El Salvador Report
Published
March 2002
by Michele Spring-Moore
I traveled to El Salvador in early February with a group of eight
other Ohio residents and three Equal Exchange employees to meet
with coffee co-op members and see how the harvesting and production
process worked. (For those interested in coffee production, see
the Rochester Committee on Latin America's [ROCLA's] upcoming newsletter,
which contains an article with much more detail.)
ROCLA gave Equal Exchange, a 40-employee, Boston-based, fair trade,
coffee company, its annual White Dove Award two years ago to recognize
the work EE has done to promote fair trade, sustainable farming
practices, direct work with small cooperatives in Latin America
and other coffee-producing regions, and consumer education on these
topics.
EE issued a challenge: if we doubled sales of EE coffee in the Rochester
area, they would take a ROCLA member on one of their coffee tours.
Those who have done solidarity work with El Salvador know that since
the end of the 12-year civil war in which at least 80,000 were killed,
the tiny nation has been in U.S. headlines only when natural disasters
have struck--Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and the latest earthquakes
a year ago. As in the rest of the Global South, ordinary people's
daily struggles for survival continue unnoticed.
With the signing of the peace accords by the government and FMLN
guerrilla forces in 1992, most Salvadorans were able to stop fearing
for their lives, but the poor have actually grown poorer in the
intervening decade. Our interpreter for part of the trip, agronomy
graduate student Ernesto Mendez, noted that many people appreciate
the changes that allow them to express their political opinions,
'but they say, 'That's nice, but it doesn't put food in our stomachs'.'
Our delegation met with the boards of two organizations that work
with co-operatives, and traveled to two coffee co-ops in the countryside.
Fair trade coffee means the difference between survival and death
for these co-ops. World coffee prices have plummeted recently, and
the $1.26 that Equal Exchange pays for each pound of coffee is keeping
the co-ops afloat when the world market price is 45 to 50 cents
a pound. (Two years ago, the price was $2.40 a pound.)
Matt Lowen, the Guatemala Accompaniment Project's latest genocide
case accompanier, said in a recent e-mail that campesino coffee
growers with whom he works are receiving so little, 25 cents a pound,
they're considering leaving the berries on the trees rather than
harvesting them.
EE also gives the co-ops prefinancing when Salvadoran banks won't
go near their small operations. The wealthy families that own the
banks are the same forces that have always
opposed agrarian reform, and Salvadoran presidents and other government
leaders still come from these families with large land holdings.
Apecafe, the Association of Small Ciffee Producers of El Salvador,
is classified as a non-governmental organization (NGO) and is able
to arrange some financing and pre-financing through the banks. Mendez
and Rosario Castellon, EE's producer relations coordinator, said
that most Salvadoran coffee producers are reluctant to grow their
crops using organic methods--the country is so small and competition
for land so fierce, farmers have traditionally forced every bit
of food they can out of their tiny plots using whatever chemical
methods are at their disposal. But the poorer co-op we visited,
El Pinal, and other cooperatives are in the process of having their
product certified 'Eco OK,' which could ultimately lead to the use
of organic farming methods.
Eco OK, a label created by the U.S. organization Rainforest Alliance,
allows the use of some chemical pesticides and fertilizers, but
specifies certain living conditions for the workers and preservation
of at least 10 native tree species on the land-- 'coffee forest'
has replaced true rainforest areas in El Salvador. The family supermarket
owner in our delegation and the four coffee and wine buyers who
work for his chain were interested in the Eco OK certification,
but noted that it would be a tough sell in the United States--consumers
understand and look for organic products, but biodiversity is a
more complex concept to explain.
Back in the capital, we saw that the government is repaving roads--in
some places replacing what the earthquakes destroyed, in other areas
providing jobs where few exist. I thought these impressive-looking
new cement roads might be a sign of improvements for the people
of El Salvador, until our group spoke with Leslie Schuld, the director
of Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad, a solidarity organization
in San Salvador. Leslie, a U.S. citizen who's lived in El Salvador
the past 8 1/2 years, said that the president of the right-wing
ARENA party, Roberto Murray Meza, owns all of the cement factories
in the country (and all of the soda and beer distribution companies)
and is making an enormous profit from the exclusive contract for
new roads. Leslie thinks the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí para la
Liberacion Nacional), the leftist party of the guerrillas who forced
the Salvadoran government to the negotiating table in the early
'90s, represents the only hope of any substantial change in the
country and has a decent chance of winning the presidential elections
in 2004. The party has had a base of supporters among the educated
in the cities, she said, and is now making inroads in rural areas,
where people have been able to see for themselves the FMLN's relative
efficiency in running municipalities, compared to neighboring villages
with corrupt governments run by ARENA or more moderate PCN mayors.
The corruption, right-wing hegemony, and natural disasters continue
to strain the environment and economy. El Salvador is the second-most
deforested nation in the western hemisphere; the desertification
was obvious as we flew over the country at the height of the dry
season. The economy is entirely dependent upon money sent home by
the 2 million Salvadorans working in other countries--out of a total
population of 8 million.
Another problem on the horizon--or on the front doorstep--is the
escalating militarization of Central America. The U.S. government
is using its 'war on drugs' to re-arm the region; President Francisco
Flores has allowed the United States to establish a military base
in El Salvador, and George Bush II will visit on March 23 to officially
open the base and meet with the presidents of all Central American
nations. Nicaragua Network reported recently that the Nicaraguan
government is sending military officers to be trained at the U.S.
Army School of the Americas (or Western Hemisphere Institute for
Security Cooperation) for the first time since the Somoza regime
of the 1970s. Cold War or drug war, it spells disaster for our friends
and neighbors in Latin America. Equal Exchange coffee is sold at
several area Tops supermarkets and at One World Goods in Pittsford
Plaza. Michele Spring-Moore is a former editor of the ROCLA newsletter
who now lives in Columbus, Ohio.
For more information, e-mail her
at: springbyker@yahoo.com.