El Salvador – The town square is adorned with brightly painted flowers intricately shaped from corn husks, I am munching on a tortilla, and in front of the church, a Queen of Corn is about to be crowned: together with the 2,000 residents of San Antonio Los Ranchos, I am celebrating their Second Annual Festival of Corn.
Here in the North of El Salvador, where 80% of the population lives in rural poverty, corn is indeed a crop to celebrate. Along with beans, corn is the staple of the Salvadoran diet, and expressed in various dishes, including tamales, tortillas, and, or course, the national favourite, pupusas – a stuffed tortilla filled with beans or cheese and served with a spicy cabbage relish. In Los Ranchos, artisans deftly weave corn husk flowers, dolls, and even Christmas ornaments for sale in the neighbouring city of Chalate. For the festival, this type of craft has been elevated to a high art, as the four potential ´queens´ display elaborate, 100% corn-husk dresses, complete with evening bags and hats. ´Corn is the source of life for our community´ comments Ana Lilia Guardado, one of the candidates, and faced with such abundance, I have to agree.
Yet this celebration of agricultural life is darkened by a growing awareness that the global economy is encroaching upon the subsistence-farming practiced by rural communities in El Salvador. The effects of structural adjustment programs encouraged by the IMF and the World Bank and avidly pursued by the Salvadoran government since 1989 have resulted in a weakening of the agricultural sector and corresponding growth in the import industry. Staff at CRIPDES, a national NGO working to support rural communities throughout El Salvador, report that between 1992 and 2002, there was a % drop in the production of basic grains, while importations of that same period increased %. While this shift has resulted in profits for large, mostly US-owned import companies, for small scale farmers, it spells disaster. As prices for basic crops such as beans and corn drop in the local market, more and more farmers are leaving their communities to work in large factories in the city, or, more frequently, to work in the service economy in the U.S.
Under the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), the massive free trade agreement currently being negotiated by Canada & the US with all of the Central and South American countries, CRIPDES staff predict the situation will only get worse. As Salvadoran workers abroad send remittances home to their families, farmers will no longer produce beans and corn, but instead will buy imported products manufactured in the US. The cruel joke for Salvadorans is that under free trade agreements, import companies are not required to invest any of their profits in the Salvadoran economy, but rather are permitted to reinvest profits back into the US. As one farmer commented in an educational workshop held by CRIPDES, ‘Under this agreement, El Salvador won`t be selling products in the global market, we`ll be selling people.’
Back in Los Ranchos, the women of the cooperative ACOPROARTE are hoping to mitigate some of these impacts by accessing fair trade markets in Canada and the US. Through the sale of embroidered clothing and the ever innovative corn-husk products, women in the cooperative are able to send their children to school, contribute to their communities, and buy small pleasures such as sugar, salt, and milk. ´Without the work the cooperative provides, I wouldn´t be able to survive´ says Olympia, who supports a household of seven. While orders have dropped off for the cooperative in the past few years, the Marquis Project is hoping to change that by developing a more longer term trading relationship with the cooperative and bringing fairly traded crafts to their Brandon store, Worldly Goods. Over the holiday season, the store is carrying corn-husk angels produced by the Los Ranchos group. ´Through our work as artisans, we have been able to remain in Los Ranchos for over 12 years,’ shares Haydee Hercules, cooperative vice president. ´What we now need from the international community are markets for our products.´ |
