After four days in La Florida’s mosquito breeding ground, I felt more than ready to return to Xela. I have to admit, for one of the first times while traveling, I was a bit lonely, researching completely independently, and the only English speaker around. While I got lots of reading in, there wasn’t exactly much excitement, and the 8:00 bedtimes were getting a bit old. This is perhaps problematic, as I am studying rural development, and I plan to spend the next several months in isolated villages, but I feel like (or at least really hope) within a week or so, things get easier and new friends help to pass the time.
Anyways, returning to my Spanish school classmates and the vibrancy of Xela was really welcome and fun. The Sunday night I returned was the semi-final of Guatemala’s soccer championships, so the whole town was abuzz. When Xela managed to defeat the Guatemala City team, the entire city erupted. I headed down to the central square to witness the parades of trucks loaded with screaming (and soon quite intoxicated) fans, screaming, honking, waving banners, and setting off incessant firecracker explosions. The park was alive with revelers until the wee hours of the morning; I have never ever witnessed such an explosion of a victory celebration—this somehow even managed to outdo the Duke victory bonfire of a sound Carolina defeat, and it was only the semi-finals! I watched the celebration from a bar rumored to be Che Gueverra’s favorite hangout during his time in Xela. The revolutionary hero actually spent a great deal of time in Guatemala during the Arevalo and Arbenz years of reform; revolutionaries from across Latin America congregated here to witness and learn. The CIA’s overthrow of Arbenz was a catalyst leading Che and others to Cuba and sparking rebellion or caution across the region.
With three cooperative visits under my belt, I decided that instead of cramming in another visit, I would return to the capital area to visit a couple of notable social science archives and the famed colonial capital city Antigua. After a night plagued by the literally hundreds of mosquito bites all over my body, a mishap-laden journey that killed a full day returning to the center of the country and included a drunk urchin urinating on my backpack, and a Rough Guide miss on a budget hotel recommendation that ended up being quite the fleapit, I finally found myself in Antigua.
The city really was quite beautiful; as a UNESCO World Heritage Sight, the streets were meticulously restored. A graceful central park with sculpted fountains and manicured grass surrounded by the former national palace, giant Catholic cathedral, and elegant shopping arcades were jaw-dropping; my tour book noted that the site seemed far-removed from Latin America, but I really don’t know anywhere similar in the world. Wireless cafes, chic boutique hotels, and the glut of white tourists everywhere really did create an enclave life incomparable with the struggles of the rural campesinos I had been staying with.
I was able to visit a highly recommended archive, and found some good leads for future reading before finding a late afternoon bus back to the capital, where I returned to the Hotel Spring for a final two nights. Following the path of Che, I located the rather bohemian pension where he had stayed for several months—and enjoyed a beer under the small plaque proclaiming Che’s residence.
On my last day in the city I visited Asociacion Para El Avance de Las Ciencias Sociales en Guatemala (AVANCSO), one of the primary social science research archives in the country, and a place where Professor Nelson, who helped me prepare for my trip, did research when she was writing her first book. The staff was extremely helpful when I explained my project, pulling several of their own studies and a collection of literature on Fair Trade and cooperatives in Guatemala from the shelves for my perusal. I have to say—the greatest complement I received in the country was from an archivist who wanted to know how I had gotten so fluent in Spanish! If only my Duke Spanish lecturers could see me know!
I filled several additional pages with notes from a variety of sources. One conference report from IFPRI dated 1989, in a series of papers regarding commercialization of agriculture, struck me as particularly significant in its discussion of experimental attempts to form small farmer cooperatives. The report concluded that the experimental cooperative had definite benefits for the community that definitely justified initial external investments, and in time the group had become a “highly efficient business enterprise” marketing its produce completely independently. Cooperative strategies are often seen as a new fad, but here was evidence that the strategy had been proved successful years ago with an initial solid infusion of capital and support. In a more recent document I learned that cooperative production accounts for 10.87% of 1997/1998 coffee production, with 82.4% coming from developed fincas. With the Peace Accords signed in 1996 and the amount of time required for organization and initiating production, it is likely that this number represents cooperative production that existed before and during the war. It would be fascinating to learn more of the stories of how these groups were able to maintain themselves during the war, as such cooperatives were usually targeted as Communist conspiracies. The production from cooperatives is certainly higher now as a number of cooperatives have emerged since the war and resettlement, including all of the groups I visited.
I also read a report from the Congreso Nacional Campesino, or National Campesino (Peasant) Conference. I believe this was the organization SCIDECO, the La Florida parent cooperative society, was a part of. Having a national organization working for unified farmer advancement, land and credit access, national and international market openings, and supportive legislature, definitely was a sign of organization at the grassroots level (though I could not necessarily tell from the reports what tangible benefits the group had received for its members).
One assessment of campesino farming in San Marcos District concluded by noting that in whatever strategy farmers had chosen to pursue, the farmers were looking for creative ways to maintain and improve their situation—and generally doing this on their own with little assistance from development organizations. Further, the farmers generally enjoyed community support from each other, which was more or less available to all. This report was not particular to cooperative organizations; these practices were true among peasant farmers in general. As I’ve mentioned earlier, this sort of general widespread support was not something I ever encountered or read about among programs in Africa, and marks a clear culture of cooperation and high levels of cognitive or relational social capital among peasant farmers. I look forward to further writing and analysis of these groups to learn more about their experiences.
My day at AVANCSO concluded my research time in Guatemala. I was eager to get home, with a very long list of necessary preparations for the Sierra Leone project. I left a day early, arriving in Minneapolis on Thursday afternoon to spend the evening with Katelyn and Ben, who was visiting for the week. We had a great time, with Ben actually making chorizo for us—a popular sausage dish Katelyn and Ben discovered in Southern Mexico that was also very Guatemalan. And on Friday morning I took a shuttle home for a very pleasant, albeit way too short and busy, Memorial Day weekend with my parents, successfully concluding Part One of my summer research adventures.
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