finca la florida

Thursday morning we got up late, bought mangos, made oatmeal, packed, got a taxi and took a bus to Colomba, 2h outside Xela. I was in charge of transportation and had been speaking with Esteban, the head of the ecotourism project of La Florida, for directions. In the bus to Colomba, we met a man who lived in San Marcos (not the lake, but the department), where there is a huge mine exploited by a Canadian company called Goldcorp that has caused hundreds of health, environmental, water, land, and human rights issues within the communities near the mine. He told us Guatemala has a lot of gold and minerals but doesn't have the resources, the equipment, to exploit their riches, so foreign companies come and do it, giving 1 to 2 % of their profit to the Guatemalan government while devastating communities. We also met a Peace Corps volunteer who was in her 10th month of service working in health for a community school project in San Miguel. We asked her about her experience working and volunteering with a cultural divide: she said some people want you there and are excited about your project and your presence, but others hate you, hate what you represent, don't think you're helping, and just want you to go back from whence you came. She advised for us to be prepared for such attitude from some people and to just learn to deal with it and limit our interactions with those persons. She also said most things move slowly and it's especially frustrating when women ask their husband's permission for anything, so she's learned a lot of patience. I wonder what cultural barriers I'll have to overcome and what obstacles are going to dot the way during my internship.
We got to Colomba and switched buses to El Paraiso, which means paradise. And indeed when we got there, it felt like a paradisiac place, with a perfect climate, wonderful smells, lush green and tropical birds. Esteban's son Gilmer came to walk us to the finca, a 45 minute walk from the bus stop. He was very friendly and talkative, and told us about the farm, what they grow and how they function. Here is their site, it's very informative and interesting, their story is incredible: fincalaflorida.org. I strongly encourage you to read their history, project, and general information. I had visited a finca with a my first Dragons trip in Guatemala, Finca Ixobel, but this finca was an entirely different world.
We got to the Casa Grande, the old farm house, which is the hospedaje, the inn, and met Rosaura, our host, and the Esteban's wife. The house has many dilapidated rooms. It smells like camp, that old wood renfermé scent that sparks your excitement and never fails to make me smile. Random huge doors lead into former kitchens or cafeterias that are now filled with wood for building and other types of storage. Wooden planks make up floor, ceilings, and stairs, and are creaky and rickety, half eaten or hanging loose. Bats have settled in one of the upstairs rooms. We slept on the upper level, our rooms giving onto a deck with a cute balustrade and a gorgeous view, overlooking the tree tops far into the horizon. The house reminded me of an old southern plantation house, with thin wood columns supporting it, white and green peeling paint, and straw mattresses completing the feel. We were the only visitors there. 
What I liked most about our stay was that we got to eat our meals with different families from the community. For our first day, we had lunch and dinner at Dona Dominga's. She told us some of her story while cooking. She is originally from Huehuetenango and was orphaned at age 15, along with her 3 younger siblings, the youngest one was 2 years old. Her parents died 1 year apart, in 1990, in the heat of the war. Although she didn't say, the closeness of her parents' deaths, the date at which they died, and the fact that she's from Huehue makes me think that they died fighting or helping the guerrilla, but one can only guess. She and her siblings went to work on a farm near Colomba where they had relatives, and Dominga and her sister got married. Her sister now lives in the capital and seems to be relatively successful, the older brother now lives in the country probably in a farm somewhere or even in La Florida, and the youngest brother they haven't heard from in years, since he was 15. They don't know if he's alive or dead and the last they heard from him was that he wanted to move to Honduras because he wanted to get away from Guatemala, where he felt he had no connection because he has no parents. She pointed out that 5 years ago, phones didn't exist here so they couldn't keep in touch. In La Florida they barely have electricity too - they get more or less depending on how much it rained that day, but light bulbs are very weak and most people use candles. We cooked with her at dinner and had the best tipico ever. We spoke to 2 of her 6 daughters too: one is 15 and the other 19 but they are in the same grade (8th). They work in the fields and in their own beehive and go to school every monday, a 45 minute walk one way. The community just built an elementary school and their vision is to build a secondary school too, because many kids end up working instead of going to school because of the impracticality of the location. They thanked us profusely for being there, saying it meant alot to them to share with people from outside and to have visitors. 
During the day, we met with Anastasio Diaz, the man in charge of the apiario, the beehive project. He brought us there, explained bee activity and showed us the bees in action, and showed us the honey making process, from bee to bottle. He also explained to us how the finca works. A junta directiva, or board of directors, appoints commissions of people to direct different divisions of the community (like health, education, women, etc) and give people trainings and workshops to do certain jobs, from working in the coffee fields to the beehive to being health promoters. People don't choose their job but if they don't like it they can ask to change. Everyone gets paid 30 quetzales per day, men and women alike as gender equality is a priority value at La Florida. The 40 or so poor landless families joined together to occupy and claim La Florida because it was state owned and on sale after its mismanagement by its owners led it to be withheld by Bancafe, the national bank. Before, these families worked in different fincas around Colomba and Quetzaltenango, had no land of their own, and earned 10 quetzales a day, or a 1.2 dollars more or less. Today they earn a little less than 4 dollars a day and they still live in dire condition - they barely have any electricity and their shelters are made of rusty tin sheets and wood - but as they say, at least they have land. Whenever the finca sells their product in Xela, the money goes to the community fund in their office and the profit goes to financing and maintaining their projects.  The eco tourism project is pretty recent and has brought alot of benefits to the farm and the families, providing them with volunteers and money, and to the women, who value themselves more now and have gained in confidence. 
Anastasio was such a sweet little old man who was so proud to show us his work and enthusiastic about our interest. When we got back to the casa grande, a man was working with bamboo on the porch. He was making wind chimes and showed us the tables and chairs he had made. He learne from a worshop given by an NGO and now he teaches others. He showed us that if you burn bamboo, the green color turns into a beige brown, draining the water and making it a lot stronger. 
On Friday morning we had breakfast at Emiliana's and took a long walk with her to the coffee plants, the macadamia and banana trees, while she showed us medicinal plants along the way. Everything smelled so amazing, the contrast between the air in Xela and the finca was astounding. Emiliana was carrying her 6 month old baby on her back the whole time. We had lunch and dinner at Mariatelga's, she's a madre soltera, or single mom, of 6 kids, and is a health promoter within the community. It was such a unique opportunity to spend time with these people, they were so sweet, open, talkative, and genuinely happy to share their lives with us, an attitude toward foreigners that is generally not so easy to find in campesino Guatemala. It was really nice to visit this farm before settling into the urban life, and I'm always wowed by how much I learn from Guatemala every time I am here.