Communidad Santa Anita

Two weeks ago, our school made a trip to a cooperative coffee finca in the Boca Costa, the region toward the coast in which most of the coffee plantations are located. We had a private bus because fourteen of us would have been hard to manage on local buses. ¨Private bus¨ means a minivan with seats everywhere and people piled four and five across. The idea of personal space is very different in Latin America than the US, and the idea of privacy is something you get over fast. The community of Santa Anita is a success story. A group of nearly 30 families of ex-comabatants from the civil war joined together to buy and work a large plantation on the side of a steep hill in a lush area about halfway to the Pacific coast. They have been there for about 8 years, grooming, growing, learning to market and sell their organic coffee around the world. They have established a primary school and begun ¨basico¨ which goes from grade 6 to 9.

Education is of particular importance to this community as much of their activity in the mountains during the civil war was concerned with educating the workers in the countryside, both in their human rights and in reading and writing and good health practices. This part of their mission continues strong today, and their community is both beautiful and interesting to visit.

We were invited to walk through the tropical forest by Gloria, whose guerilla name was Teresa, a proud, machete-wielding member of the community. She described how workers have to carry the yeild of the coffee plants up the steep slope during harvests, a feat I can hardly imagine, as the trail we were on was slippery in the humidity and after the rain, and precariously steep. We stopped often to take in the view across the deep canyon, rich with huge trees necessary for the shade coffee cultivation requires. At the bottom of the canyon is the Rio Naranja, which defines the extent of the cooperative´s territory, and which then joins the Rio Mujulia, the largest river in the area, the border between the county of Queztaltenango and neighboring San Marcos. From a few spots, you could see into San Marcos, and Gloria and Ronaldo, our guide from the school, told us that they met each other in those mountains when they worked there as guerillas in the 1980´s.

At the bottom of the canyon was a beautiful waterfall, a real treat as we were hot and sweaty from our downward trek in the humidity of the forest. But the real test was the trek back up. Slippery, steep, and humid it seemed never-ending. By the time we got to the top, my thighs were wobbly, and I was steaming like racehorse - huffing and puffing and dripping wet. It would have been really embarrassing, but I was not the only one. The women of the community served us a rewarding lunch, and we had a chance to talk to the leader of the commercial operation about the history of the conflict and the work of the guerillas, as well as the history of the community. The armed conflict ended only 10 years ago, with the peace accords of 1996, so this story is very fresh in the memories of those who suffered during that time, mostly country farmers who wanted a better life for themselves and their families and found themselves thwarted and threatened on every side by cruel dictators who represented the status quo. Whole communities were bombed and community leaders were regularly ¨disappeared,¨ usually tortured and killed by the army or police. The hardest part to hear, for me, is that those dictatorships, responsible for some of the cruelest repression in the world, were put in place through US foreign policy. It was a policy that protected US business interests in the region, regardless of the effect that policy would have on the burgeoning democracy and independence of the people of Guatemala. It is a story to make your heart ache, and to make you sad to be an American. I have heard it so often here that you would think it would no longer affect me, but it hurts every time I am faced with it.

It was so encouraging to listen to the leaders of the community of Santa Anita, who are living the dream that drove them to fight for their country and for their compañeros. One of the students asked if the community believed cooperatives like theirs could change the future for the people who still have little in the way of food security and education in the countryside. They said no. The only possiblity for real change will be through political organization to reflect the will of the people who desire change for themselves and their families. It is hard to imagine that such a change will happen soon, as the political conditions in Guatemala still reflect the will of wealthy landowners and large businesses more than the will of the common people. Witnessing the pride of the community of Santa Anita and the changes they have already wrought for themselves and their children is a source of hope that their dream of such success for the rest of their compatriots could really come true.

There are some pictures of Santa Anita at my spot on the photobucket website: http;//s85.photobucket.com/albums/k80/barbarapunch/ Enjoy