...in continuation: ATC this fall

Somehow autumn happened and I didn't post a few final photos from my summer with the ATC in Nicaragua:

Visit to the community of Santa Julia
Santa Julia (a small community outside of the capital city of Managua) is home to the Gloria Quintanilla Women's Cooperative and its founder, ATC leader Doña Lola.  This community has a long history of women-organized resistance against oppressive employers and land policies.  We spent two days with the women of Santa Julia learning about their community organizing and adoption of ecological farming methods to face challenges from climate change to machismo.  We also dialogued about the community's hosting of foreign visitors and volunteers (the town has frequent visitors from around the world), and marketing of agricultural products to the local community.

Saturday agroecology course in Santa Julia - drawing farm maps.

Pitayaha (dragon fruit) on Doña Lola's farm.

Dragon fruit.

Delicious elote from Lola's farm.

The ubiquitous Nicaraguan red bean.

Lola's red beans and coffee being sold at the local feria (market) in Crucero.

Final days at the Escuela Campesina
I organized a practicum for myself in lombricultura (worm composting).  I had some experience doing home worm composting but wanted to learn the techniques that I was seeing at a number of the projects I had visited while traveling around the country.  ATC Matagalpa member German brought some worms down from Santa Emilia's Rudolfo Sanchez Bustos Agricultural Institute and talked about how he does worm composting.

Taking notes, next to the big worm bin.

Cleaning the cow manure for the worms.

Then, at the end of August, it was time for the Central America Assembly of La Via Campesina organizations, which took place at the school.  Each country shared its strengths and struggles and many discussions were held about how the Central American countries can work together to address climate change, challenge patriarchy, and implement agroecology.

Mística by LVC Central America's political commission.

Cuban and Nicaraguan leaders share political updates.

Some of us even took an excursion on the last day of the assembly to the little islands of Granada:

A packed bus: Central Americans, US Americans, a Canadian, and a European.

The work continues:

While I left Nicaragua in September, I continue to stay involved with the ATC as a coordinator of Friends of the ATC, a Global North-based institution that strengthens network of solidarity & support for the ATC and the connected Via Campesina movement.  I'm happy with the work so far, and I'm glad to have finally found a place where those I work with are articulating struggles for social justice that are in alignment with my own world view. 

I represented Friends of the ATC at the School of the Americas protest in November, an annual convergence of people who are working to resist US empire and militarization.  I met people on the Left from throughout the States and Americas and talked to them about food sovereignty as a response to neoliberal economic polices and US empire.  I received a positive response and was also reminded of the potential for many different movements to effectively work together.

Protesting at the for-profit immigration detention center in Lumpkin, GA.

Tabling at the gates of Fort Benning, where the SOA is located.

SOA Watch leaders and founder Father Roy Bourgeois leading the vigil.

Vigil at the gates of Fort Benning.

The puppetistas at the SOA vigil were especially memorable for me.  The story depicted peasants who overcame free trade policies and agricultural corporations in order to re-gain autonomy and community health.  The puppetistas provide a hopeful note after the the solemn funeral procession where names of hundreds of innocent people who have been killed by SOA graduates are read.

Puppetistas: Peasants on left, export bananas on right.

My first big project with Friends of the ATC is organizing a delegation to Nicaragua that will focus on food sovereignty and agroecology through the lens of social movements.  We'll be visiting some of the places I featured on my blog over the summer.  Please consider joining me and what will be an inter-generational group of students, activists, and farmers.  You can contact me at erikatakeo.atc@gmail.com for more information or an application.  And, if you're on Facebook, please keep in touch by liking and following the Friends of the ATC's page.

Saludos,
Erika

To be continued...

I returned from Nicaragua yesterday but did not get to share some of my final adventures on my blog.  And, as all social movements go, the work is never done.  I will be continuing to work with the ATC to build a solidarity network in the States this fall and beyond.  Stay tuned for all of the updates...

Fundación Entre Mujeres

ATC interns + FEM representatives in Rosario

This week I had the chance to visit one of ATC’s partner organizations in Nicaragua, the Fundación Entre Mujeres (FEM).  Founded in 1995 by a group of 14 women from communities throughout Northern Nicaragua, the FEM works to defend the rights of rural women.  They see gender equity in rural communities in a way that is very tied to the relationship with land, and thus many of their programs focus on access to land, to food production, and building rural women livelihoods through agriculture. 

Nicaragua has a long history of machismo culture, like the world at large.  The role of women is typically to work in the kitchen and take care of children.  Women traditionally lack access to educational opportunities, to choose an alternative livelihood, or to manage a family's financial resources.  As I heard from many women during my visit with the FEM, there is also a major problem with domestic violence against women in rural communities, and it regularly goes on without challenge.

Another part of the historical discrimination against women in Nicaragua occurred during the Sandanista agrarian reform in 1979.  While there were many positives of the agrarian reform (which redistributed land to peasants), women were not included in this distribution of land.  This of course is not a unique story.  While the majority of small-scale producers in the world are women, very few own their own land.  In other words, women are feeding the world, but they often lack the autonomy that they deserve.

It is with this context that the FEM developed and continues to work in today.  All of their projects work with a feminist lens and on empowering women economically, ideologically, and organizationally.  They work to situate women in the public sphere (no longer just in the kitchen) and in leadership positions in their rural communities.  To see how the FEM works in action, I got to visit a few rural communities and learn directly from women involved in the FEM what they are working on and how they are doing it. 

Walking around Los Llanos.

In the mountains north of Estelí in the community of Los Llanos (population 1300), I visited a women’s agricultural cooperative called COPEMUJER (Cooperativa Multisectorial Mujeres del Norte, or the Northern Women’s Multi-Sectoral Cooperative).  The 45 cooperative members grow a variety of agricultural products including basic grains, hibiscus, chia, and vegetables.  They are most well known for their coffee production, which is certified organic and fair trade and is sold in parts of the United States and Europe.  

Coffee beans

In 1996, a group of 5 women in the Los Llanos organized to become land owners on a nearby hillside and founded COPEMUJER.  (The FEM helped them purchase the land and organize the cooperative.)  We visited the land that is still worked to this day by one of the cooperative's founders (with the help of others, including her daughter).  We also toured some of the other parcels of land where cooperative members work.

Walking in the fields around Los Llanos.

Tasseling corn.

Learning to plant hibiscus.

A major struggle that producers of Los Llanos are facing now is climate change.  The region has become substantially drier during the rainy season.  I saw many crops of corn and beans that were going to be used to feed families' animals because they were had not developed enough to produce fruit.  Another major issue the women are having now is with their coffee crops.  Coffee trees around the region are being devastated by a disease known as “la roya”, a fungus that attacks the leaves, spreads easily, and substantially reduces production.  This disease is also linked with the drier climate due to climate change.  These crop failures mean that more families run out of food and that they have less income from coffee.

A coffee plant leaf infected with la roya.

While these are grand challenges, the women producers of Los Llanos working on ways to adapt production to the drier climate.  They are testing out different methods of coffee production and different coffee varieties to see which are most resistant to la roya.  Some are looking to integrate more drought-resistant crops such as hibiscus and experiment with other crops like chia.  They are also actively learning and implementing a variety of agroecological production techniques including the use of compost, intercropping, and agroforestry. 

Checking out the new compost system.

Lookin' good!

Agroforestry system of fruit trees, corn, and vegetables.

Coffee and fruit tree intercroppings.

In the village of El Rosario (population 480 families), women are also working on implementing a variety of agroecological production techniques and adapting to a drier climate.  20 of the 50 women in the village who collaborate with the FEM are learning and practicing biointensive production methods for their home gardens.

In El Rosario, I got to see a very important project of the FEM, which is the community seed bank.  Women in each community maintain a reserve of native seeds and ensure that varieties are planted and saved each year.  Not only is native seed saving important for biodiversity, but it also supports the women to in producing food for themselves autonomously from the market and from men.

Rosarios' seed bank.

A variety of red beans, a Nicaraguan favorite.

Sorghum seeds for tortillas.

In these rural villages, the FEM has also provided many other resources for women.  They helped many adult women go to school to earn a bachelors degree and many other young women receive university scholarships.  They coordinate sexual health workshops.  They provide animals (for milk, cheese, eggs, meat, and soil fertility) to women in need.  In each village where they work, they have helped women construct their own houses (many women are single mothers).  Each village has a FEM organizational house for meetings, courses, a seed bank, and other supplies.  Over and over again, I heard from women that, with the help of FEM, they were able to change their lives for the better and organize successfully in their communities with other women.

After visiting Los Llanos and El Rosario, we traveled to the Central de Cooperativas Multisecoriales de Mujeres Rurales Feministas-Ecológicas, located just outside of Estelí.  The Central supports the creation and distribution of organic food products from 6 (soon to be 8) women cooperatives.  Here, various raw products that come from rural community cooperatives are processed and prepared for market in certified commercial facilities.  For example, the coffee grown by women in rural communities (such as Los Llanos) is toasted, ground, and packaged here.  As income from coffee decreases (due to less production), cooperatives that traditionally focused on coffee only are also looking for other ways to gain income.  The women are now processing hibiscus flowers into tea, wine, and jam.  They also recently tested out making mango wine (mangos grow plentifully here with little effort), which sold very successfully at the local market.  The production and commercialization of value-added products is an important income source for the women.

The Central's coffee toaster.

Coffee packaging for Denmark.

Drying lemongrass for tea.

Hibiscus tea and jam.

There is also plentiful space at the Central for the propagation of coffee tree starts, for vegetable trays, for various biofertilizers, and for compost.  These are distributed to communities once they are ready to go.

Many coffee varieties are being grown here.

Baby coffee.

Baby beets.

For a single producer or a single cooperative, constructing and maintaining such a facility, as well as going through the appropriate processes for organic, fair trade, and sanitary certification, would be a major cost and challenge.  However, this facility, which began as a project of the FEM (and now functions as partner), allows rural women producers to collectively share the costs of processing.  It also creates jobs for 13 workers, who are women from the rural areas where FEM works.

In my two days with the FEM, I was able to get a glimpse into the life of rural women in Nicaragua and see a powerful organization in action.  As in the States, I’ve heard many people give lip service to gender equity.  The FEM is actively producing it.  In fact, it’s been such a success story that it is being shared around the world, and they receive visitors daily who come to learn what FEM does and how they do it.  As FEM staff told me, these visits also are a way for feminist organizers from around the globe to exchange challenges and ideas for combating struggles that still exist in the work for gender equity.

ATC interns + FEM representatives in Los Llanos

Intergenerational, international exchange in Los Llanos.

What was especially inspiring for me during my visit was to meet confident women in their late teens and early 20s who were already actively involved in food production or studying topics like agriculture and rural development in university.  They planned to earn a livelihood through agroecological food production, and were proud of it.  I was reminded of the vigor of beginning farmers that I’ve met in my home state through programs like Rogue Farm Corps.  Without a new generation of politically aware farmers across the globe who grow ecologically on small-scales, we’re in for real trouble.  I hope to see this movement continue to grow, near and far from wherever I am.