CHAPTER NINE
CAMPESINOS IN THE MOUNTAINS OF ESCAZU:
A MEASURE OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Introduction
The measurement of sustainable development is still a much discussed and unresolved issue. Many authors have attempted to operationalize the measurement of sustainability by suggesting diverse sets of indicators. They have, for example, offered "land quality" indicators (FAO 1997, Schomaker 1997), indicators to measure the sustainability of agriculture and of natural resources (Altieri 1987; De Camino and Müller 1993), and indicators to measure sustainable "human development" (Gutiérrez-Espeleta 1996). While the importance of their contributions is undeniable, all these attempts at measurement fail to consider that sustainable development, even in its mainstream rendition, is based fundamentally on the imponderables of "present and future needs". And these "needs" can ultimately only be defined subjectively by the present and future communities. It is for this reason that the critical perspective places local empowerment as the most important element of sustainable development. Only through local empowerment can communities define their needs and take action to satisfy them. Thus, even the critical perspective must in the last analysis set aside its theoretical constructs to allow the local communities to express their lifeworld and the means by which they would choose to maintain it. It is only by allowing the local lifeworld to continually nourish their discourse and practice, that a critical perspective can hope to remain critical.
In the previous chapters I looked at CODECE's efforts of over a decade to promote a critical perspective of sustainable development in and around the Mountains of Escazú. As an NGO within civil society, CODECE formed part of a new and growing social sector recognized for its capacity to "provide an efficient alternative to public agencies in the delivery of programmes and projects" (WCED 1987:328), and for being "an important new terrain of democratization, and of democratic institution building" (Cohen and Arato 1992:16). As part of a new social movement, CODECE waged a protracted struggle against what Luke (1989:220) has referred to as the "core", "technocratically empowered", "lifeworld colonizers", in favor of the "periphery", "disempowered", "lifeworld colonized". CODECE attempted to defend the interests of the local rural communities around the Mountains of Escazú, above all, by seeking ways to empower them.
CODECE did this first by inventing itself as a social space for community participation in the defense of the local environment, gathering the social and cultural capital of its membership, for collective appropriation, empowerment and mobilization. Then CODECE embarked on efforts of "democratic institution building" through attempts at transforming and appropriating the institutionalized cultural capital of the legal system which maintained a political and economic status quo contrary to local interests. CODECE also sought to sustain the local lifeworld by transforming the local culture and generating new ideologies which fomented a sense of belonging, ownership and responsibility among the people in their relationship to the Mountains of Escazú. Finally, CODECE sought to harness greater social, cultural, and even economic capital, beyond the borders of Escazú, as a means of empowering its own work in favor of the sustainable development of the local community.
I concluded the last chapter suggesting that sustainable development is best served by making use of local resources, and is ultimately dependent on local definitions of what "needs" are to be sustained, and by what means. The proposition that CODECE made use of different forms of capital as means of local empowerment to maintain or create a lived context of social, environmental and economic sustainability, would require the verification of its impact in terms of local definitions of sustainable development.
CODECE's target population, since its birth and throughout its existence, was primarily the rural communities around the Mountains of Escazú, and particularly, the campesinos in San Antonio de Escazú. In this chapter, I focus specifically on the sustainability of the lifeworld of campesinos in that community, and discuss the extent to which CODECE has had an impact there. Where CODECE has contributed to empowering campesinos to maintain their desired lifeworld, that, I argue, is the primary measure of its impact on local sustainable development. Ultimately, though, I contend that it is, in fact, the lifeworld of campesinos which provides the measures for a locally appropriate and appropriable sustainable development.
The Local Context
Before the Spanish arrived in the early 1500s, Escazú was already settled by native Huetar communities dedicated to hunting, fishing and shifting agriculture. By 1560 the Spanish had taken over their territories and transformed the land with cattle grazing and irrigated cultivation (IFAM 1990:31). Most of the Spanish settlers of Escazú, as in the rest of Costa Rica, were poor peasant farmers who maintained their European farming practices, but who also began adopting some native crops and forms of cultivation (Sánchez 1992). Subsistence farming predominated in Escazú until the mid 1800s when coffee was introduced as an export crop (Hall 1991). Many family farms dedicated part of their land to the cultivation of coffee as a source of income. Others began selling part of their land to larger coffee growers. By 1920, the district of San Rafael de Escazú had a coffee processing plant, or "beneficio", in the hands of a coffee exporting elite who showed signs of capital accumulation and land concentration. With reduced land, some small farmers began to change from extensive coffee cultivation to a more intensive vegetable farming for an expanding national market. After the Second World War, the Green Revolution promised greater yields and economic income to farmers with the introduction and promotion of "improved" hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides.
In a study carried out in 1969, San Antonio de Escazú was registered as having a population of 5,459 people, with coffee and sugar cane still being the principal crops. At that time there were 425 coffee growers, and nearly two dozen family-owned sugar mills, or "trapiches", to process the sugar cane, half of which were powered by oxen, and the other half were already motorized. There were only 10 cars and 15 motorcycles registered in all of the district. Virtually all of the houses were made of adobe, and above an elevation of 1400 meters, the mountains remained uninhabited (Bozzolli 1969:8). As a child, I remember walking up to San Antonio on dirt roads where only ox-carts passed. Thirty years later, when I carried out my fieldwork, the population of San Antonio was nearly 16,000 inhabitants (IFAM 1990), there were hundreds of cars, and constructions above 1400 meters speckled the hillsides. Other changes that were evident were the transformed agricultural practices from an extensive form of production of sugar cane, coffee and cattle, to a more intensive practice of vegetable farming on increasingly smaller lots.
During my fieldwork, I also quickly learned that land prices had risen tremendously, and along with that, property taxes. During my interviews, many farmers would inquire if I was interested in buying a piece of land they were selling. Moreover, luxurious mansions seemed to mushroom in what previously had been land dedicated to agriculture. The "quaint" rural lifestyle that predominated in San Antonio, as well as the scenic beauty provided by the mountains, attracted outsiders to buy land and build their homes there. San Antonio also became an attraction to tourists who stayed in a growing number of hotels and B&Bs in Escazú. Many farmers expressed their concern over being displaced by outsiders, but also complained about the difficulty of making a living by continuing to farm in San Antonio. Property taxes became increasingly onerous for small farmers. Access to water for irrigation became more of a struggle with the piping of streams to supply the growing demand for drinking water from surrounding residences. Large-scale construction in the Protection Zone brought about erosion and mud slides that further degraded the water quality of communities downstream. These were some of the elements which jeopardized the sustainability of the lifeworld of campesinos around the Mountains of Escazú, which CODECE attempted to resolve, in part, by promoting the importance or local knowledge and local organization.
CODECE Promotes Organic Farming
During my summer visit in 1990, Romano Sancho commented to me his concern over the extensive use of pesticides by campesinos and was enthusiastic about beginning an organic farming project in CODECE, "to recover the ways our campesinos used to work 40 years ago, without pesticides" (Field notes, July 15, 1990). When I returned in 1992, CODECE had recently initiated a project to promote organic farming among the campesinos of San Antonio. CODECE first started out helping Nino Fernández, a small farmer who by his own initiative had decided to produce organically. One Saturday afternoon, collaborating with CODECE, I picked up Nino at the Escazú feria, or farmer's market, to drive him home to San Antonio.
"How is it that you plant without chemicals," I asked him, "while others continue to fumigate with pesticides?"
"It's a matter of this," he said, tapping his heart. "Some of us have a conscience. One cannot play with the health of the people. One does not have to fumigate because there are natural ways to control pests. The thing started some time ago, and I must confess that I did it principally for health reasons. I suffered from gastritis and my problem was quite serious. I didn't want my family to suffer the pains that I had, and it also worried me to know that the people who bought my vegetables at the feria would fall ill from the pesticides on the produce they bought from me. It worried me a lot to see how fellow farmers used pesticides that were quite toxic and then would take their harvest to market. This has been talked about for some time, but you know that we farmers are quite obstinate. We can be killing each other, but we continue with the same stubbornness. Another thing: you probably already know that agrochemicals also cause sterility. In this country there are very many campesinos who are sterile: in the banana plantations, in the region of Cartago, and right here, in San Antonio de Escazú. Moreover, I am not ashamed to say that I myself am sterile because of agrochemicals. Imagine how harmful farming with agrochemicals is! Because of all this I am telling you, was why I decided to change systems. In January of this year, CODECE invited the farmers of the zone to start a program in organic farming, as part of the fight being carried out for the defense of the environment here in San Antonio. I was able to share the way I work, known only to my family and to my friend Rodolfo León. Now, very slowly, others are beginning to take the plunge."
"Was it difficult for you to change to organic farming?" I asked Nino.
"Organic farming is very difficult," he said. "It is difficult for others to understand what one does. I had many problems with fellow farmers of the region who didn't believe in this. And another thing: all this experience is a slow process, and very costly at first, and a risk because one is poor and doesn't have the capital others can secure, and everything one does is an experiment at first. I also had definite problems with some engineers from the Ministry of Agriculture. Imagine, that I was denounced for the way I farmed, and my permit to sell at the feria was taken away from me. I had to invite them to my piece of land so that they could take vegetable samples to analyze in laboratories. They found out that what I sold was completely healthy, and they returned my permit. But you know that the Ministry of Agriculture is the prime importer of agrochemicals, and of course, it does not benefit them for farmers to become aware, and organize themselves to use other forms of agriculture, abandoning all the toxic substances they sell. This is definitely a difficult struggle, a fight of truth against lies, of justice against deception.
"At this moment, I am satisfied to be able to count on the support of all my family. We are very happy to know that we have good health, and that we are offering health to all those who for more than a year have been buying our produce. When we submitted ourselves to this change, we made a promise. We offered to give what we knew to anyone who wished to practice organic farming, and also to give some of the harvest to the poorest; all this so that my health would improve, and so that whatever we undertook would not turn out badly. I had always done that, but now we had even more reason to do so. It is a promise we made to the Virgen de los Angeles, which we must follow to the word, and for ever. I don't think that I will become poor for giving to others who are also in need. When my family and I made the change all at once, we made an important decision: either we would go forward producing without agrochemicals, or we would continue poisoning the people. These were the two possibilities, and there was only one option. So we took the plunge." (Field notes, May 23, 1992).
In June, I attended a workshop on organic farming organized by Javier Sánchez, who was in charge of the project. The workshop was held at Nino's home, where some 15 other small farmers attended. Nino showed us around his land, less than half an hectare on a steep hillside with slopes greater than 90 percent. He had terraced the land and was cultivating beets, mustard, lettuce, coriander, radishes, onions and beans, among other things. After commenting on the benefits of diversifying the crops, the farmers then began discussing some of the disadvantages of organic farming.
"The way I see it," Rodolfo León offered his opinion, "the problem is that there is no awareness among the people, or among any of us. The day consumers become aware, they will come to you and tell you to charge them what you want. But this awareness doesn't exist." Javier, however, turned the discussion toward the opportunities of organic farming in the region.
"Let me suggest a market none of you have exploited," he said. "It is a market nobody has exploited here in Escazú or in Santa Ana. It is all the Gringos and all these foreigners. They are a sure market for whoever will offer organic products and sets up a stand at the feria only for organic products. We have an advantage here in Escazú -although in other ways it's a disadvantage- that the large number of foreigners form a large market with important buying power, and are willing to pay a higher price for healthy products."
Rodolfo agreed. "See here," he said, "how many of us are there in this course? Some fourteen, very well. What has to be done is that at least five or four of us have to commit ourselves to begin planting organically, even if with small amounts. Produce something every week, and each one of us something different. Then yes, try to set up a stand together. The important thing is that something useful should come out of this course. A commitment. Fine, maybe we continue farming with chemicals. No matter. But have a small part be completely organic. That's a commitment. And if not, then it's best we pack up and leave." (Field notes, June 6, 1992).
Two months later CODECE had set up a stand at the feria where Nino, Rodolfo and a third farmer, Jaime González advertised their produce as organic. Some time later, however, each returned to tending their own particular stands, though they continued selling organic produce. By the following year, things again had changed.
Nino had been able to save up enough money to buy a pump to irrigate his hillside from a stream at the bottom of his land. But one day I passed by to visit him and he was not his usual self.
"Your crops look beautiful," I said.
"To you they look beautiful," he responded sullenly.
"How has life treated you lately?" I asked.
"Healthwise, well, fortunately. But materially, bad. They robbed my pump. They came Tuesday of Holy Week, broke the box, and took it."
Two weeks earlier I had helped Nino finish a concrete box in a shed by the stream, where he kept the pump locked under an iron lid.
"What hurts me the most," Nino said, "is that this was an effort of many, including you. But in San Antonio I realize that, as well as good people, there are also bad people."
"And now what?" I asked.
"Nothing. Not even the police want to get involved. For less than 250,000 colones they don't do anything, and the pump cost 200,000. It's lost, and it's lost! This year has been a bad one for me. I haven't been able to save a cent. I have remained with what I started. Now I am bummed out, totally disillusioned. One cannot work here. I feel like selling this piece and looking for land somewhere else, because here one cannot do anything anymore. Specially because of the thieves who cramp you, and cramp you. And not only me, but everyone, and it's all the time. If it isn't the harvest they steal, its the clothing, the tools, everything. The last time we were robbed I told my family that I felt like looking for land somewhere else, but they were against it. This time it was they who told me we should go. And like I say, one cannot farm here anymore. There is no help from anyone. The banks don't help. And without your own transportation, the intermediaries eat you up. And if you pay transportation, they also squeeze you. There is no help from anyone. We farmers have been abandoned. And CODECE didn't return. It's been more than a month that Javier hasn't come by. Before, he would come every week. I lent that piece over there to CODECE for experimentation, but there it is, abandoned. If they are not going to use it, I can work it. Maybe you can do me a favor and pass by CODECE and tell Javier that I want to talk to him about this. Because definitely, I am not returning to CODECE. Too many meetings, too much time wasted, and nothing gets done." (Field notes, April 13, 1993).
This was a difficult period for Nino, but he did not sell his land. In fact, some time later, he was even able to rent a larger and flatter piece of land in San Antonio near a stream where he increased his organic production. Moreover, he remained a faithful member of CODECE, and was later elected to the Directive Junta of the Association.
Rodolfo León, in contrast, moved away from producing organically and away from CODECE. Despite being elected president of CODECE in February of 1993, at an assembly in April he confessed not believing in organic farming any more. Rodolfo also sold half of his land to a German family, where they soon erected a mansion. By November, Rodolfo had resigned as president of CODECE and was at odds with many of the members over diverse issues, including a green house the Association had built on his land some years earlier and over which it was now trying to settle accounts with him. After Amalia's election to the presidency of CODECE in February of 1995, the Association and Rodolfo León became engaged in a protracted legal battle over the issue of the green house, with Rodolfo eventually winning, but definitively distancing himself from CODECE.
Jaime González, like Nino, continued farming organically, joined, in fact, by two of his sons, Guido and Nixon, who also began farming organically. They farmed a small piece of land behind the house where Jaime and his wife Olga lived, along with Guido and Nixon, as well as two daughters, one of whom, Tina, was a teacher at the school in San Antonio. I visited them occasionally, and would exchange plant cuttings with doña Olga who kept a garden that resembled a tropical forest. On one visit, I commented on Rodolfo's disillusion with organic farming. Tina said she understood him.
"When you consider the price of agricultural products," she said, "and compare it to the exorbitant prices people are willing to pay for clothes, for example, without a complaint, it's easy to get disillusioned. But the government continues fixing the price of the products we grow, without considering that farmers, too, have to earn a living."
Guido was less lenient with Rodolfo.
"The problem," he said, "is that we live in a materialist culture. People want to have more and more things and so need money to buy them. Rodolfo, why did he sell his land? He didn't have to, but there he is. Now he is against organic farming. But organic agriculture is not a system of production with which one makes money, but rather a system of production one can live with, and live a long time. That is the point. Organic agriculture has allowed us to live a good life. We can't complain. We all study, and we eat well." (Field notes, May 5, 1993).
In fact, I learned that Jaime had recently bought another piece of land in Sarapiquí (in the northeast lowlands of Costa Rica) to expand his organic production, where he cultivated other crops that did not grow in the cooler climate of San Antonio. And on the recommendation of Javier Sánchez, Nixon was studying agronomy at the University of Costa Rica to become a professional organic farmer.
Several years later, in a conversation I had with Nixon, after he had graduated and was farming the family property, without the direct help of Guido who had by that time become a musician and a mechanic, Nixon seemed fully convinced of the value of organic farming.
"Organic agriculture provides for both our material and spiritual needs," he said, "and our family's material needs are few. Otherwise," he continued, "we would already have sold this piece of land for so many millions that have been offered, cash in hand. We will never be able to make that much money by farming. But you can't eat money. And no money can buy the tranquillity of sitting under the shade of a tree my grandfather planted." (Field notes, May 14, 1998).
CODECE's efforts of promoting organic farming and "recovering campesino practices" as a way to sustainable development in San Antonio, did not result in its widespread adoption, to the extent that CODECE had hoped for. Almost seven years after CODECE had brought together some 15 local farmers to interest them in organic farming, of these, only Nino and Jaime remained organic farmers. However, outside of this group, most farmers of San Antonio had at least heard of organic farming, recognizing it as farming without pesticides, and there were a few farmers who, independent of CODECE, had adopted organic farming themselves. Moreover, through Nixon and Nino's son, who accompanied him in the field, a younger generation of farmers now had representatives of this sustainable form of production that revived traditional campesino practices.
Despite the low rate of adoption of organic farming among the campesinos of San Antonio, CODECE can be said to have raised the visibility of this "traditional" practice, rendering it, once again, a part of the community's cultural capital, appropriable for empowerment, once conditions, such as greater consumer consciousness and demand, or the increasing cost of pesticides, made organic farming more attractive.
Promoting Traditional Practices
Besides
attempting to promote the recovery of campesino agricultural practices, CODECE
also sought to contribute to the persistence of local traditional knowledge,
including architecture, cooking, music, and crafts, among others.