; it is a little city with a lot of history. I would describe Suchi as a non-tourist version of Guatemala’s Antigua; all over you can see the remnants of its colonial past. It also sits right next to Lago Suchitlan, which makes it the Salvadoran get away destination. Suchi happens to be where our wonderful professor Sister Peggy lives and has created a cultural center and hostile. Post-war Peggy came here to aid the returning refugees; so twenty years of living in solidarity with the community has brought her a great deal of respect for her throughout the community. In her twenty years here Peggy has aided in numerous community building projects and helped (through her many connections) to fund many more.

While our weekend there was a beautiful get-away from the city life, it also served as a learning experience. Just a boat ride away from Suchitoto lays a massacre site; what was once like any other Salvadoran community, now 30 years later still remains abandon. A man by the Rogelio who was only nine years old at the time, was one of the only survivors of that lived to tell the tale of happened that horrible day. The community had been living in fear of attacks from the Salvadoran army for months before the massacre actually happened, and had actually fled their homes in the weeks prior. They were only returning because that had gotten word that the army had left.

Rogelio told his story to us, standing on the very ground in which the massacre of his entire family and community happened. It was like no testimony I have ever heard. If you can imagine the death camps in Germany; people lined up and executed, hanged, burned in their homes and starved to death. Rogelio merely escaped the same fate as his family, only by the smoke of the gun shots that took the lives of his sister and mother in front of him. He spent the next two days injured and trying to survive in what used to be his town; now a ghost town, abandon and half burnt to the ground. Later simply by pure fate, he would find his uncle who was a guerrilla soldier. From that point on his uncle took care of him and would reconnect him with his grandparents (who had fled the country).

Rogelio now lives with his wife and children in the newly created El Citio. All of the people who managed to survive these horrible events in the community of (most because they fled the country to Honduras) Copapayo, have created a community similar to Nueva Esperanza. Through organization in the community they have created a school, health care center and a library. They were proud to report that their community has Zero gang action; which is a huge accomplishment in a country that is the second most violent in the entire world (Yes--more violent that any current warring country in the world). They try to keep a proactive mentality within the youth in the community to keep drugs and gangs from entering the community.

Listening to Rogelio’s story and the feeling of standing on the ground where so many innocent people lost their lives is a feeling that will stick with me for the rest of my life. It is one thing to learn about the things that have happened, but it is whole different ball game to take action to stop future atrocities. As if this whole experience wasn’t enough, hearing his testimony concreted in my mind how and what war really does to communities. People can’t just be statistics and collateral in war.  

                                                                                                                                         

Resilience

I don’t even know how to begin to articulate my experience in the community of Nueva Esperanza – which I think is worth mentioning literally means New Hope. We arrived on Thursday afternoon and stayed until Sunday. All 15 of us lived in pairs with host families throughout the community. Nueva Esperanza is a community like I have never experienced, and certainly unlike anything I have had the opportunity to taken part in. The current community was formed after the war (1 year before the Peace Accords were signed). However, the people in the community have deeper connections to each other than I can even begin to understand.

                Before the war began the community that is now called Nueva Esperanza lived together in San Migalito. Before the years of the war’s actual beginning the community was faced with such violence and death they were forced to relocate (literally in the midst of gun fire) to a refugee camp.  Because of the war, there were ample refugees and not nearly enough space to house them all.  This community of about 20 families (so about 100 people) lived in the basement of a church. All 100 of them lived in a church basement with one sink and one toilet for over a year (afterwards reports would be made that it was one of the refugee camps with the most deplorable conditions).  The church in which they lived was always surrounded by the Salvadoran military; if anyone left the basement they would become “disappeared”. The only food they had was food that priests (the ones I mentioned were murdered in my last blog) and sisters of the church snuck in for them.  One can only imagine your children crying out from hunger pains, and having nothing to give them.

                Finally after that year the community was given refuge in Nicaragua, under the newly revolutionized Sandinista government. It would be there in Nicaragua where the community would really begin to organize its self and decide that they were going to learn how to read, write and learn agriculture. For 10 years in Nicaragua the community lived and learned, but they also knew that they wanted to return to their homeland; they were not going to live in exile for the rest of their lives. However, they had decided collectively because of the danger of going back (because their country was still in war time) that they had to return as a community.  At first the Salvadoran government would not let them; they said they could only allow one family at a time to return. After much resistance and advocacy from the community in 1990 they were able to return as a community to El Salvador. As expected upon return they had nothing: no homes, no food or means to provide for themselves. That’s not even to mention the fact that they had no place to educated their children or health care. What they did have however was their new found agricultural skills and knowledge, a plan, but most importantly they were in it together. They knew that their lively hood depended on one and other.

                Now to fast-forward 21 years later, they are flourishing. That’s not to say there are not things that they need or are working towards, but comparatively they are doing better.  The community has schools K-12, homes, multiple churches and a community arts center. How did all of these things come about you ask? Through unbelievable organization the community created an agricultural cooperative. The community works together to grow and sell; sugar cane, corn, coconuts, cows and dairy products. Primarily they use their crops to sustain themselves, but the surplus earnings are broken up into different funds and recycled back into the cooperative to continue its growth.  I also think it is worth mentioning that foreign aid (mostly Germany, Canada) has played a part in the community’s development. Not just from government aid, but outsiders coming to the community and being so impressed with the level of proactivity and organization, that individuals and organizations have donated money to help them.

                Just this past October this community and many others surrounding it were hit by record breaking floods. The houses were 4 foot deep in water. Water that was filled with debris from destroyed homes and deceased animals; they lost everything. Now here we are not even 4 months later and they are still there, starting over, rebuilding. That is resilience if I have ever seen it.  

Liberation Theology - San Salvador

We arrived here in San Salvador, El Salvador only four days ago. The 15 of us live under one roof in a bed and breakfast, which for the time being is home. We have a beautiful backyard/courtyard area, along with many other cozy living areas around the house. Though we have only been here for 4 days, it feels like we have learned so much and there is still a wealth of information to be taken in.

            In our few days here we have had a couple different meetings with professors from the University of Central America (UCA), first to get the history of the country, then to get the more recent events and current issues. The class that coincides with El Salvador is Liberation Theologies. In order to understand the current political, economic and social situation, we have to learn about the past. El Salvador, like Guatemala is now just 20 years out of a very brutal civil war. Also very similar to Guatemala, now 20 years after the peace accords have been signed, nothing much has really changed. The oppressive economic, political and social structures that sparked the brutal war are still in place. Though the military may not outright be slaughtering its people it kills them economically and politically.          

            While the war here “officially” started 1980 the situation here was a very brutal hostile one leading up to its beginning. Liberation Theology Started in Central America during the 1970’s. The whole idea behind the movement was the people (the lower class/impoverished peoples) rising up and deciding that simply praying, and waiting for “God” to save them wasn’t going to fix their situation, they needed to be proactive in changing their government. Throughout Latin America there were many different movements of Liberation Theology, but El Salvador has one of the richest histories (We met with Oscar Romero’s secretary at the time of his assassination!! How cool!). There was this large movement of the people joining together to fight for their rights against their greatly oppressive government. It mostly started out as small pockets of people forming groups around the country, but would later form together to become the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front aka the FMLN. This group of people fought against the brutal Salvadorian Army, an army who was responsible for some hundreds and hundreds of massacres all around the country.  

            As I mention before we have been speaking with professors from the UCA and we had to opportunity on one of those two occasions to go on campus for a lecture. Which was cool to get to see a college campus here, but the most powerful of all, is the fact that one of those massacres happened on the campus of UCA.  Six Jesuit Priests were brutally slaughtered one morning, along with two other innocent bystanders, “No one was to be left to testify”.  We were able to take a tour of the museum there on campus, and tour the sight where the murders occurred. Having that opportunity to be there tour the campus was moving to say the least.  Among other things, the museum contained the clothes the priests were murdered in, photographs of the scene of the crime and part of the tour is even the room the two by standards (a mother and her daughter; of the lands-keeper to UCA) were murdered in.  

            Obviously all of this was very hard to take in, and very gruesome. However, I think what sickened me the most is the fact that my own country U.S.A funded every bit of that war. The U.S funded the Salvadorian military (along with other L.A countries) to fights its own people who were accused of becoming communist.  It’s a big game of chest, with just a few million lives at stake.  The idea of this makes me ill, knowing that here and all over the world we have funded and are funding wars were we don’t fully understand the whole impact of our choices. 

Chwitxirbal Rural Stay

     Well, our first rural stay is officially over with. Going into it, I definitely did not know what to expect. The community we stayed in is a small very rural community called Chwitxirbal (Twit-city-bal), which sits about 30 minutes up in the mountains above Xela. The whole community of Chwitxirbal consists of about 15 families. As one could imagine our arrival to the community was widely known and anticipated as our group of 15 students and 2 coordinators occupied 9 homes in their community (2 to a home).

       We were welcomed with such open hearts and arms. In retrospect it was just 5 days out of our whole semester, but I could just feel how special it was for the families to have us there, how much it meant. We arrived on Sunday and we were received by the mayor of the town and our families. From there we all dispersed out into our host families. My family was the Victoria family; there was an older lady, her daughter and 3 younger children. As tends to be, the more rural communities are densely indigenous populations. The majority of the families there speak an indigenous language as their primary language and Spanish as their secondary. This surprisingly made communication a bit easier, since from both ends we were trying to speak in a secondary language. Going into this I didn’t think that our families would have running water or electricity, but they did. There was running water to the sink to do dishes and we had a light in our room, they had a latrine and a wood burning stove.

     The food we ate there was so fresh and tasty, the corn to make the tortillas was freshly ground and there queso fresca and milk was straight from the cow fresh. With every meal we had this really wonderful hot drink made from masa (ground corn), it was surprisingly sweat. While we were there we had to opportunity to have a cooking lesson with a local woman. We learned how to make envueltos, a Guatemalan dish. Enveuelto literally translated means to wrap, but basically they are any vegetable dipped in this egg batter and fried. We also had fresh chamomile, mint and lavender tea to go with our meal.

     I think the highlight of being in Chwitxirbal was the different dynamic with our teachers from PLQ. For the four days, they all road a bus up into the community in the morning and we would have our class there. This week was special though, we all were intentional in finishing up all of our graded tests and works so that we could just hang out and have conversations with our teachers. We went on hikes in the mountains, walked around the community and just soaked up the beauty of our surroundings. It was really a beautiful week.