TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2002
Helping Unemployed Coffee Workers
By Ann Hutt Browning [Ann Hutt Browning is a Nicaragua Network supporter who lives in Ashfield, Massachusetts.]Anyone who has visited Nicaragua knows that it is a very poor country. This January [2003] was my fifth annual visit, but I had never seen such deplorable impoverishment as I did on my visit to the Department of Matagalpa. While after Hurricane Mitch, I had seen hundreds of people living in makeshift shelters, for the most part these were temporary.
Four years ago Sandra Lopez and her husband, Jose Gonzalez, established a small foundation in memory of a teenage son who had died. Jose is a former legislator from Matagalpa in the National Assembly. Their initial work was with young people in Matagalpa but, after coffee prices fell so badly and workers and their families began suffering increasingly from hunger, some of the families asked the foundation for help with food and with alternative work. The foundation was able to rent unused land near the town of San Ramon, and to help 20 families plant beans and corn as a cooperative for basic food needs. The Nicaragua Network has helped out for two years now, first with seeds and other costs of production, and last year with two storage silos and a team of oxen.
Some background information for my visit to the project: The largest number of unemployed coffee workers lives in the Departments of Jinotega and Matagalpa. The poorest township in Matagalpa is San Ramon, where 3,000 hungry unemployed coffee worker families live in desperate need. The two poorest rural settlements within the town limits are 1) Yucul (elevation 3300 feet, eleven miles from San Ramon); and 2) El Horno (3600 feet, three miles further on). It was from these two communities that the foundation chose the 20 families it serves. This year some coffee is being harvested in the region, but the pickers only "payment" comes from a government food program. The harvest lasts only a few months; after that the coffee pickers and their families suffer unemployment and hunger.
Sandra Lopez and I took the express bus from Managua to Matagalpa, where we were met by Hector, the local coordinator of the project, in a pick-up truck that had to be pushed to get it started. In Yucul we stopped near a plastic-roofed shack; I was told one of the families in the project lived there. There were several other homes nearby. None of the families owned the land they lived on by the side of the one lane dirt road; no one had a latrine; no one had a source of water other than a polluted river two kilometers away. Obviously no one had a vehicle of any sort. The plastic-roofed home was about 10 by 12 feet, had a very uneven dirt floor, and was home to a husband and wife and their three small boys. The only furniture in the dwelling was a small pine table, a platform formed of three fairly wide boards, and an open wood cooking stove. The walls were formed by boards separated by large gaps. It must have gotten quite cold at night, and I saw no bedding of any kind. (I needed a blanket that night in Matagalpa where the elevation is about 2,000 feet.) About ten of the families in the project lived nearby. Other dwellings were similar in Yucul, and yet the people were of amazingly good cheer. I don't say this as though I was surprised, because everywhere I have been in Nicaragua the people are good-natured, hospitable and open, and yet very dignified, despite their circumstances.
One hundred thirty-seven families in Yucul were sick from using polluted river water, contaminated by three coffee plantations that were dumping their coffee pulp into the river, an illegal activity in Nicaragua. Eighteen of the families had signed a petition to the mayor of San Ramon to rectify this situation of two years' duration, and asked Sandra to present it to him.
Sandra had brought photographs of a gathering that celebrated a successful harvest held at the cooperative's community center, a collection of sheds and a building at the unused farm where some of the land was being rented for planting corn and beans. Everyone was delighted with the photos and the children giggled at seeing themselves and their friends. At the community center two young men were cleaning dried corn for storage and for sale, and three men were yoking the beautiful, strong, white oxen prior to plowing.
We pushed on to El Horno, down a track one could hardly describe as a road. Another ten families in the project lived there, and as soon as we arrived at one house, other families began to appear. We met a young woman who was volunteering as a teacher for 30 children at the school. (We had passed several schools that were closed because there were no teachers.) She told us that not one child had even a pencil or a notebook, although the living circumstances of the people in El Horno did not seem quite as desperate as those in Yucul. It was heart wrenching that, in those beautiful hills, people were so isolated and so brave, so determined to be whole and to feed their children.
When I was there in January the fields were lying fallow, as the first sowing of bean seeds is in May, and the second in September. The first harvest usually produces twice as much as the second because of greater rainfall. A manzana (about 1 ½ acres) will produce anywhere from 1,500 to 2,500 pounds of beans. At a yield of 2,500 pounds per plot a family can keep half for eating and sell half, for a profit of about $200. However the cost of seed and fertilizers for that same plot is about $180 per planting. When we left we took back into Matagalpa about 1,000 pounds of dried corn for sale. Thus the families are at least eating but there is almost no cash income for other needs.
That evening I went to a board meeting of the Ernesto Gonzalez Foundation in Matagalpa composed of five community leaders, serious people in their fifties who realized that helping 20 families was a proverbial drop in the bucket in an area of such great need, but who hope to expand the project this year, as well as help with a sports project for young people in Matagalpa itself.
We also discussed methods for enriching the diet of the families in the cooperative, with ideas for vegetable gardening, and the raising of chickens and pigs to increase protein consumption. Initially, the land around the community center would be the area where the animals would be raised and the vegetable gardens planted. We discussed costs and ideas for finding the money. For example, $35 will buy a piglet, and another $35 would buy another, one male and one female, so that when grown they would produce more piglets, and more and more families would benefit. Thirty-five U.S. dollars will also buy one rooster and 12 hens, providing both eggs and meat. A modest $10 will purchase enough seeds for a family vegetable garden.
Here then are specific ways that people in the U.S. can help struggling unemployed coffee workers in a well thought out and well managed cooperative, which is the work of a small Nicaraguan family foundation, with realistic plans for expanding its work in the future. I was very impressed with the dedication of Sandra Lopez and Jose Gonzalez of the Ernesto Gonzalez Foundation. If you would like to make a tax deductible contribution to the work of the foundation, send a check to: Nicaragua Network, 1247 "E" Street SE, Washington, DC 20003. Be sure to write "crisis aid" in the memo.
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