Interviews with Three Campesino Activists
Edelman, Marc
Peasant organizations in Central America run the gamut from large national unions to small local cooperatives, from groups that include small, medium and occasionally even large producers to...
...Don't be a polo, you look like a polo...
...You have a lot of land and few people, give me this part so I can distribute it to someone else...
...When I was little, I remember my papd telling us that to be somebody, to triumph, to have a better life, meant not being a campesino...
...So many campesinos don't understand campesino mentality, that pigs need to be fed to produce fertilizer for maize, that by selling some maize you can get shoes and notebooks so the children can study...
...These things are very disturbing, but I've continued in the process because of my commitment to the people and the confidence that the majority has in me...
...If they sell their land, they'll have nothing, no way to support their families, no independence, no reason to exist...
...They tried to remove me from the coordinating committee and even from my base organization...
...In the countryside, if you put two people together who don't know each other-one who was a Contra and the other from the army-and they begin to talk about land, credit and production, they understand each other right away...
...Now cooperative directors and small producers are in with the police, they have lawyers, they're on the property with the laws in hand...
...Fortunately, people have come to identify themselves as proprietors...
...He didn't want us to be agriculturalists, because he came from a very painful experience of being a campesino and agricultural worker...
...It was always someone else, from outside, who knew: the priest, the mayor, above them legislative deputies, experts, technicians, professors...
...Sellers don't always have titles, just great needs, and they have to sell cheaply...
...We have to talk about the kind of society we want, and that's profoundly political...
...I have six children...
...Producers are recovering the values of their ancestors, becoming self-sufficient...
...So the compahieros have softened up, now they're not so machista as one might think, although some still maintain that attitude...
...In Costa Rica, they call us "polos...
...Why don't we join forces...
...All the development models failed precisely because they hadn't taken the campesino into account...
...A promoter came to our community and I learned about how CODIMCA supports peasant women's efforts to improve their living standards and housing...
...We have a telephone, a health center and a school...
...Peasants are returning to the model that allowed them to survive all these generations, in good and bad times, with good and bad governments...
...This is important, because the war didn't permit young peasants to develop a productive culture...
...When I was still very young, I was part of a group that wanted to be agriculturalists...
...A Central America-wide umbrella group, the Association of Central American Peasant Organizations for Cooperation and Development (ASOCODE), is attempting to unite organizations from different countries and to develop viable political and economic alternatives for small agriculturalists throughout the region...
...There are times when I'd like to be able to multiply myself, just to fulfil all my responsibilities...
...That logic was lost, that capacity of the campesino to manage his micro-economy in spite of all the economists that surround him...
...Economy Minister Paulo Pereira, for example, bought lands in Sebaco telling the campesinos, "I'll buy the land and pay your debts...
...I spent two years in that...
...So I said to myself: "If these are the ones who are supposed to know, then I really know...
...They hoped to eradicate us and impose a modernizing view of culture...
...But if you start them talking about politics, they'll start shooting at each other again and killing...
...Approximately 10% of the land area distributed by the Sandinista agrarian reform has been sold, and 40% of the land distributed by the present government has been sold...
...He leaves every morning and returns at night...
...People make fun of and discriminate against campesinos...
...There was an idea that we were dumb, ignorant...
...The government then auctions the properties, and these people bid, assuming the cooperatives' debts and obtaining new loans...
...We've come to summits with documents, with profound critiques of economic structural adjustment, but also with proposals...
...We've had three-day gender workshops with men and women where we talk about women's rights and why women must join the development process...
...Alone we weren't going to get very far, either nationally or at the Central American regional level...
...In 1986 the CODIMCA compahreras elected me to a national position, in charge of education...
...Those people have settled with each other and the machinations of reunited elite families are behind the counter-reform...
...Now the typical peasant farm is re-emerging, with avocados, pigs, bananas, tubers, oranges, rice and a cow...
...And we use the presidents' own words: "As you said in Antigua...," when they called for the participation of civil society in the reconciliation process...
...But "to privatize" now means "to monopolize," as has happened in banking, commerce and in those public posts that permit one to become rich fast...
...They didn't understand or know about our experience and belittled our culture of production, our organizational processes...
...We've concentrated on small projects for our own consumption-vegetables, plantains and cassava-because we've never received any outside economic support...
...Now that doesn't happen...
...They have the information and know the opportunities so they buy the lands in advance...
...I think this is very important, because historically the peasantry was seen as retrograde, conservative, non-progressive...
...A niece makes their meals...
...I would hear it in school...
...Because in CODIMCA the majority are white compafieras...
...Nor anyone from the high levels of either side...
...The previous government tried to control the entire economy and the present government tends to privatize everything...
...Some day we'd like to expand our project and to be able to sell some of what we produce...
...Here he analyzes the "counter-reform" taking place in the Nicaraguan countryside...
...It's pejorative...
...And there are days when I have to leave COCOCH because they call me from CODIMCA for another activity...
...My children stay in our community...
...The most important thing is that people relate to each other as producers, not as politicians...
...We'd ask them: "Why did you come...
...Sometimes I'll do it or I'll pay someone to do it in order to be able to cover all my activities...
...In our country, there's still some racism...
...We're only a few blacks, only the compaireras from the north coast...
...Although the goals and orientations of these organizations vary greatly from country to country and within each country, several broad trends are present throughout the region...
...The agriculture and economy ministers needed those lands because the Inter-American Development Bank financed onion and peanut projects there...
...Campesinos had become specialists in monoculture-the Sandinista development poles encouraged this by producing only rice, tomatoes, coffee, cotton, or livestock...
...This goes against a lot of political theories...
...We approached the leftist parties, hoping to transform our situation, but we rapidly saw that they didn't have answers for us...
...I knew the community, so I invited about 20 women to a meeting...
...Of those, 16 stayed and a week later we formed our group...
...The people who buy know it's illegal...
...Let's talk and have a meeting...
...The campesino organizers interviewed here speak of both personal experiences and broader issues of social and political change...
...The campesinos would arrive at a presidential summit and find union members...
...My older children are boys...
...The majority of organized male compatieros don't think it's strange anymore that a woman is a leader, or that a woman shouldn't participate just because she's a woman...
...The racism was clear, because some compahieras said, "this negra can't continue in the national coordinating committee, because a black woman can't coordinate a white people's organization...
...LEONCIA SOLORZANO, born in 1953, is national coordinator of the Coordinating Council of Honduran Peasant Organizations (COCOCH...
...So in the cooperatives, in UNAG, in FENACOOP, we say, "in this house we talk about the problems of our sector and leave politics at the door...
...ASOCODE was chosen by these movements to coordinate ICIC...
...They said to my face, "negra, inferior race...
...Everybody knows this, because Nicaragua has only a few family names...
...It's difficult, very difficult...
...He worked on plantations-bananas, all kinds of farms-and he was always very poor...
...There was always a profound denial of our own knowledge, culture and experience...
...Since 1991, he has been coordinator of ASOCODE, based in Nicaragua...
...We came for these reasons...
...And in November, 1993, I was elected national coordinator of COCOCH...
...He said it's better to work in a factory or with the government, anything but agriculture...
...The people have great common sense...
...Come from the department of Atlbntida, from Corozal, a beautiful Garifuna community on the north coast, with 5,000 inhabitants...
...They left when they were 15 or 16 years old, returned at 25, and never learned to farm...
...Peasant organizations in Central America run the gamut from large national unions to small local cooperatives, from groups that include small, medium and occasionally even large producers to those with constituencies among the landless...
...Having passed from a paternalist state to being orphansbecause that's what we are now-made us return to our roots...
...In 1985 I formed a base organization in my community affiliated with CODIMCA, the Council for the Integral Development of Peasant Women...
...They were city people talking about the countryside, but without any knowledge...
...In addition, peasants in every country have had to confront and adapt to free-market economic policies that have usually favored large-scale, exportoriented agriculture and threatened hard-won agrarian reforms...
...Different sectors began to meet...
...Leave the legal questions to me, I'll give you cash...
...At another summit, we met the human rights groups and we found that many of their concerns are also ours...
...Most agrarian conflicts now aren't in big landlords' properties, but in cooperatives...
...This was very common in my community...
...Nevertheless, the CODIMCA regional organization had a serious talk with them...
...Their voices and viewpoints are diverse, but they reflect the emergence of an increasingly sophisticated and articulate leadership committed to finding strategies that go far beyond the next harvest...
...Overnight poor functionaries become rich landlords with thousands of hectares...
...It's not that we're philosophizing...
...Now with the danger of losing land to banks or in court, they've rapidly become conscious...
...Many peasant organizations are seeking to distance themselves from political parties, arguing that the interests of small producers must be uppermost on their agendas...
...Among those who died in the struggle for land, you won't find members of any important family...
...But now, after two years, we've participated in four summits and over 20 regional forums...
...Influential people, such as Vice-Minister of Agriculture Jorge Granera, get banks to investigate which cooperatives have debts and can be legally dispossessed...
...We managed to obtain 20 manzanas [35 acres] of land...
...it's that otherwise blood could flow...
...We're seeing that they've made a lot of promises that they haven't kept...
...Now it's an advanced, leading sector, even in a process of coordinating non-peasant organizations...
...We're trying to obtain funds for a cassava processing plant...
...My father suffered from that a lot...
...I'm talking about the army high command, cabinet ministers, public functionaries with family connections and high status...
...She speaks here of organizing campesinas on the north coast of sexism and racism in the peasant movement, and of the difficulties of being a national leader...
...Before you could easily make decisions about peasants' land...
...Our movement isn't only for development, but for the effective democratization of Central American societies...
...The strangest thing about Nicaraguan campesinos is that when they received the most land they had the least consciousness of being owners...
...We can't just seek economic improvements...
...Who is taking over this land...
...We've begun to organize ICIC-the Civil Initiative for Central American Integration-with various social movements, unions, cooperatives, urban shantytown dwellers, NGOs, and small enterprise and women's groups...
...We've forced them to recognize us as a legitimate force...
...The greatest beneficiaries of these conflicts are the large producers and this caste of nuevos ricos...
...But men and women have to work side by side...
...Good...
...Some companeras saw that this black woman was standing out, surpassing them in a few things...
...My mama is nearby and my husband works in Ceiba, 13 kilometers away...
...They wash their school uniforms, but they're so lazy-they don't wash all the clothes, they always leave part of the laundry...
...The mechanism is simple and audacious...
...Seventy thousand hectares (173,000 acres) from the Sandinistas and 245,000 hectares (605,000 acres) from Dorla Violeta's government...
...The educational system, the whole culture told us that...
...The elites fight by day," they say, "but they drink guaro together by night...
...So we'd meet and find areas of agreement, common themes...
...WILSON CAMPOS, born in 1959, participated in the formation of the Peasant Union of Guatuso (UCADEGUA) in northern Costa Rica, in the early 1980s...
...SINFORIANO CACERES, born in 1959, is a leader of the National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG) in Nicaragua, and of the National Cooperative Federation (FENACOOP...
...I spent a year in my region and then they sought me out again for a national post, this time in health...
...Credit has been fundamental in forcing small and medium peasants to return to their historical role of supplying cheap food and labor to the nearest hacienda...
...or our male compaieros, given the machista system, it's difficult to have a woman as a leader...
...You'll find names like Martinez, Perez, Garcia, Gonz~lez, but not Cuadra, Chamorro, Lacayo, or even Ortega...
Vol. 28 • November 1994 • No. 3
