by Buffy Childerhose
As our mini
bus climbs higher and higher into the hills surrounding San Salvador, the
scenery changes dramatically. Gone are the signs for fast food chains signs and
the bedazzled rainbow- busses spewing black smoke. These hallmarks of city life
are quickly replaced by things a little less jarring, less loud, less urban.
Now? Dusty roads. Pick-up trucks. Chickens.
We’re
headed to Zacatales, a pueblo some 35 kilometers outside the country’s capital
and the site of two businesses in which CIS has played a role. But neither is a
place one can reach via mini-bus. We park at the foot of a small mountain and
transfer to a pickup, the only vehicle that can navigate the uneven and
challenging dirt roads that will lead us to our first stop.
When we
finally alight from the pickup and tumble onto the dusty road, we’re greeted by
the smell of something baking. It’s not quite sweet, but it’s not quite savory.
It remains a mystery till we cluster around the open door of the
building we’ve stopped at and glimpse what’s happening inside.
There, a
handful of women, and a few men, gathered
around two tables, some pounding and rolling large balls of
yellow dough as other tear off strips that they roll into what first look like
crescent rolls that are soon stuffed with a milky filling and then pinched
around the edges like an empanada.
“They’re
sweet, don’t worry,” laughs one of the woman in the cooperative and she wipes
her hands on her apron. She is one of the villagers who run the bakery. Today,
as a handful of them are busy baking, they share how they went from having
almost nothing, to running this busy collective.
“We are
grateful to God that we have the opportunity to come here and work everyday,” says
another woman as she stands in the bakery’s doorway, the other workers bustling
and smiling behind her, transforming piles of flour and other goods into a
better future for themselves and their children.
It wasn’t
long ago that there was little work in the community, and limited food that was
produced locally. “In light of what we needed in the community, we decided to
start a women’s group in 2006,” explains Mimita, one of the co-op founders.
“Thirty of us organized into a group and a local representative of El Frente
(the FMLN) came, and she helped us form a directive for the organization.”
Initially,
the women started a cooperative to produce eggs, thanks to a US$ 50,00 from
Primoere to build the coops, buy the chickens and create the means to care for
them. As that business began to grow, the women’s dreams grew with it.
“Because we already had the eggs,” says Mimita, “we thought we could do more and with the proceeds from selling the eggs we decided to start a bakery, starting small by making bread in my house.” The group enjoyed making bread, and soon they had two flourishing businesses, with half the women working in the bakery and the other half in the chicken farm.
“Out of the
egg project, we’ve also figured out a way to have some families have their own
chickens. And we’re starting to do the same with cows. We collectively decide
who in the community most needs these things, based on size of family and their
income,” sys Mimita. The idea is to produce more calves and keep sharing them
amongst those with the greatest needs.
The way
they make this decision is representative of how the group operates. It’s a
participatory co-op with the women making decisions together. So the yield of
these projects isn’t just salaries for the women, it’s also a sense of
ownership, pride and authority, something that these women had not experienced
in the past. And for Mimita and her co-workers, that’s almost as sweet as the
pain dulce itself.
(And for the record, the recipe is a secret;
all you’ll get when you ask is a smile.)
Not far
away from the bakery, another group of women is savoring sweet victories, with
nary a grain of sugar in sight. In the rolling hills of Comasagua the women of
the Vivaz collective group are collectively blue –in the most positive interpretation
of what that phrase might mean.
The Vivaz
group is a collective made up of 12 women who decided to form a collective in
2005, an effort born of simple necessity. “There just was no work,” said Delmy,
a worker and coordinator with the project. “We needed to do something, so we
decided to try to do something for ourselves.”
One of the
CIS’s grassroots organizers who worked in the town of Comasagua heard about the
group, and brought them to CIS’s attention. “CIS asked if we wanted to learn
some useful skills and we said, ‘Of course.’ We were told about Indigo, but we
didn’t know what it was then. And through consults with CIS, we decided to undertake a crafts project to
make items dyed with indigo. We started the training in indigo dying in 2006. “
Since then,
the group has had their struggles, including a large financial loss due to the
purchase of a large amount of bad indigo. Eventually, the group built their own
relationship with a reputable indigo association, and again began producing
high quality work. After these financial losses, the women felt they needed
greater control over the process, and that they should actually be producing
the clothes they were dyeing. Yet none of them knew how to sew. CIS organized a
training program through a local organization and with this training, the women
learned how to produce create their own products from start to finish. As they
were able to guarantee the quality of the indigo dye, the quality of the
articles being dyed, and the design, both the quality of the products and sales
increased.
It took
some struggle to right themselves after their financial losses, but these women
are clearly resolute, spurred on by both necessity and faith. Now, there are
now 20 women involved in the collective, and the group produces large amounts
shirts, skirts, t-shirts and scarves. Beyond these beautiful items, they’ve
also fashioning a better future. “The living conditions of the women and their
families have drastically improved since the collective began,” says Delmy.
But this
change hasn’t been easy. In Delmy’s community, as well as in the majority of
the rural areas in the region, the husbands make the decisions. “So these women
depended on their husbands – for money, for choices - even what clothes she
might wear,” she explained.
As the
women began to earn their own incomes and develop a sense of pride and
autonomy, these changes weren’t always well received. “In the beginning it was
difficult to deal with - the men weren’t happy,” said Delmy. “ But we’ve
learned how to defend our rights,” she said. “The women began to resist and said, ‘This is something that I am going to do,
that I want to do because it’s going to be of mutual benefit to both of us and
our families.’ So in time, the project has helped transform some of the men,
and some husbands are even helping with chores to assist the newly busy women.”
Supported
by grants and training from CIS and a variety of other NGOs, the collective is
now opening up a new building, and the celebration is so large and boisterous that
I can barely hear Delmy’s responses to my questions. Which, depending on how
you think about it, may be the best response of all.
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| Legendary English School Volunteer Anne listening the cooperative |
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| One of the Small Businesses's for Woman: A chicken coop |
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| Volunteers are all smiles |
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| Spanish Student with a group of kids |
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| Preparing the coffee at the Vivaz cooperative |
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| Sharing a meal |
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| Teacher and student-at CIS everybody teaches and everyone learns! |
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| Making pastries is an exact science |
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| Students and volunteers attentively listen to the woman |
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| Showing off the beautiful work of the woman: an indigo scarf |
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| Ready to cut the ribbon |
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| Celebrating |
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| Shaping the delicious pastries |
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| Enjoying the time in the countryside |
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| The fruits of their labor |
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| Spanish teacher leading the way |
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| un beso |
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| Staff enjoys the outing |
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| Walking through the campo |
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| The Bakery |
All of these topics
are prepared with a methodology that allows us to take a step back and examine
how we are doing currently. It is done
in a way that each participant reflects on the topic from his/her reality. We are going to look deeper into our groups
in the communities. Our orientation is
that, as leaders, we should be actors and not spectators. Change should first come from us. 
After the first
workshop on power, the leaders reproduced the workshop in five different municipalities. Some of the comment that emerged was many
people saw power as just being something from above that politicians have. One woman said, “I had never heard people
talk about power from below. The ability
that each an every one of us have…now I feel more important.” On the topic of leadership one youth said “I
see myself as a paternalistic leader. I
thought I was doing things the right way, but now I realized I have to change
my attitude about my leadership.”
Another man said, “in leadership, honesty is very important.”
