On Food Day from Caroline

Finca Magdalena

Each semester the Traveling School class dedicates one day to an interdisciplinary study of a major issue shaping the part of the world in which we are traveling. In other words, we look at an important regional/global topic from a variety of angles. On TTS21, the girls examined the issue of Food in Central America. Finca Magdalena (http://www.fincamagdalena.com/) on Isla Ometepe, a volcanic island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, provided the perfect setting to celebrate Food Day. The finca is a community run coffee cooperative that sells their beans to fair trade buyers in the United States and Canada. After Somoza was ousted by the Sandinista Revolution in the late 1970s, the Marxist leaders of the new government of Nicaragua nationalized lands previously held by Somoza and other wealthy land owners and redistributed them to campesinos (regular folk living in rural areas). Finca Magdalena was a result of this land reform effort.  Ferdinando, who we met on the Finca, has been working among the coffee plants since he was 10 years old and had fought in the revolution and seen the finca change from a privately owned plantation to a community owned and operated finca. He spoke to us about the issues facing the finca today and the difficulty the cooperative is facing in making enough money to support its members. Most farmers in the cooperative have outside sources of income to supplement what they make from the coffee they grow on the finca. The roots of issues such as the ones facing the members of Finca Magdalena are what we try to dig up during Food Day.

The day began with Ruth's presentation on the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita Banana).  She did a phenomenal job exploring the effects that mega corporation has had on the history and politics of Guatemala, including inciting civil war. Additionally, Ruth led us through the conditions banana workers face in packing houses and in the fields today, and how these problems are being addressed through banana workers' unions. The Advanced Spanish students (Annalise, Anna, Kat, and Mimi) presented current event articles from publications written in Spanish about issues around food in Central America. Emelia told us about small farmers in Florida who are having trouble competing with produce grown in Mexico and sold cheaply in the US. Anna explored a fungus attacking coffee plants throughout Central America. Later in the day, Felix, the finca boss, told us how the farmers at Finca Magdalena combat that fungus without pesticides using garlic and onions. The science class got into a heated debate about the necessity and safety of genetically modified foods. Ruth, Maggie, and Mikaela argued against Genetically Modified (GM) foods while Ava, Abby and Eliza led a spirited attack in favor of them. At one point, Jen, our moderator, had to silence both the debaters and the audience as we all competed to make a point or ask a question. We came to the conclusion Abby should be a lobbyist. Kat translated for our guest speaker Felix, the jefe (head/chief) of Finca Magdalena. She did an admirable job translating difficult economic and agricultural ideas to the group. Felix, quiet and unassuming, patiently explained the history of the finca and some challenges facing coffee farmers today, as well as answering innumerable questions from the science girls eager to gather information for their research papers.

After lunch, we staged a round-table discussion in which the girls discussed the pros and cons of NAFTA/CAFTA (North American/Central America Free Trade Agreement). Each student was given a role representing a person in the US, Mexico or Central America affected differently by NAFTA/CAFTA. Eliza was a wealthy Mexican farmer in favor of NAFTA; Abby was a lobbyist on behalf of major corporations benefitting from NAFTA/CAFTA policies; Ava was a worker at a jeans factory in the US who felt her job was compromised by US manufacturing moving to Mexico and Central America where labor is cheaper and regulations fewer; Miki was a worker in a garment factory in a free trade zone in Nicaragua. In their roles, the girls debated and discussed the pros and cons of Neo-Liberal economic policies like NAFTA/CAFTA and explored how these policies were issues of class and race in addition to issues of economic theory and policy. Finally, we looked at NAFTA/CAFTA's effects on immigration and discussed questions of nationhood, citizenry, and national identity.  Although the girls' (and their teachers’) heads were virtually exploding as the day came to a close, we were proud of the different ideas and opinions we had shared with each other and of the new understanding we had come to about FOOD.

Throughout the day, the girls kept track of the ideas and issues we explored and thought critically about how those ideas connected to each other by creating a web. We drew the word “food” in a box in the middle of a giant piece of paper taped to the wall. The girls then drew lines coming off the word in order facilitate their understanding of the different factors affecting the production of and access to food in Central American and how the issues connect to each other. By the end of the day, the web was a mess of bubbles and a tangle of lines. The next morning we took a moment to reflect on the previous day. We used the phrases, words, and ideas expressed on our web to write “found poems” - the web became the inspiration for poetry. After sharing our poetry with each other, each girl contributed her favorite line from her own poem to compile a group poem. The girls' poem is called “11 Borderless Girls” - in it they declare they are no longer a “mono-culture of minds”. 

Here is the found poem the girls wrote as a class:

Eleven Borderless Girls

Everything has a place where it started, in the ground, near the roots Capitalism makes food a commodity, but why can't people just eat?

Ethics and morals versus human starvation Goods move freely, unfettered, between borders Free Trade is a carnivore, a dog on the leash of politics Giant capitalist companies swarm developing nations, flies to a rotting piece of meat Conniving arms stretch and grow, connecting our globe There is a fungus among us and our small farmer says just spray it with lime.

Trickle down lies, realities

It's a race to the bottom out there.

Our heavy word soak into the dirt, nutrients for what we grow.

We are not a monoculture of minds anymore. Global citizens, 11 Borderless girls.

--Ruth, Mikaela, Ava, Annalise, Anna, Simone, Eliza, Maggie, Emelia, Kathryn, and Abby