World-wide Coffee Crisis Impacts Nicaragua!

Nicanet Helps Unemployed Coffee Workers Plant Corn and Beans!
By Katherine Hoyt

What on earth could we do to help? The price of coffee had dropped to the point where it was not worthwhile to pick it! From US$120 for 100 pounds to US$40! Several years ago, the IMF and World Bank encouraged Vietnam to plant coffee. This production, when combined with Brazil’s coffee bushes producing again after the 1994 freeze resulted in an enormous surplus of coffee on the world market in 2001. Small growers in Nicaragua and elsewhere were in danger of losing their land; large growers were laying off permanent workers and not hiring the thousands of pickers they usually hired at harvest time each year. Coffee workers and their families came into the city of Matagalpa where adults begged for work and the children for food. They set up camp in the parks where they fainted from hunger and several died. Nicaragua Network staff called or e-mailed several large non-governmental organizations in Managua and was not convinced that this work would be their highest priority.

Then, we discovered that the Ernesto Gonzalez Foundation, founded by former National Assembly deputy Jose Gonzalez of Matagalpa and his wife Sandra Lopez to commemorate their son who died in an accident, would be able to help. They would use our donations to buy food locally—food that was grown in Nicaragua by Nicaraguan farmers—and distribute it to the neediest and hungriest. We knew that this was merely a palliative. It would make no structural changes to permanently alleviate the crisis. A change in Nicaraguan government policy and changes in policy on the part of the IMF, World Bank and the U.S. government would be required.

With the money we sent, the Foundation fed 850 families camped out at the San Francisco junction north of Matagalpa and at the Elias Alonso athletic field on the outskirts of the city with food packages which contained the following items: 4 lbs. rice, 3 lbs. beans, 1lb. powdered milk, 3 lbs. oatmeal, and 2 lbs. sugar. The Foundation also received donations for its work from the Embassy of France in Nicaragua and carried out programs in collaboration with the World Food Program of the United Nations.

Then, as planting season approached in 2002, the Foundation began a new pilot project in two poor communities of unemployed coffee workers near San Ramon in the Department of Matagalpa. They approached us for help with the project and soon aid from the Nicaragua Network was helping coffee workers plant corn and beans to feed their families. Thirty families in the department of Matagalpa received seeds and fertilizer from the Foundation just as the first rains of the 2002 rainy season were falling in Nicaragua. Among the qualifications to receive aid was that the families be unemployed as a result of the drop in coffee prices and that they be among the most needy. Close to half of the heads of house involved in the project were women.

The families, from the two communities of El Horno #2 and Yucul, were organized into two groups to give each other solidarity support. Both villages were in the Municipality of San Ramon, where there was a large concentration of people left without a livelihood by the drop in coffee prices. The families are planting corn and/or beans on an average of 3 ½ acres each. Some families have their own tiny plots of land. But, without the money the families earned during the coffee harvest, they were unable to buy seed and fertilizer. Other, landless families are provided with borrowed land. All receive seed, fertilizer and technical training. At the end of the harvest, each family returns 100 pounds of its harvest to the program to be given as seed to another farming family. The first year the families cleared the land and plowed the furrows with hand plows. For the second harvest the Nicaragua Network donated money from our supporters for a team of oxen for plowing and several small grain silos to store the harvest so farmers can get the best price because they do not have to sell their harvest to the first potential buyer.

The project that began as a simple distribution of food turned into a pilot farming project that numerous people have pointed to as an example of what the Nicaraguan government should be doing to resolve the crisis of hundreds of thousands of unemployed coffee workers and their families. The Nicaragua Network has sent a total of $19,000 for the work of the Foundation. And, through our efforts, other donors have taken on the project as well, including the American Jewish World Service (AJWS) and St. Mark’s, the Episcopal Cathedral of Seattle. Now in 2003, there are 116 families that are benefiting: 64 from Yucul and 52 from El Horno. Educational workshops have been held for the participants in agricultural techniques, health, hygiene and the environment, and, coming up soon, workshops in gender issues and use of the silos for crop storage.

Juan Polanco, an 80 year old farmer with 8 children, answered questions about his participation in the project in a recent interview. He said, “I was tired of hearing promises from the government that were never fulfilled. I have been in the tent cities and gotten nothing. I got nothing until this project came along. Now I’m not sleeping on the highway, looking for help. I’m planting! The family is happy to be working although we still go to the highway blockades to pressure the government to fulfill the Las Tunas Accords that they signed [in August]. But I have to watch over my crops in order to have food, sell a little, and save some for bad times, and have some to give back to the Foundation.”

Karla Diaz, a 30 year old woman with a husband and 4 children, said, “This is the first project that helps us to move forward and lessen the hunger in our households. As a coordinator of a solidarity group, I have learned about the work of the members of my group and their problems and how to follow up and concern myself about the work of the others based on the way we are organized in the project. This is the first time I have been taken into account. I had never thought that I would be organized and receive training to learn more about the work of farming.”

The crisis is far from over. In August [2003], alarmed by the deaths of 14 people, children and adults, from starvation in the camps, 5,000 unemployed coffee workers and their families began a march to Managua. Two more people died of hunger as they walked. Alarmed, we mailed out another alert and sent the resulting funds down to the Ernesto Gonzalez Foundation for food and blankets for the marchers. The government then proceeded to negotiate another agreement with the marchers similar to the agreement they signed in 2002 in the same spot on the same highway.

Under the new agreement signed at Las Tunas, the farm workers will be able to buy from the government 14 farms that they have been occupying. The government will return two other farms to two “U.S. citizens” who have filed claims for them. (Many Somocistas became naturalized US citizens and the US has supported their claims for return of property.) The remaining farms will be purchased by the landless farmworkers at 40% of their value over 25 years with no interest. Other aspects of the agreement include temporary work for 5,000 heads of families, along with food packages and farm supplies for tending the land. As farmer Juan Polanco says above, we have to be sure the government complies with this new accord.
[Update: The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH) followed the government's compliance and reported to Nicanet that officials gave three months work to 5,000 heads of family paying them $2.33 per day (without the food packages, however). When the three months of work was completed, the workers and their families waited for the land the government promised. When the land did not appear, they began the 2004 march to Managua; were again stopped at Las Tunas and are again awaiting for parcels of land on which to plant food crops to feed their families.]
If you would like to make a donation to support the project of the Ernesto Gonzalez Foundation for unemployed coffee workers and their families, please send a check made out to Nicaragua Network/AGJ to 1247 E Street SE, Washington, DC 20003. Be sure to write “crisis aid” in the memo.