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SPECIAL REPORTS -
Sunday 03 January 2010 |
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COLOMBIA:
Women Empowered by Restoring Desertified
Land
By Helda Martínez
NATAGAIMA, Colombia (IPS) - Indigenous
and rural women from southern Tolima, a
province located in the heart of Colombia,
are lending a hand to the bleak land around
them, with the aim of simultaneously
recovering the ecosystem and regaining their
own dignity, in a community effort that is
changing their environment and their lives.
Manos de Mujer (Women's Hands) is the name
of the non-governmental organisation working
since 2001 in Natagaima, a town some 100
kilometres south of the provincial capital,
Ibagué. Nine hundred women of the Pijao
native community plant ecosystem-friendly
seeds to grow natural crops without the use
of agrochemicals.
"Nine years ago, the land all around my plot
was a yellowish colour. There were only one
or two lonely trees," Claudina Loaiza, who
has been part of the projects since its
onset, told IPS.
The project extends over 56 rural villages,
townships and Pijao reservations, which make
up six municipalities, and has its central
office in Natagaima, 225 kilometres from
Bogotá.
The area known as the Pijao region is home
to this native group, who used to be spread
out in different parts of the country but
whose numbers have dwindled. The population
is not purely indigenous, though, as there
are also many white and mestizo (mixed-race)
people. In fact, only a portion of the rural
women in the project are Amerindian.
The territory borders with the Tatacoa, a
desert that is encroaching on the region,
having already swallowed up a once huge
tropical forest. It is this forest ecosystem
that Manos de Mujer is working hard to
regenerate through a number of actions, with
the aim of pushing back the advancing
desertification.
"When I left the father of my children,
because of his drinking and cheating, I
began planting my own fruit and vegetable
garden in my yard; this was something I
really wanted," Loaiza said, her eyes
shining as she introduced her daughter and
niece, who work the land with her.
"I'm the kind of woman who'd rather be alone
than have a bad man by her side," she said,
before going on to describe how she fenced
off her one-hectare garden with 144 metres
of wire netting.
"I felt, and I still feel, so proud, because
we were planting beans, watermelon,
plantain, cassava, corn, green vegetables
and all sorts of things, without using any
weed killers or chemicals, just what we
prepared for fertilising and replenishing
the soil," she explained.
"In the summer (the tropical dry season),
water was rationed, so I'd water each plant
a little bit at a time, and that's how I
grew these beautiful melons," she said,
before specifying to this IPS reporter that
she wanted to be described as an indigenous
peasant woman.
Enthusiastically she explained how she
worked the land using natural techniques,
learning, for example, to use cattle dung as
fertiliser and cassava and plantain leaves
to maintain moisture.
"We used the hoe to check that the soil was
humid before spreading the organic
fertiliser…We also found that if there was
garbage on the ground, the soil would stay
dry even if it rained," recalled Loaiza,
just one of the 1,100 peasant women involved
in the changes in the land and agricultural
production brought about by Manos de Mujer.
The man behind the women
Natagaima is also home to Javier Múnera, an
economist who manages and organises
activities in Manos de Mujer. Despite his
profession he prefers to be known simply as
an activist.
Múnera originally came to the area in 1998,
for an aqueduct project in Coyaima, during a
period of drought caused by the El Niño
climate phenomenon.
The project was financed by the
Americas-Spain Solidarity and Cooperation
Organisation (AESCO), an NGO headed by
Yolanda Villavicencio, a
Colombian-Ecuadorian woman with relatives
who came from the area.
Aware of the potable water shortage in the
area, Villavicencio used her Spanish
citizenship, which she obtained in 1994, to
raise funds to build an aqueduct. As of
2008, she also holds a seat in the Spanish
parliament, representing Madrid.
Through Villavicencio's and Múnera's efforts
the aqueduct was built without using up all
the resources. Some 10,500 dollars were left
over, which were "turned into wages for 400
families," the activist said in an interview
with IPS.
That project was the seed that blossomed
into Manos de Mujer, which was built on the
conviction that it is vital to halt the
erosion coming from Tatacoa, in the southern
province of Huila bordering with Tolima.
"A human-made desert. For the past 5,000
years it was a tropical dry forest, with
trees standing as high as 15 metres," Múnera
said.
"Tatacoa is not really a desert. It's a very
dry area of xerophytes (plants that survive
with little water or moisture), which is
undergoing a very fast process of erosion
with large rill (small gully) systems," he
said.
After the Spanish conquest, the Jesuits
brought in cattle and established ranches
throughout the region. "There's no greater
predator than cattle ranchers, who push
settlers from outside the region deep into
the forest," said Múnera, who has worked on
the issue in the province of Caquetá, in the
country's southeast Amazon region.
For that reason, he insists on raising
awareness on the danger posed by the area
immediately adjacent to the Tatacoa Desert,
which extends over 330 sq. km. and is
advancing at an annual rate of 1.5 percent.
Múnera dreams of a future in which "the
forest will be returned to this desertified
cattle land," although he feels that very
little has been achieved in almost a decade
of work.
"We planted some 600,000 trees but with
Mario Mejía (an environmentalist) we figured
we need 16 million to stop the desert from
advancing from southern Natagaima, Guamo in
the north, Coyaima, Ortega, southern
Chaparral, western Alpujarra, Dolores, Prado
and Purificación," Múnera said.
But in Natagaima, the women involved in the
project are not discouraged by these 'minor'
achievements. Because what's important for
them is the knowledge they've gained and the
real improvements their efforts have brought
to their environment and lives. On the day
that IPS followed a group of these women as
they performed their daily tasks, they
couldn't stop talking about all they've
learned about agriculture and ecology.
Even so, problems do exist. The gardens
range in size from a quarter of a hectare to
half a hectare or a full hectare, which
means that a lot of work has to be put into
obtaining a good yield from a small plot.
Meanwhile the government has practically
left these women on their own, and there's
no indication that that's going to change.
When considering results that go beyond
production yields, Múnera spoke
nostalgically of Aracelly Botache, one of
the project's pioneers, a born-leader who
has since passed away. Not long after the
crops began to thrive, Botache told Múnera:
"The weather has changed here." She sounded
very convinced of what she was saying.
And it was true. By planting trees they had
brought the temperature down, in a region
where it ranges from 30 to 40 degrees C.
Environmental improvements are not the only
good thing to come out of the initiative:
women have also been empowered by their
work.
"There are some very difficult situations,"
Múnera said, citing cases like that of "a
woman who told us how her husband would beat
her every Saturday after drinking chicha,"
an indigenous alcoholic beverage made from
fermented corn.
"She told us how with her husband's first
drink, she could already feel the pain of
the blows she would receive later. Until,
one day, when she was a member of Manos de
Mujer, she said to herself: 'who's stronger?
Him drunk or me sober?'" Múnera recalled.
"So she stood up to him and he never laid a
hand on her again. Women feel empowered by
the confidence they gain going out to work
in their crops, working on their own,
knowing they can be self-sufficient. And
that's probably the best thing about this
project," he reflected.
Manos de Mujer currently operates with
funding from two international Catholic
development agencies: the Ireland-based
Trócaire, and the Catholic Agency for
Overseas Development (CAFOD), based in
England and Wales.
In Colombia it receives support from state
institutions such as the Autonomous
Corporation of Tolima, the Agricultural
Research Corporation and the regional
university, but only for specific issues.
This support is limited to "knowledge
sharing: they contribute their academic
knowledge, and we share our experience and
the wisdom acquired by the people," Múnera
said.
As part of the project, workshops are held
every 15 days or so, with participants
working with and discussing audiovisual
material on a range of subjects, including
soil composition, water cycles, nitrogen,
phosphorous, carbon, agro-ecology and
environmental education.
The training encourages women involved in
Manos de Mujer, like Elcy Lozano, to dream
big.
Lozano, who has been in the project for five
years, told IPS that her dream is to "Make
people aware. What we want to do is build.
Not destroy. That's what I long for every
day. Because cattle ranching expands the
desert, and is causing a lot of damage. We
need to stop it, and revitalise the region
instead," she said emphatically.
Her complaints were focused on the almost
non-existent support they receive from the
government, which doesn't even collect the
garbage in the area regularly. "So, it's bad
if we burn it, but if it piles up it ends up
in the rivers," she lamented. "But we don't
even think of giving up. All we have to do
is look around us and remember what it was
like before," she said as her face lit up
with a smile |
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