Mischa, the cat at the office, that I have adopted.

Hey everyone, I am posting again to get us up date for the month of October. The month started by me getting assigned a new project! I was eager and happy to start working on a research project regarding women and land access. This entailed me and my go worker Alida to conduct interviews in 11 different states of Guatemala. We started in the state of Solola (where we live) and in the municipality of San Lucas Toliman (where we also live). We did about 60 interviews in six different villages around San Lucas. This was followed by 40 interviews in Sachitepequez. Then our project got cut, so that is nothing new.

However, staying on the positive side I got to learn a lot about the way women live here and some of the issues they face. One major issue is economic dependence. Several women have no idea how much their husbands make working in the fields or even what they grow. They have no control over money making it very difficult for them to leave violent or abusive situations. I met a few remarkable women whose stories I will share.

Me and my baby, and the collar that I knit her.

One story that is particularly striking is one in San Juan, a community just across the river where I live. The political turmoil and violence of the elections has created serious divisions within the communities around San Lucas, and as I represent a partisan organization interviewing was sometimes difficult. I asked one woman if I could ask her some questions about land, and that I was doing a study on the subject. This woman was about 45 years old, and she agreed. She said that she was still living on her fathers property and proceeded to answer questions. When we saw a few people walking by in the street, she asked me again which organization I was with and when I answered, she said that the people that were walking by were going to tell her father and that she shouldn't be talking to me. I told her that I didn't want to get her into any trouble and that I would go, and she said thank you because her father would beat her if he found out.

Alida (co-worker) and I at a wedding in San Lucas.

Another story is that of a woman in her seventies in a different community. The living situation in this community is precarious because community lies between two rivers, both of which are growing, eroding the land on both sides and are prone to flooding. The people are very poor and needless to say they have no where to grow food. This woman has seven children and various grandchildren all living on the same plot of land that is less than a half acre. The children are suffering from chronic malnutrition as they had lost pigment in their hair and skin and the lady admitted that having children was a huge burden, especially as they get older because they want to eat more and there is not enough food to feed them. She was so destitute because her husband had left her for another women after she had had his children, he wanted something younger. She was still living on her father's small plot of land and had no work. She said she used to clean houses for 150Q a month, which is not even 20 dollars. Her circumstance is not unique, men walk out on their wives or trade them in for new ones all the time, and unfortunately I know several women in the exact same situation.

A volcano near Antigua. Where there is the visible remains of a landslide.

Coffee Cherries directly after being picked off the bush

Machismo is a serious issue here. A man is more of man, the more kids he has, this added with the religious beliefs that birth control of any kind is killing babies leads women to have no choice but to have several children. There is a second machista belief that women are no good for sex after having several children, this is publicly discussed and is no secret. Therefore, men leave women all the time, with no money, or child support payments. To make the situation worse many women do not even have primary education and a high percentage are illiterate. Continuing the cycle of poverty and dependence as they are not able to find jobs, they can sometimes find jobs, cooking cleaning, or doing laundry but they are often exploited or abused sexually or otherwise while working in these circumstances. Sometimes they can get a job in fields, women are still paid less than men for the same work.

The best quality of coffee, after being separated by the machine.

The machine that separates the cherry from the bean and divides the different qualities of coffee.

A third story of importance is another community called El Esfuerzo. This is a community literally on top of a mountain, that is a privately owned finca(plantation). As is the norm here, the finca has not paid these people their wages for several months. The people got tired of working for free and decided to take over a part of the finca in order to grow food for their families. Now, several families have moved there and are squatting illegally. In the past, wage disputes have been handled in this fashion here wealthy land owners will give workers a plot of land rather than paying them their wages. This is how my village received their land. However, El Esfuerzo has not come to an agreement with the plantation owners, so the could be evicted anytime. The organization I work for supports poor landless peasants in their struggle to buy land, and we are currently buying coffee from this community, paying the laborers a fair price and selling it locally but also exporting it as fair trade internationally. This community is extremely isolated and takes a good 45 minutes to drive up the mountain, needless to say most people do not leave the community at all. I talked to one girl here who was 15 and was forced to marry an older man, as the community only consists of a cetain amount of families.

There is no electricity in the community, the organization I work for pays the salary of the teacher for the school, who teaches 70 students of all ages a day.

Washing and selecting the best quality of coffee by hand.

Other than this, I have had to make two trips to the capital to renew my visa, which has also kept me busy because I have had to take time of work and make up my hours on Saturdays. The rainy season has been terrible, it actually rained day and night for over 12 days, and there has been serious destruction in Guatemala and througout Central America. Check out the link to a BBC article I posted, all the people, especially the elders say that storms and rains have intensified in the last ten years due to global warming. This is devastating for their crops and ways of life. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-15331290

Laying the coffee out to dry and raking it at intervals to ensure it is dry before bagged and sold to roasters or roasted at our office.

I have also posted some pictures of the coffee production that just started at the end of October. The organization I work for, buys coffee from campesinos above the regular price and invests profits in infrastructure, such as houses and schools to give back to the community. They call it fair trade plus, the coffee that is produced in these pictures can be bought from JustUs, and is called “Breaking the Silence” Guatemala.