Esmeralda Solarte
Leading
the community
 Esmeralda Solarte lives at the Quizgó Indigenous Reservation, situated in
the Municipality of Silvia, Cauca, southwestern Colombia. This 28-year-old housewife and
mother has already spent 10 years of her life in community work. For the last 4 years, she
has played an important role as coordinator of the Committee for Local Agricultural
Research (CIAL, its Spanish acronym) and of a nongovernmental organization, the Foundation
for Popular Communication (FUNCOP).
When a
technician explained the CIAL methodology, the concept appealed to Esmeralda so much that
she was motivated to coordinate a group of 15 women, with whom she still works. "The
work basically consists of organizing the women and deciding what commodity to study. We
began with 7 maize varieties, taken from another municipality with a warm climate-Silvia
has a cold climate-and the idea was to find maize varieties with quicker growth and higher
production. We've been going ever since," she says.
The group is also working with quinoa, using 6 varieties from Ecuador. In Quizgó, the
community works with a food security program and has more than 150 vegetable gardens
established, of which 60 are planted to quinoa.
"We began with training in research, in which we are becoming more and more adept.
Training is not continuous, being 1 or 2 days a month. Sometimes it's not available, so we
seek it from entities like CORFOCIAL and UMATA, and the community itself. Thus, we're
always learning." (CORFOCIAL is the Corporation for Promoting CIALs, and UMATA is the
Municipal Unit for Technical Assistance in Agriculture.)
Esmeralda considers that her work has been very positive, not only as coordinator but
also from the viewpoint of a woman. "I learn a great deal by going out, knowing, and
talking. But more important is organizing people to integrate with the community, so it's
not just me who benefits." Equally, she is very happy when objectives are reached,
and her idea is to continue looking for resources, preparing projects, and obtaining
collaboration to develop them. "The most important thing is that I'm not alone; many
of my workmates have got ahead and have seen the value of their work. They are very
motivated," she says, proud of the integration achieved.
The group's workdays are dynamic, with programmed activities and frequent meetings that
sometimes last all day, from 9 in the morning to 4 or 5 in the afternoon. "We talk
about many subjects: community conflicts, production, health, training... On other days we
visit the fields, observe vegetable gardens, talk to people, orient them if necessary,
according to recommendations we can give or send someone who knows. On other days, I
attend to my own house, vegetable garden, and children," Esmeralda reports.
As in all work, difficulties come up, but these are overcome. When trials are prepared
in the vegetable gardens and do not work out, people become discouraged. This is when
Esmeralda takes the opportunity to clarify that this is the reason for conducting the
trial-to prove whether it gives a result-and that research is a process that must be taken
calmly.
Esmeralda is a woman who has a zeal for studying and bettering herself, not only for
personal reasons but also for the community. She is supported by her partner and children.
However, she knows that her work sometimes means leaving the house very early, to arrive
tired in the afternoon to help her children with their homework, and look after the house.
"But it's worth it, it's an effort made for bettering oneself," she says.
"What they say is that women should be in the kitchen, taking care of the children
and looking after the vegetable garden. They even see evil in women working, but we must
rise above these ideas," she adds.
The results the CIAL obtains are sometimes not the best, but the community sees the
value of these efforts and is happy. Priorities being addressed include such community
problems as unemployment, insecurity, health, and education. "I think this work
encompasses almost everything, because one is educating, anticipating, and doing something
so that at least there's food, and that is improvement," she affirms.
 You would not believe it now, but Adelmo Calambáz used to be
deeply shy. "When we first met him, he wouldn’t say a word," says Teresa
Gracia, sociologist with the CIAT-IPRA team.
Adelmo is of humble origin. Born in San Bosco, Colombia, of landless Indian parents, he
left primary school after 3 years without being able to read or write. When his father
fell ill, responsibility for feeding his large family fell to him as the eldest son.
Adelmo became a laborer, rising every day at 4:00 am to set off on a 3-hour walk to reach
the small plot he rented to grow the family’s maize. There he worked without rest or
food until late afternoon. After the long trek home, he would eat and fall asleep.
Exhausted and barely able to break even, Adelmo decided on a change. With his
mother’s support, he reduced his solitary toil on the distant plot to 3 days a week,
devoting the other two to voluntary activities in the village itself. Only through work
with others, on behalf of the whole community, could he himself advance.
The decision proved a turning point. With others in the village, Adelmo formed a
literacy group and began work on a community garden. The group met in the evenings at the
house of Doña Ruth Bueno, the village’s largest farmer and a leading light in the
community. There he met Ruth’s son, a schoolteacher who taught the group and who
became his friend and mentor. It was while the two were seeking ways of enabling the group
to develop that they heard of the CIAL concept and wrote to CIAT asking for help in
starting up the San Bosco CIAL.
Because of his reputation for hard work and community-mindedness, Adelmo was elected
the new CIAL’s secretary and later its leader. Undeterred by the failure of their
first experiment, on potatoes, he and his fellow members persevered and after a few years
began selling seeds of a new maize variety. Soon a milling enterprise was also
established.
Adelmo’s work with the CIAL has transformed his situation. He now has a house in
the village and his own land nearby—2 hectares on which he grows maize, beans,
plantain, and coffee. In recognition of his outstanding contribution to the community, he
was recently elected chairman of the junta comunal or village council. He has also become
an ambassador for the CIAL process, often being invited to visit other communities to tell
them of his experiences.
But the biggest change of all is in Adelmo’s perception of himself. "I am a
different person," he says. "I have more confidence in my abilities and feel I
could now manage to farm a much larger area. My training in the CIAL has helped me learn
to speak in public. I’m no longer afraid of outsiders and don’t feel
uncomfortable going to government offices."
"Do you like being a researcher?" "Sí." A smile lights up the
young face. "Sí! Because when I do research, I learn."
The speaker is 14-year-old Zuly Pajoy, who lives with her parents at San Isidro, a
village in the cassava-growing country of Colombia’s Cauca Department. Zuly is the
youngest member of a seven-strong, all-women CIAL that is seeking alternatives to cassava,
which became unprofitable when the processing sector slumped in the mid-1990s.
Opportunities to learn mean a lot to Zuly. She was born in the village, where she
studied up to fifth grade in the local primary school. But after that she had to stay at
home to help her mother with the housework, since San Isidro has no secondary school.
Local government’s answer to the village’s long-running campaign to get one is
that it has no money to pay for a teacher. Sixty other pupils in the village are in
Zuly’s position.
Fortunately, Zuly has acquired another interest, one that takes her out of the house.
Unlike other girls in her village, she likes farming. While still a school-girl she joined
a group of women learning about chicken production. The group, originally organized by the
local branch of the extension service, later evolved into a CIAL.
The CIAL is conducting research on soybean, a new crop for the area. The learning
experience has not been easy, Zuly says. The first trial, sown in an El Niño year, was
lost to drought. The crop grew well in the second year, but shelling the harvested beans
by hand was tedious and time-consuming—so much so that some members of the group
wanted to give up. A borrowed threshing machine came to the rescue. Now the group has been
granted a loan to buy its own machine.
Last year Zuly received her first ever invitation to pass on what she has learned to
others. She visited CIAT for the first time, where she made a presentation on the San
Isidro women’s CIAL to a workshop on participatory research. "I was nervous
beforehand, but when I started speaking I relaxed," she says. The scientists in her
audience were impressed. "If only we could learn to explain things so simply and
clearly," said one.
Zuly’s dream is to go to agricultural college—but that would mean leaving San
Isidro and the CIAL. Living elsewhere would cost money that Zuly’s parents do not
have, at least not at the moment. They have told her she must wait until her older
brother, now at high school, has finished his education.
Until her dream becomes a reality, Zuly is content to go on "learning by
doing" through her participation in the CIAL. What has she learned from her research?
"That you have to persevere to overcome difficulties, that you have to be
patient." And Zuly smiles again.
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