Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » Honduras

On the Farm in Paterno: Organic versus Fair Trade

Mariehurt — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 16:12:03 +0000

Paterno I had been to Paolo Guarnaccia’s family farm in 2009 when a group of us had dinner with his family while talking about the Simeto Valley. Now I saw it differently as we joined his wife for a simple and delicious lunch there. I had not fully realized that the farm was still in Paterno, simply on the other side of the hill from the Norman castle, old church and cemetery I had visited several times this trip. With 23 hectares of land assembled over 30 years this was a large set of groves tended by Paolo, tenants, and volunteers that came throughout the year to help and to learn organic farming techniques. Everything about this operation had a “social” purpose, as they say here, right down to the room that hosted school field trips and the vegetable plot tended by various people in rehab or other programs.

For the first time I toured the huge “warehouse,” as Paolo calls it, which is leased from the regional government, but is a combination packing shed, orange sorting and processing operation, olive oil manufacturing plant, and much more. Consorzio Terre Di Sicilia is a model, organic, educational, and experimental farming location, but it is also largely empty, inoperative, and laden with debt. At one point serving 1000 customers all over Sicily with certified organic products, it now was little used, waiting for an EU loan of 200,000 euros over the last number of years, which still hadn’t arrived, and only a place for a couple of small farmers to sort their oranges by size with one of the giant machines. Paolo had tried to turn it all into a cooperative over 5 years, but it didn’t work out…just not enough interest.

Similar to our friends with COMUCAP in Honduras and their coffee and aloe vera looking for markets, I started asking what it would take to get the marmalade made here over to North America where ACORN International could move it through Fair Grinds and other places to support the survival of farming in Sicily. Get ready for a headache.

The blood oranges as fresh fruit are impractical to even consider because of cost and requirements to prevent Mediterranean fly from coming to our shores. Scratch that.

How about fair trade, organic marmalade? Well, organic is easy. Rigorous Italian and European Union inspections are already in place which would meet any requirements. Fair trade, though, probably not it seems. This is not a co-op. Looking at the FLO affiliate website FairTrade Italia it seems they only bring in products from the rest of the developing world. When my friends have described Sicily as the Appalachia of Europe and of Italy, that doesn’t seem to count.

There has to be a way. This stuff is too good not to save and survive.

Death Threats, Web Attacks, and Organizing Reports

dine — Fri, 20 May 2011 14:29:39 +0000

Dilcia Zevala giving the Tegucigalpa Report

Tegucigalpa A critical feature to the annual international meeting of the ACORN International board and staff beginning last year in Lima and now with both excitement and trepidation is the reports from offices around the world on their progress. All of this is well and good, but we use Skype and our life blood is the strength of the internet connection, which can and was shaky. This year thanks to a better set of portable speakers and a borrowed projector, even with vexing connections, the process worked much better. It was amazing to hear the report from Prague and to listen to the Czech being translated into English and then the English being translated in the meeting into Spanish as well or to both listen and see our leaders in La Matanza outside of Buenos Aires talk about their progress. Talk about international!

We interrupted the reports when our leader from Col. Ramon Amador, Maria Amalia, and one of our members from Manzanales, came into the meeting. We quickly turned the attention from staff reports to their brave and quiet recitation of the events of the night before after we had all visited the community where our members homes had been bulldozed by golpistas during the coup. It seemed that police accompanied by soldiers had arrived at 11 PM at night and gone site to site intimidatingly harassing people out of their sleep while shining flashlights in their face. None of this surprised the members, but at 2 AM in the morning Maria Amalia received a call on her cell phone awakening her. The caller asked if her husband was there. She asked if who was calling. The caller gruffly replied that he was “outside, and he would not think twice about killing her.” She then turned off her phone quickly. The message had been delivered and she had gotten it. Our visit had given both hope, which meant that it had to be offset by force. Kay Bisnah, ACORN International’s president spoke for everyone when she pledged that we would stand with them in whatever action they decided to undertake. Everyone was shocked. As tragic though was how inured our Honduran leaders and organizers had become inured to threat and reality of violence. Over the last several years this had become the “new normal” as political and community life was gripped in oppression. What might have meant a huge change in the day’s agenda ended up being simply an episode, as life – and the meeting – went on.

Reports from Prague also seemed past the pale, when Michal Ulver, our organizer and colleague there, reported on the attempts to attack the organization from the right wing by launching an attack website with a similar name in order to try and discredit the organization and its program. When we talked about our actions in Toronto, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires to support our friends in Russia trying to save the Khimki Forest, we also had to note the daily beatings and their constant courage which had become routine in their struggle.

For all of the growth and victories reported, including winning water after all of these years in Col. Ramon Amador, there was no way not to feel that we were also learning lessons that we wish were not being taught. None of us there could have also missed the fact even as hard as we work and as grave the injustices our members face in their organizations, we cannot fail to remember how dear a price our sisters and brothers in many parts of the world pay every day as they struggle to find a voice and build power against repressive regimes and unchecked corporations.

Teachers on Hunger Strike, Union Fighting Wholesale Repression

dine — Tue, 17 May 2011 13:48:18 +0000

Hunger Striking for teachers

Tegucigalpa Before 8 AM on Monday morning we were greeting Jaime Rodriguez, the President of COPEMH (Colegiio de Profesores de Educacion Media de Honduras) in the parking lot of the Colegio and teachers’ union. Even as the lights left us in darkness drinking our sweet coffee in a sky lit waiting room, he told us stories that were shockingly current and contradicted the notions that the civil wars of the Honduras-Michelleti golpe government had ceased against its own people and their social institutions.

During the coup to usurp the elected government over the last several years in Honduras, the teachers unions had been among those in the forefront of the resistance and demand for a return to democracy. This period, hardly more than a year ago, saw several teachers involved in the almost daily marches in Tegucigalpa killed, one right on the street where we had exited the cab for this meeting. More recently in March in a protest against the government’s announcements of educational “reform” four teachers in march were brutally beaten by police. These were fresh wounds.

Rodriguez explained that the so-called reforms essentially were an effort to privatize the state educational system. Despite the constitutional guarantees of education and their definition of the state’s responsibilities to provide it, the government had ordered the educational system to be decentralized to the municipalities. Most municipalities not having the experience, resources, and capacity to actually provide education for the children would be forced to subcontract or privatize the system. A similar scheme had been seen several years before around water resources leading to privatization of water in many areas (see blogs from San Pedro Sula earlier this year). Around this same time teachers were already raw about millions that turned up missing from their pension programs being maintained by the government.

In the protest against these “reforms” 302 teachers were fired. In reaction teachers’ unions have launched a rotating huger strike maintained by five strikers at all times. We visited with the hunger strikers and listened to their moving stories, while standing under a tent where they were living, now evicted from their homes as well, but firmly planted in front of the Congress buildings.

All of this was coupled with frontal attacks on the union itself. In the “reform” effort the government declared a “state of emergency” in the educational systems thereby asserting extraordinary powers similar to what one would find in general martial law. In this emergencia the government suspended the right to strike (allowing it to fire strikers like the 302!), stopped all dues checkoff in this process on the transitional claim that the teachers were no longer state employees, and took other steps to defund and break the teachers’ unions. Rodriguez explained how the membership had dropped from 25000 in March 2011, hardly two months ago, to less than 2000 now who were paying dues by hand at the window next to the waiting room where we were huddled in our meeting.

Shockingly to Rodriquez and others, their story has not gotten attention, making their fight even harder. ACORN International’s board will take up a resolution of support on Friday and hold a press conference to announce our decision, if affirmative, but in the meantime this is a crisis that needs investigation and action. Now!

Fighting Everywhere over Drinking Water

dine — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 20:37:08 +0000

San Pedro Sula It has rained three straight days virtually non-stop in San Pedro Sula. Water is standing on many streets in huge ponds in the colonias, as cars, bikes, and pedestrians try to navigate the deep ruts for a path home or to work. Unfortunately the situation is literally “water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink!”

Meeting with an organizing committee during the rainstorm on Sunday in Colonia 6 de Mayo, the issue they repeated over and over was their frustration at having no potable water in their sector of the barrio. Early settlers had dug a few wells, but these were closed and for 15 years families that now added up to over 1000 people had been vainly pleading with the municipality to provide potable water. The river was not that far away, perhaps 10 kilometers, but unfiltered and therefore undrinkable. Within a few blocks were huge pipes fenced in behind a sign saying Agua San Pedro, but still no water for Col. 6 de Mayo, which meant buying water litre after liter at what residents said were escalating prices as well. If they could drink promises, they would be more than full, but that is all they had been served. After animated discussion around the table with ACORN Honduras – San Pedro Sula head organizer, Luis Martinez, an agreement was finally reached on a strategy and tactics. A grand reunion or meeting was planned for the 6^th of March to mobilize all of the residents, circulate petitions of support, and force the officials to attend to finally commit to a plan. If that did not work, then in the next steps, people were committed to “go all Cairo” on the authorities.

In some ways this discussion was not a surprise. In the leadership meeting the day before in San Pedro Sula, delegates from the ACORN Honduras chapters in Cholomo had also talked constantly about water, and it had nothing to do with the pouring rain, but the efforts by the Mayor of Cholomo to privatize the water with an outside company and the rising rates people were already paying. There the details were not transparent yet on the exact name of the company, its scope, and its relationship to the powers that be in Cholomo. The only thing the leaders knew for certain was that the project was being pushed and financed by the Inter-American Development Bank, an arm of the United States based in Washington, D.C. Given ACORN Peru’s many years of fights against privatization with our companeros in FENTAP, the water workers’ union of Peru, this was a battle where we knew the field and many of the combatants. Unfortunately we did not know whether or not we were too late, and the endless rain might prevent another meeting to get the details on this trip.

Fortunately, Luis has recruited his own “intern army,” as I call it with four volunteers from the University helping him and another couple of his companeros committed to lending their hands, cars, and anything else to make the organizing work. The core capacity and leadership is coming together in San Pedro Sula for Honduras ACORN, and it will take more than a lot of rain to stop the members from organizing aggressively to win their basic needs. Water is at the top of the list for us in the colonias.

“We know the way to Tahrir Square.”

dine — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 14:32:48 +0000

San Pedro Sula Landing in Honduras I felt lost in a dark seam of time. No blackberries were working. The news was trailing the heat and humidity of the city. Finally able to connect in mid-afternoon, it appeared Mubarak’s last play had been trumped on the street, and he was gone.

Speaking that night to twenty young activists about Citizen Wealth and ACORN International and our work supporting ACORN Honduras, I asked how many were on Twitter. Answer: One. I asked how many were on Facebook? Answer: All! I asked how many knew the news from Cairo. A couple of hands were raised. This was a touchy subject. Many of these young men and women had been vitally involved in demonstrating and protesting the coup that pushed out an elected president in Honduras less than two years ago. They were veterans of a failed effort and dispirited despite their energy and commitment.

Their questions wee the right ones? Mubarak is gone? The Army is in. We’ve been there, done that, what’s going to happen their next?

It seems trite and romantic to simply answer, it’s in the hands of the Egyptian people now, but I think that’s actually the right answer. The U.S. State Department may always be willing to settle for stability rather than support democratic struggle whether in Honduras then or Egypt now, as they juggle expediency over principle, but as we see over and over again, the people united can not be defeated.

One of the organizers quoted a few days ago in the paper when asked the same question answered along the lines, that he didn’t care if a “monkey” was “president” as long as it was a “government of institutions.” I cringed at that, though I understood the hyperbole. The military is a huge and powerful institution. Kicking out a dictator and substituting the military, despite the fact that it is a respected institution, supposedly, in Egypt doesn’t seem like a good trade.

An organizer quoted today named Ahmed Sleem, when asked about various future scenarios including army control, answered in a slogan I hope is picked up everywhere: “We know the way to Tahrir Square.”

What has now been won on the streets, can be enforced on the streets. The future is in the hands of the people now.

Tegucigalpa and Politicos

jstuart — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 14:29:51 +0000

Tegucigalpa On Sunday morning I had awaken again on the COMUCAP mountain properties in one of their cabanas. After dawn I had walked down along the gladiola lined pathway to see not only the aloe vera fields but also the truck garden of sorts at the base with its radishes, squash, and whatever. It was surprising how steep it was getting back and how out of breath I seemed compared to the children I had seen scampering up and down the mountain sides.

By noon the magic of the mountains with their cool, fresh air was gone as we came into the Valle de Los Angeles leading into the smoke generated smog of the capital, Tegucigalpa. To say the city is built on the mountain sides does not really describe the reality, because a lot of cities are built that way. Rather it seems that the 1.3 million people were dropped all over a series of hills, most not visible to others with the streets winding around and plopping us elsewhere. A church tower rose there, Christ rose there, high rises were in the distance, slums were set many since Hurricane Mitch along the outer hills, and orientation was almost impossible.

The city seemed arid, especially in contrast to Marcala, a sort of hot, dusty Delhi on hills. It was a pleasant surprise to find ourselves meeting at length at our companera’s house with her husband and children and feeling the breeze from her back porch and the shade of the mango and lemon trees. But water was the issue raised quickly and repeatedly. There’s not enough of it, it’s highly contested, and expensive. Washing is still done by hand here in a large concrete “tub” of sorts, which I had also seen in Marcala. When possible, conservation is critical. In the barrios the issue is even more intense.

This will be big for our organizing, and the discussion seemed to deepen the consensus that ACORN International needed to move forward on a real organizing plan for Honduras. Furthermore the thinking seemed to settle at two operations with strong candidates for training in both San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa. It will be interesting to see if we can put these pieces together.

Politics and political discussion was everywhere with the last president going into exile on Wednesday and the new president coming into protest from other Latin American countries. Sunday evening we were driving down a wide avenue near the center of down, and I heard a window roll down and someone in the back seat yelled “Viva Mel and La Resistancia!” A salute to the former president still staying at the Brazilian embassy on that street. A minute later and the American flag was waving over the huge embassy building downtown. Another minute later and the new shopping center anchored by Pais,reportedly owned by Wal-Mart, was right there. More than smoke was in the air.

There was one more area to be seen this morning, so we met at six with another campanero and his 4 WD pickup truck to head up the mountain. I was confused since we were surrounded by mountains, but we headed out and up. Within a kilometer on the other side of our friend’s house there was an endless wall and wooded space which turned out to be the US Ambassador’s residence. We passed a squatters colonias and then one rich home after another almost next door to each other.

We were going to a national forest area called Tigre from the signs, but once there we found that we were also in a farming community and cooperative that had existed in one form or another at the top of the mountain since the 1880′s. We met at length with Juan Lopez, a weathered man with many years on this mount and president of the 2000 member campesino organization there. I ate a delicious strawberry from his field as they were coming to ripening. There are 10000 people who live and work on the mountain with his group being a large force there. There concern was that the government was going to take the mountain for tourist development and displace them. We talked about federating his organization into an alliance with ACORN Honduras and a part of ACORN International and Community Organizations International. I tried to talk to him about how he could manage to irrigate his fields as I watched the water spread out along the rows. Senor Lopez complained that the government wanted that water, and I could tell water was going to be an issue everywhere. I tried to explain in my inadequate Spanish the treat of seeing orange double hisbiscus growing next to his hut, just as it used to grow next to our house in New Orleans before a hard freeze several years ago.

He knew I was no farmer and the story bored him quickly. He was interested in my skills as an organizer, and that was fair. He didn’t want to lose the chance at a ride in the back of the pickup part way down the mountain, and we moved back down the rough pig trail of a road until hitting the pavement nearer to the sights of the many hilled city and the heat rising with the dust and smoke as we made our way to the airport and our hopeful and temporary goodbyes.

Colors and Dawn on the Marcala Mountains

dine — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 16:02:23 +0000

Marcala In an afterthought I had thrown a small flashlight in my bag. You never know. As Tim sings, “there’s the cowboy in us all,” and with me there’s still a boy scout deep down riding alongside I guess. Good thing. We had driven up the mountains from Marcala in pitch dark to where our team was being housed for the night. Arriving we could see the large porch of the recently finished brick and concrete structure until the car lights went out, then nada but the half-moon and stars. One lone candle was lit in the middle of the room where we enjoyed sweet tea – organico, as they kept saying – after plopping our bags on the bare concrete floor. A little later when we were led down a rough path to a cabin, the absence of running water and electricity faded next to the joyful surprise at finding a nice bunk bed with clean sheets. Hey, it’s the little things that count. I slept like a baby in the pitch dark until the predawn when I woke with the campesinos to see the morning light come over the green dotted fog of the mountain sides.

We had started the day at eight in a makeshift meeting room in the hotel chapel with many of our union brothers as well as several new companeros from NGOs and the University. For hours one after another listed the issues in and around San Pedro Sula that needed attention and organizational activity: water, remittances, housing, public services. It was a long list delivered in lengthy and passionate speeches listened to respectfully by all interrupted only by the appearance of a Channel 39 TV reporter who had heard the discussion was going on and that I was in town. At noon we drove through some of the colonias including one fascinating development some of my union brothers showed me where the union had built the houses and the school. This was only minutes away from a new highrise condo development abutting one piece of a small creek in San Pedro Sula. Another sign down the road indicated the future would be filled with these luxury developments, the first in the city. Another five minutes away and we were looking at a squatters development along a larger riverbank where families had been forced after Hurricane Mitch’s devastation in Honduras, as still remained. Driving away we could see children swimming as their mothers washed their clothes in the calmer pools of the stream

Next stop was a quick lunch and visit with a woman and her family who had graciously invited us over for pico gallo in the Honduran style with red beans. The reason in the interconnected world of organizing: her sister had been a member of ACORN in the Queens. Anything she could do to help, just ask.

Though there seemed to be no hurry to the drive, and it was a good thing since construction and 18-wheelers had us parking for long stretches as we crossed the mountains on the good highway from San Pedro Sula to Tegucigalpa, we parked in Marcala in one of the barrios and followed the noise and music into a giant structure just in time for a young political theater company to begin their presentation. There were several hundred children and a score of adults in the crowd, as the moderator shouted, “Silencio!” over and over to gain attention. Suyapa explained to me that this was part of a celebration for the women in the community, but the theater company brought much more to it.

This was a well acted and rehearsed production by a half-dozen enthusiastic late teen or early 20′s actors. In the beginning a “generalito” – small general – with his lieutenant wanted everything to be gray, gray, gray, and the three citizens, two women and one man, lived in gray huts in fear. As the play developed to great humor and passion from the actors and increasingly the crowd as they warmed to the theme, the caricature soldiers in the face paint of Batman’s Joker gradually lost control. Singing and dancing would erupt and pull the people off of their knees to find that they could walk and be happy again. At the same time their huts turned from gray to white, pink, and green. A giant bride dressed in white appeared on stilts and danced along as well. A toy cannon exploded and led the soldier to defect to the people until the generalito was deflated with the air escaping from him like wind from a bag. More singing ensued. Children were pulled from the crowd. Marching and dancing. My summary doesn’t do the play or the skill and quality of the actors justice for this hour long presentation, but it was one of the few times where one had the feeling people were staying for the action and not the frijoles and tortillas passed out to all of us with plastic cups of weak coffee at the end of the show.

There may have been a fake election in Honduras to try to rightsize the military coup, but the scars will wear deep among these people. When the elected president announced on my first day in country that he was agreeing to go into exile in the Dominican Republic there was no celebration about his volunteering to take the first step to “reconciliation.” It seemed hollow, and this children’s play with its well practiced themes and smooth presentation was hardly designed for this one show, but was traveling around the country.

All of these things were on our minds as our eyes closed in the dark last night. We were staying at the unfinished compound organized as a project to support the campesinos in this area.

It was an honor and a gift to have lived this day!