Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Feeding Children, Communities, and Souls

2018; Duke University Press; Volume: 33; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/08879982-6817913

2164-0041

Pamela S. Haines,

Latin American and Latino Studies

Eight-year-old Stefano Castro, born in Mexico, was eager to tell his mother about his recent farm trip:First I saw Fidel and his friends dancing to bless the land. To start the dance, they blew into a shell and made a fire in a bowl. The dancers have a lot of things to put on, like white robes with sashes. . . . I have seen clothes like that in Mexico. Next I helped plant some seeds. It’s a lot of work.At the greenhouse, my friend Andrew showed me how to harvest the lettuce. I helped by picking a lot of leaves. There were about 800 million plants in there. It was the most fun thing I ever did.The next day I helped him load the salad on a truck so he can drive it to the school. It was heavy and cold. Now when I eat salad at school I remember all the people and the work that goes into making it, and it tasted really good too.How did a handful of Quakers’ concern about militarism grow into this program that now provides fresh organic produce to more than half of New Mexico’s school children? Through the story run strands of deep listening, respect for native spirituality, and a vision of an economy and a land that nurtures the community’s well-being.It started in the early 1970s, when Quakers from New Mexico approached the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) headquarters in Philadelphia to explore the possibility of developing a program in northern New Mexico. A leading concern was militarization and the military economy connected to Air Force bases and weapons laboratories, including Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, where the atomic bomb was designed and manufactured. New Mexico had been annexed to the United States following the war with Mexico less than a century before the Second World War, and Friends (AFSC members) were seeking a means by which to counter a social order based on organized violence.Following its normal practice, the AFSC sent out a small team to consult widely with Friends and members of local communities in the northern Rio Grande region of the state. Over and over again, they heard concern from the community, not about militarism but about land and water rights. The result of these listening sessions was a decision to set up a program in support of traditional communities, whose titles to land, water, and common natural resources had been expropriated by the federal government and unscrupulous private interests. The people of these communities, largely Hispanic and Native, had lost access to the resource base that had enabled them to preserve their culture and lifeways; many had been reduced to finding occupations in the armed forces, representing the political authority that had taken their land.The AFSC recognized that, while there were other organizations resisting militarism in the area, the more pressing need to which they could respond was for economic alternatives to military employment, and that success in this area required a greater capacity to regain lost land and water rights.The pueblos of this area have a water system that dates back to before the Spanish arrived in 1540, built around communally managed irrigation ditches called acequias. The Spanish settlers brought additional irrigation technology developed in North Africa with them to New Mexico, and the two approaches combined to form the regional systems that have provided water to agricultural communities for the last 400 years. Both Pueblo communities and Spanish colonial settlements had access to land and natural resources confirmed by the Spanish Crown and the Republic of Mexico, an arrangement that was challenged by the United States’ annexation of northern New Mexico following the defeat of Mexico in 1848. With water becoming an ever more valuable and contested resource, defending this traditionally shared system was pivotal in protecting traditional water rights.The AFSC heard the underlying spiritual principle, that the water belongs to the earth and the earth belongs to God, and they followed the community’s lead. In 2002, after working for 25 years to protect land-grant communities and empower regional acequia associations to advocate for historic water rights, the AFSC program in New Mexico turned its attention toward the land. How might traditional land-use systems and values best be supported in the 21st century?AFSC began supporting sustainable agriculture practices, already so deeply embedded in the culture, by training new farmers and developing cooperative marketing systems. They piloted a farmer-to-farmer training program in Albuquerque and incubated a now flourishing farmer co-operative, the Agri-Cultura Network. ACN began selling produce to the Albuquerque public schools and soon spun off as an independent co-op.In 2012, this farmer-to-farmer training program expanded into northern and southern New Mexico, resulting in scores of new farmers, technical support for over a hundred small farms, and two more farmer cooperatives. Several critical needs are being addressed in this process. Many older people in some of these communities are no longer able to work the land. If it’s not in use for three years, however, they lose the water rights. At the other end of the age spectrum are young people who need work in this region of high unemployment.To secure land and water rights and ongoing employment requires stable markets for farm produce. So the project advocated for the state to fund public schools to purchase from local farmers. This resulted in school districts receiving thousands of dollars to pay for school lunch ingredients from local farms—which predominantly benefit low-income children like Stefano on the free or reduced school lunch program.The goal is a self-sustaining system, which involves developing not only farming skills but also skills in running cooperatives and marketing. While AFSC staff provides training for running a farmers’ cooperative, early in the program, the practice of setting aside a small percentage of profits to be plowed back into the cooperative to cover costs is introduced, so that within three years the co-op can be self-sustaining.It’s a classic win-win situation. With contracts with the two largest school districts in the state (Albuquerque and Las Cruces), as well as some smaller ones, the program now serves more than 30,000 children. Some farms are serving schools less than a mile from where the food is grown. At the same time, small family farmers have a strong and stable market for their produce, and they are able to both secure a livelihood and protect their traditional land and water rights. As Don Bustos, former director of the AFSC project, says, “We see this as a real positive way to keep our water intact, keep our land in healthy use, feed our kids in the same way, and put enough money in our pockets to pay the bills.”Don Bustos explains that the cooperative model helps small farmers build their economic power without getting caught in the traps of competitive capitalism. “We teach people how to grow food in a way that’s all replicable. So the same people that are growing the lettuce greens here in Las Cruces, the people that are working in Albuquerque are growing the same salad greens, using the same methods, same harvesting techniques as in Española and other areas, so that they can aggregate their product together to meet the large demand of an institutional buyer. We’re trying to say, ‘Let’s work together to create the market and the market needs to fit our demands. So instead of Yvonne trying to undercut Manny selling her lettuce, let’s work together, let’s plant the same things; here’s what it costs to make a living, here’s what you need to pay us.’ So it’s changing that paradigm of market strategy in capitalism: ‘Let’s work together as a unit, as a community, and let’s get what we need to make a living for ourselves.’ ”This work is starting to change the economic landscape of the area, as it shifts the locus of food production away from agribusiness and toward local communities, and moves distribution and marketing infrastructures away from corporate models and toward cooperative control, while leveraging public funds to help create markets for local produce in a way that meets pressing human needs. Thus, a network of cooperative enterprises, founded on community empowerment and individual transformation, is building up the soil from which a completely reimagined economy can grow. These fundamental shifts in economic dynamics, already transformative on a small scale, contain the seeds of a very different world.This story, however, is not just about economics and cannot be fully explained or understood without attention to the spiritual foundation. The values run much deeper than a belief in organic farming or cooperative enterprise. Stefano caught a glimpse of this in the traditional prayers and dances that came before the planting.In much of New Mexico, agriculture is culture, and culture is rooted in spiritual practice. The program is based in this reality, but it can be hard to talk about. Many religious traditions around farming are intentionally unrecorded, since putting a sacred act into written words risks taking the spirit out of the practice. Sayrah Namaste, current program director, speaks with feeling of this truth, saying there’s no way to capture in words what some of the prayers, or the spirit that accompanies them, feel like. These are things that are sacred.A practice she does feel comfortable talking about, one that has stayed with the people of New Mexico for 400 years, is the celebration of San Ysidro, the patron saint of farmers. The legend of San Ysidro has been told for centuries throughout Spanish-speaking countries. Ysidro and his wife, Maria de la Cabeza, were poor farm laborers to a wealthy landowner in Spain around the year 1100. Humble and devout, they went to Mass every morning before work. Yet despite the lost hours of labor, their fields were as well cared for as those of other laborers. This created envy among the others, who complained to the wealthy landowner that Ysidro and Maria spent too much time praying. The landowner checked on them, and found that while Ysidro and Maria were praying at Mass, an angel was plowing their fields for them.Many miracles are associated with Ysidro and Maria, especially miracles associated with water, since water is so important in this dry land. Every May 15th, the feast day of San Ysidro and Santa Maria de la Cabeza is celebrated. Though it comes from Spain, it has been adapted by indigenous people. Every village honors it, everybody comes out, and the AFSC project has been active in support of the tradition.Each feast day a farming family is given a statue of San Ysidro to take care of for the year. They decorate it with flowers, keep it on their farm, then pass it on with a basket of fruit and flowers the next year to a new family that has been selected by the community. Farmers come together in a procession along the acequias. They throw in flower petals so that the petals float along with the walkers. The walking is their prayer as the community blesses the fields and the water.There’s an order to who walks—Catholic deacons, laypeople, nuns, indigenous folks. Azteca dancers in full regalia lead the procession and pray with their dance. There are Catholic songs, indigenous songs, prayers in people’s native languages that were never written down, all about blessings and respect for water. Eight years ago, Sayrah remembers, they realized that there was only one person in the clan who knew one of the prayers by heart. They had to call this woman so they could learn it and keep the tradition alive. At the end, there is a traditional home-made feast, and everybody sits and eats together. Then the Azteca dancers close with a dance to the four directions.Sayrah emphasizes how this is not just a Catholic tradition. Although indigenous groups were forced by conquistadores to take on the Catholic religion, over time they incorporated many of the forms into their spirituality. Catholics will dip a branch from a juniper or piñon tree in the water of the acequia and bless the people with it. Indigenous people say the water is blessing us. This public blend of indigenous and Catholic traditions on San Ysidro Day is unusual, and it is lovely to witness the mutual respect for each other’s religious beliefs.Sayrah goes on to recite the very simple prayer that most New Mexicans, regardless of where they are from, say before they plant. Taking four seeds, they say in Spanish:“This seed is for myself and my family, this seed is for my neighbor, this seed is for the animals, this seed is for the thief.” They recognize that wildlife has rights, and that there will always be people who will take your food without asking. Rather than claiming ownership, they recognize that they are planting for everyone, and that if someone is stealing food, they must really need it.She recalls a time when the AFSC program was housed in the basement of the Quaker meetinghouse in Albuquerque. It was 2008 and times were hard. In exchange for having the rent waived, they planted a garden. One day, they went out in the garden and found a man with a bag picking vegetables. He panicked on being caught, but they said he could take what he needed. That was what it was for. Even the sign said, “This is a Friends garden.” He came back the next year and said he had been unemployed, and that the garden had fed him. You plant for the thief. It’s a spirituality not of individualism, but of community.Being respectful of spiritual and cultural traditions means that starting in a new community can be a slow process. “We have spent a year getting to know the people at the Jemez Pueblo, listening, learning about the relationships, getting a fuller understanding of the cultural values and traditions at their Pueblo,” recounts Sayrah.This attention to culture and spirituality resonates with project participants. A young woman from the AFSC training farm in southern New Mexico reflects on the impact of visiting her father’s family in Mexico: “I always had the dream of coming back home and having my own piece of land like I saw in the pueblitos, growing your own food, sustaining yourself and your family.” After three years on the AFSC training site, she thinks of all the things she’s learned and the people she’s met, “other farmers from across the world who are doing exactly what I’m doing, trying to create an alternative to the industrial food system, and trying to feel the connection with those people.”Another farmer trainee comments, “To be honest, in my mind, I don’t see it as training. I see it as my work. I consider myself already a farmer even though I just barely began, but I’m so invested into it I feel like I’m a big part of the farm. When I barely began, I was super tired when I got back home, but now I feel more energized. After I just rest for a little bit after work, I feel as if I can just go and go and go.”Don Bustos, whose family has farmed the same land for 400 years, markets more than 72 varieties of crops, including berries, tomatoes, squash, peppers, and greens year-round. “We wanted the ability to retain our land for future generations and not have to develop it into houses,” he said. “We wanted to stay close to what we’ve done. Preserving our land ties into the spirituality of how we grew up.”Over the years, the project has developed the capacity and flexibility to help meet the land and food needs of different communities in a variety of ways. In some communities, the farmers are already masters in traditional farming. They know all about the three sisters, where the maiz stalks provide a structure for the frijoles plants to climb up, the frijoles provide nitrogen to the soil for the maiz and calabaza to use, and the calabaza leaves provide shade, which discourages weeds and helps retain moisture in the soil. Instead, they are interested in learning about the potential of passive solar cold frames and hoop houses to extend their growing season, and about high-value market crops like greens, berries and asparagus that can be grown along with their traditional crops.One native tribe requested AFSC’s assistance but did not want to be involved with the market economy at all. They have a large community of elders for whom they wanted to provide fresh, healthy vegetables, and a community of youth who are learning to farm. They asked AFSC to help them obtain a large passive solar hoop house that would permit year-round food production. AFSC found a donor to purchase the materials and then trained a group of youth from the tribe to construct it. The beds were raised high enough that the older people could have access to them. Thus, the youth gained construction and farming skills and elders got good, nutritious food without any money changing hands.A project partnership in the border region of Anthony gives incarcerated youth a second chance. The Mexican women in the southern border region of Chaparral knew how to farm but needed access to land and the skills to develop a cooperative structure to better market their produce. At another community near the border, after an initial period of training, the clear need that emerged was for cold storage so their harvest could stay fresh till it got to market.The AFSC has helped to knit these projects together and provide the infrastructure to make them sustainable. Staff have helped the farm cooperatives negotiate initial contracts with the school districts and worked to create a network of cooperatives across New Mexico. With very different growing seasons in the north, center, and south of the state, by working together the co-ops can complement each other’s efforts and provide a broader range of foods throughout the year. As the co-op members learn these aspects of the business, the AFSC is steadily working itself out of a job.The questions around which they based their programs are simple, and can be asked anywhere. How are the folks who are closest to the land doing, and what do they need? What are the good, healthy ingredients in a local place (culture, water, soil, farming traditions, community connections) and how can they be built on? Where do people’s skills, experience and longing for a life of meaning meet their community’s need?Though they are simple, taking these questions seriously can have far-reaching implications. Centering our activities around them requires big shifts in power, strategic priorities, accountability, and guiding values systems. Stefano talks about helping to plant seeds. He is excited to simply grow lettuce. But the seeds of something much bigger have been planted here.What might they grow into? We don’t yet know in full. But as we claim the necessity of connection to land and place, as we call on the wisdom that underlies and transcends different religious traditions, as we build an economy that centers around community well-being, as we relocate power from outside systems and institutions to the living relationships in our midst, both with each other and with the earth, we are planting the seeds of change, seeds of transformation of the whole economy.