OFC Visits Cecosesola

El Jardin de Yenny

2012-02-23T18:00:00.001-08:00

By: Alejandra Abreu

Below are pictures of the beautiful garden that our beloved friend Yenny has helped midwife into existence. The garden surrounds Cecosesola's Escuela (Coop education hub /guest dormitory) in the Feria Del Centro. The Escuela and Feria del Centro are located in the midst of the concrete covered Industrial 1 zone of Barquisimeto. Yenny's passion for plants along with the support of her fellow cooperativistas has helped to bring verdant, glorious, sweet smelling ---Vida (life) to the previously disregarded wasteland that was left by the abandoned sorghum processing plant that Cecocosesola has now reclaimed and re-purposed with and for the community.


Yenny

mango

tamarind

Neem tree

Conchi

Yenny

I would like to dedicate this post to my dear friend and Coop Staff member Sarika - who, along with the nurturing support of coop Volunteers, has also helped to bring an extra and much appreciated dose of life and love to the garden outside the Eastside Coop. Thanks Friends!

Meet Ricardo and Sneida!

2012-02-22T08:12:00.000-08:00

Sneida Hernandez lives in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, in a neighborhood called Carucieña, with her two sons Jose y Junior, and her daughter Stefany; her mother lives in a house very nearby. She currently works in an area of Ceocsesola called "Mutual Support," where she attends meetings of Cecosesola's affiliated producers, coops, and community organizations, and helps to administer and do accounting for loans for the needs of those groups. Her favorite parts of this work are the relationships she develops with a wide variety of people and the travel she does to attend meetings in many different parts of the country. She is excited to share her experience with collective decision-making and capacity building here at Cecosesola with OFC, and she is especially interested in learning how the Olympia Food Co-op is integrated within our community, and how area students participate in the life of the Co-op.

Ricardo Jose Gimenez also lives on the westside of Barquisimeto, in an neighborhood called Pueblo Nuevo, with his wife Michel, daughter Wlanchel, and within a week, a brand new baby daughter! At Cecosesola, he does a little bit of everything: whatever is needed at the time. In the current mix for Ricardo is organization-wide accounting, radiology at el C.I.S.C., and work with receiving and stocking viveres in the feria.He is looking forward to sharing the unique way the Cecosesola is organized with workers at the Olympia Food Co-op, and he is especially interested in fair trade and product selection at OFC, as well as decision-making structures. He would like to learn more about the variety of ways people organize in the U.S. He is very much looking forward to exchanging ideas with those within the cooperative movement in our area as well.

Ricardo and Sneida are two of the compañer@s who will be visiting Olympia in May. I will be posting profiles of the other exchangees--Javier and Jesus--as soon as possible, and hopefully within a few days of my return to the U.S.

It's a Wrap!

2012-02-22T07:35:00.000-08:00

This morning, Yenny asks me if my shoulders are sore. To tell the truth, I tell her, my entire body hurts. And yours? Hasta mi pelo, she says.

This is not the result of a 12 hour day stocking products in the feria, though I was sore after my first fin de semana here at Cecosesola. Rather, it is the effect of 3 straight hours of sand volleyball at the granja. And if we are moving like a pair of rusty machines while scrubbing the floor of the escuela this morning, I for one, will say it was worth every ache.

This weekend was the start of carnival here in Venezuela, as in many other parts of Latin America and around the world. Schoolkids are out of class until Wednesday, and many businesses are closed. In honor of the holiday, Cecosesola threw a huge party for it's compañer@s, producers, and members of associated coops, as well as their families. In total, more than 700 people were invited, and activities planned included a planetarium, telescope to view Venus and Jupiter, swimming in two piscinas, softball, fishing, bola criolla, ping pong, pool, bingo, dancing to live music, and my favorite: volleyball.

Around 100 of us went down to the granja Sunday in the evening and camped overnight. Typical of the generosity we've experienced while here, although Ale and I weren't sure where we'd be sleeping, when we arrived there was a tent set up for us, complete with a dinner a cachapas and a blow-up mattress: more comfort than I've experienced camping at home!

Several times throughout the day on Monday folks asked me whether we have gatherings like this at our coop. I explained the difficulty of gathering all together--that our stores are always open, that it's hard on the members to close early, that it's not always easy to justify the expense. People at Cecosesola can certainly understand these difficulties--they, too, are trying to serve the needs of their community, are concerned with financial solvency, and would have a hard time doing what they do if the ferias were open every day of the week (my description of our store hours is most often met with na´guara!) And yet, there is also a strong sense that gatherings like this one are important--that knowing each other's friends and families, and building relationships outside of work are tools as crucial to the success of the organization as reporting sales and margin numbers, which has been done in every single large-group meeting I've attended here.

In today's reunion de gestion, we are discussing and overall financial loss experienced at the Central Integral de Salud (el C.I.S.C., pronounced "sees"). As I listen to percentages of total use and cost experienced by areas such as acupuncture, radiology, alternative therapies, etc., I shell and savor the taste of tamarind fruit, which Yenny (of the sore everthing) harvested for us this morning by repeatedly tossing a broom into a tree outside the escuela.I consider the faces around me, with whom yesterday I splashed in pools, and dove after kills on the volleyball court. We drank cerveza and jugo de jamaica. We danced, got sunburns, and talked with kids about the solar system. The people around me look tired, and it's hot enough that we move our chairs from the meeting room at Ruiz Pineda down to the patio outside the feria where there's a bit more breeze, but still the effects of a weekend spent together show in the midst of a difficult conversation. People laugh easily and cede the floor to each other so that each person can say what they need to. When the conversation is over there's an amiable lull while people chat amongst themselves until Ricardo says that I have something to say, and I nervously offer my gratitude for all I've experienced over the last four weeks, and say how excited I am to host representatives from Cecosesola in Olympia this May.

Here are some pictures: of the granja, of meetings, of Carnival, and a few of my favorite shots from the trip that haven't made it onto the blog yet. Also, check out "Work and Play," where Ale has added a bunch of photos from our trip to the beach and our work in the ferias.

I fly out tonight, but will also leave you with some profiles of the compañer@s who are preparing for their trip to Olympia. Thanks to everyone who's been following the blog these past five weeks and a million thanks to my coworkers at the Coop, for their support with this intercambio. I'll see you all soon!

Yenny, Conchi, Emily

Crepuscular sunset overlooking the Ceocsesola Granga Recreation Area

Ale's interpretation of OFC logo and Jacob & Michaels Flaming Eggplant represent on Cecosesola's community mural around the granja's meeting space

Ale,Conchi,Yenny,Emily, Jacob

Crepuscular

Yenny

Scrambling for candy thrown from high above the carnival floats

(photo credits: Alejandra Abreu & Emily Van Kley)

The End is (Like) a Beginning

2012-02-18T18:03:00.000-08:00

Our last weekend in the feria had a strong feeling of return for me. As with our first weekend, I started out in El Monte, with the lettuces, leeks, green onions, and cilantro. As then, I woke incredibly early to be ready to work by 5:45 in the morning. As then, there were crowds of people, many of them with questions, and a system for selling vegetables that is very different from the one I know at OFC.

In many ways, this weekend was a return for me, but exactly because of its similarity, I was able to notice some huge changes that have been in process during my time here.

      1. It was easy to get out of bed, both Friday and Saturday morning at 4:30. Friday night, I had no problem going to sleep by 9:00. The rhythms of Cooperative life and the fact that people tend to stay in at night have become more and more natural for me. So much so that when I woke up at 7:45 on a non-feria day this week, I caught myself thinking holy crap is it ever late!

      2. Instead of wanting to hide behind piles of lettuce and put my head down to work, I got to be fully present with shoppers and co-workers this weekend, greeting people, sharing ideas for food preparation, directing them to other parts of the feria as needed. Partly, this is because my Spanish has improved, but it is also because I'm so much more comfortable with the the place in general. After several weeks of following other people's example, I know, more or less, what's expected of me in areas like El Monte. I am even beginning to develop some of my own opinions about how I like the work to be done--I prefer, for example, to clean beneath the vegetables before stocking new ones, and keep the displays trim and tidy to avoid too much breakage and loss as people search for just the right bunch of cebollin.Don't get me wrong, I still have to ask people to repeat themselves often, and there are times I am still totally lost, but for the most part, with a little patience on the part of my conversation partner, I can figure out what's going on.

     3. Not only have we learned an amazing amount while working here, as I prepare to leave next Wednesday, I have been thinking a lot about the friends I'm going to miss. The people of Cecosesola are so warm, so dedicated, I feel truly honored to have spent this time with them. And I am so looking forward to sharing our Co-op and the place with live with them, through the visit of Ricardo, Jesus, Sneida and Javier. Not to mention sharing my amazing co-workers at OFC with them and vice versa. I have actually been daydreaming (and Ale and I have been talking a lot) about presentations in collective meetings about Cecosesola. That's how inspired/ nerdy we are.

The days are counting down to my departure, but you can expect a few more blog posts before I fly out on Wednesday. (From Barquisimeto to Caracas...then I'll be spending the night in the airport and leaving in the morning, so wish me good flourescently-lit dreams). First, Ale will be posting soon about Senarre and confianza, and I'd like to do a short interview and photo shoot with each of the companeros who will be visiting in May before I leave.

More photos tomorrow...

Work and Play

2012-02-16T20:23:00.002-08:00

Photo credit: Alejandra Abreu & Emily Van Kley
Hello from Barquisimeto! I know it´s been a while since we´ve talked, so let me set the scene. Ale & I, having just come back from an epic journey to the coast, have installed ourselves at a desk with two computers, a plug-in to ward off mosquitos, and a latticed window open to the evening air. Outside, produce trucks are coming and going through the Cecosesola compound to help get the feria set up for tomorrow morning, when crowds of people will be lined up outside the big warehouse doors as usual, by 5:30 a.m. We are tired and sunburned, but quite contented. A lot has happened since the last time I had internet access, so I´ll do my best to fill you all in (and include some pictures along the way).

First: what didn´t happen. Monday, I was planning to go to Senarre with members of U.P.C., the network of producer co-ops that sells directly to Cecosesola. Senarre is a mountainous region about an hour outside of Barquisimeto, and some of the producer co-ops located there include 8 de Marzo--a pasta, granola, and other grain-based producers co-op--San Miguel--which makes a pepper sauce--and MonCar--a tomato sauce maker, which also has an affiliated organic farm. We sent Ale to the meeting, which she said was very interesting, both because of the beautfiul scenery, and also because the assembled group was talking about whether or not to incorporate a new member cooperative. I hope to ask her to write a guest blog entry sometime in the next few days to share more about what that converation was like, so stay tuned.

The reason I didn´t go to Senarre is that rather suddenly this weekend we got the news that Ricardo and Jesus were scheduled for a visa interview at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas. This sent us into a flurry of activity, gathering documents, writing letters of invitation, making travel arrangments, etc. Considering how much there was to do, it made sense for someone from OFC to stay behind. We spent all of Monday printing, signing, and putting documents in order, practicing interview questions, getting prepared in every way we could imagine. By 9 p.m., Ale had returned from Senarre, and we got to wish Jesus & Ricardo a final good luck as they headed out the door for the bus terminal and an overnight trip to Caracas. And I won´t leave you in suspense as I have been until this evening. The meeting went smoothly aaaaaand, Ricardo & Jesus got their visas! (Thanks to those at OFC and Evergreen we called on for support with this). Hopefully it means those for Sneida and Javier will be forthcoming soon.

In the downtime between visa prep I sat in on the collective and feria meetings happening outside the escuela. And this turned out to be a reason I was glad I had stayed behind. At one point, two of the compañeras were working on a wall sized list with people´s names and their equipos--sort of like OFC´s departments, except that they can be either groups doing organizational and shift work--and I had the chance to ask some of the questions I´ve been confused about for some time now, around how equipo membership is determined. What I had learned so far is that each compañer@ gets to decide what equipo they are affiliated with, based on their interest and the needs of the organization. When someone wants to learn a new skill or change groups, they contact the members of the desired equipo to gain consent to join, as well as someone who is willing to train them. The new equipo member then shadows that person for however many weeks or months are needed to learn the skill thoroughly, and then, depending on the needs of the group, the trainer may choose to rotate into a new equipo as well. What I was confused about was that I was constantly seeing these lists with people´s names and what seemed like job assignments. How did that mesh with people choosing equipos for themselves?

As it turns out, the list the companer@s were working on was for reflection in the feria meeting. It wasn´t to assign people to new groups, but rather for the assembled feria workers to analyze, both to assure that each equipo had the number of people it needed, and to assure a fair gender distribution within each group. So the main way that job rotation works at Cecosesola, as far as I have been able to understand, is that workers choose their jobs, equipos decide whether or not to admit new members, and the whole group reflects on whether the resulting work teams are meeting the needs of the organization. I´ll let you know as I learn more.

And then Ale and I took a quick trip to the beach. Sand, waves, turquoise water, a sweet posada with an open courtyard and a small fluffy dog named Princesa. Despite a bus accident in the mountains this morning (Ale´s second for the week...the other was on the way home from Senarre) we are sleepy, sun-kissed and well-rested. At least for the moment. The feria opens again tomorrow at 5:45, and it´s going on midnight, so I think I´ll have to leave the photos until tomorrow.

Until then!

Photo credit: Alejandra Abreu, Emily Van Kley, Conchi Verdesoto

Patchwork Post

2012-02-11T20:53:00.000-08:00

Well, friends, I am incredibly tired tonight, after having woken up at 4:30 in the morning the last 2 days (one needs to leave Ricardo & Michel's house by 5 in order to arrive at the feria on time Fridays and Saturdays when it opens to the public). So this will be short, and may or may not be entirely worth the time it takes to read through. That's your disclaimer.

Still, since Ale and I are going to be on the road for much of next week, I wanted to check in quickly before we head out. As usual, I'll keep updating if we happen to have internet along the way.

In keeping with the scattered nature of my thoughts tonight, how about a post in snippets, some things I've been meaning to share but haven't yet had the chance?

1) Cecosesola has published several books, which Ale and I will be buying to bring home with us. One of them, which I read last night at Ricardo & Michel's house, is a truly awesome manual of natural medicine, which was published in conjunction with their opening on The Centro Integral de Salud. This book reclaims traditional indigenous remedies, and puts education about health into a cooperative context. It includes detailed information about herbs, water treatments, parasites, and more.

The other reading I've been doing (besides the guilty pleasure of Agatha Christie in Espanol) has been the entirety of Venezuela's Law of Cooperatives, which is sold in a handy pocked-sized format, and has a nice rainbow-y cover. Did you know, that the government in Venezuela is obligated by law to purchase goods and services first from cooperatives whenever possible? How amazing would it be if that particular bit of legislation was more widespread? As I kept reading this document, I thought, more and more, about how we need better legislation to support collectively-run cooperatives in the United States (the Venezuelan definition of cooperatives is by its nature tied to collectivity...for example, by law, any change in policy must be approved by at least 75% of a coop's workers in a general assembly). At OFC, we have more than once had to struggle with the fact that laws governing our work are written with hierarcical management structures in mind, and in many ways don't have the ability to recognize what we're doing. I would love if we could have a little book of our own that detailed all the ways our government recognized the work of collectively-run coops, and would love even more if, like the our companer@s at Cecosesola, we had the chance to help write those laws.

2) Indigenous and African languages have had a strong influence on Venezuelan Spanish, which means that there are many words and expressions that may be new to those who speak versions of Spanish that originate in other places. To those who haven't had the chance to spend time in the country, here's some Venezuelan Spanish vocabulary for the day:

cayapa: a group that comes together to work in a cooperative way. For example, every several Mondays at Cecosesola, there's a cayapa to clean the ferias, their outbuildings, and entire grounds.

naguara: (emphasis on the last syllable) an expression that means: "oh my god" or "no way." This expression can be drawn way out for emphasis, or can be inserted into conversation casually and often, like punctuation.

3) As part of the Barrio Adentro program, the health program that has brought thousands of Cuban doctors to Venezuela and has created free and affordable health centers in many poor neighborhoods, there are Cuban fitness instructors in many communities as well. These instructors teach baila terapia, a dance aerobics that incorporates salsa, merengue, and other Latin American dance rhythms. The classes are free and often held in the open air in rural areas, with the teacher on a raised stage. We haven not, unfortunately, located baila terapia here in Barquisimeto, but we know it must exist, and plan to keep our eyes peeled.

4) Monday, Ale and I head to Senarre, a mountainous region not far from Barquisimeto, to attend a meeting of the producers' coops that are affiliated with Cecosesola. The meeting will be held at 8 del Marzo, a cooperative that produces granola and other grain-based products, and where a number of the Evergreen students have been working for the last few weeks. We will be riding with workers from Tulpian, a cleaning-products and vanilla producers' coop with a factory here in the same area as the Feria del Centro, and with folks from other Cecosesola producers coops in the area.

Well, I have more to say, but I am literally falling asleep at the computer. Until next time, which I hope will be soon.

Counting caraotas

2012-02-08T19:17:00.000-08:00

Photo Credit: Alejandra Abreu & Emily Van Kley

This morning, Ale and I arrive at theFeria Ruiz Pineda, me in a car with Ricardo, and Ale by way ofseveral rapiditos,shared taxis that augment the bus service here in Barquisimeto. Wehave a meeting in the office of contabilidad (accounting), acrisply air conditioned room ringed with twenty or more computers,and a compañer@ at every one. On thewall, several large pieces of butcher paper have been taped together,and Cecosesola's overall finances have been represented in threecolumns of numbers, with differently colored markers for 2010, 2011,and the projected budget for 2012. We sit down and folks at thecomputers stop their work to meet with us. A compañerareviews the numbers on the wall: some of which track sales, othersthe costs of goods and taxes, and others various funds ( health,education, loans for other cooperatives, etc).

We talk about the structure ofaccounting in a collective organization as large as Cecosesola. Eventhough there is a central office for contabilidad , financialcomputation and accountability happens throughout the organization atboth micro and macro levels. As I've mentioned before, inventoryhappens every week at Cecosesola. This Monday, when Ricardo and Iarrived at la Feria del Centro, there were some areas of the deposito(warehouse) left to be counted, which means I got to participate. Iwas handed a legal-sized excel document already printed with thetypes and brands of products kept in a particular row in thewarehouse, along with columns for quantity, unit, etc. Anothercompañero was handed the same sheet.Starting on different ends, we counted pallets of tuna, coffee, andcanned peas. At the end, we compared numbers, re-counted when theydidn't agree, and signed each others' documents.

At the same time, other teams of peopleon the feria floor were counting bags of ripped, broken, andotherwise damaged items: the loss. Each week, once inventory is done,a rotating group of people from every work area takes the informationfrom the previous week's inventory and compares it to the currentweek, as well as to the registered loss. They create a report calleda control, which is then presented in the meeting of thecorresponding feria. They check to make sure that sales andloss correspond with the lists made during inventory. If they don't,the team seeks an explanation. If none is found, or if theexplanation is theft or another situation by which Cecosesola haslost money or product, the entire team takes responsibility bysplitting the loss and paying the collective back.

This is one level of accounting. Sinceeach team member has the chance to prepare these weekly reports,everyone is able to gain competence with the organization's finances.At the meetings where these numbers are presented, therefore, thereis a high level of understanding among attendees, and lots of groupparticipation while the group works towards solution-making. Thisweek, for example, the equipo de verduras at the Feriadel Centro experienced loss at a percentage higher than theupper limit they'd set for themselves. The explanation: the vegetablesection had been short-staffed all weekend and many stations weren'tattended, like the yuca, which can be easily broken, or thecilantro, which should ideally be given out by hand.

At the next level of accounting, eachworksite—the 3 ferias, the funeraria, and the Centro delSalud—tally their own weekly reports and keep track of their yearlybudgets. This information, then, is funneled to the central office ofcontabilidad , where it iscompiled into an overall budget. This team also undergoesregular rotation of members to further distribute financial skillaround the organization.

Before long, as so many conversationsdo here at Cecosesola, the conversation turns to confianza. Wetalk about the many reuniones, and the amount of time peoplespend in them. (For example, the reunion of theFeria del Centro we attended on Monday went from 12:30-7 atnight, and the reunion de gestion this week featured a fullscreening of Shawshank Redemption, followed by a small and largegroup reflection on themes of passion, trust, and fear. Thecompañer@s in contabilidad make the case that the amount of time spent building confianzain reunions can actually be cost effective, in that importantdecisions don't have to be delayed by rifts among workers. They alsoexplain that everyone having the chance to take responsibility forthe organization's finances through inventory, weekly controls, andreflections in meetings helps build confianza because peopleare able to be more supportive when they have fuller understanding ofkind of job their co-workers are trying to do.

In total, the compañer@sin contabilidad spend more than an hour and a half withus. The talk about the expansion at la Feria Ruiz Pineda, and howCecosesola has been paying for it: through colaboraciones from thecommunity, through budgetary projections, and by funneling extramoney left over after the weekly controls have been done. We aresomewhat relieved to hear that the project, which is now some monthsfrom completion, has been 10 years in the discussion and planningstages. We are of course reminded of our own long path in terms ofcurrent expansion.

All of what we hear meshes well for mewith what my understanding of OFC's staff structure evolution inprocess. I leave the meeting with my head buzzing with ideas to beexplored further when we return.

In the rest of the day, we attend ameeting of new collective members at the funeraria, and listento the new folks present research they've done on Cecosesola's crazyhistory as a transportation cooperative, complete with tales ofprotest marches to Caracas, government infiltration, sabotage, andmore.

We tour the funeraria briefly,and learn about the mortuary, funeral, and burial services thatCecosesola offers to its workers, as well as to the community at anaccessible price.

It rains like crazy and the streets areflooded as we walk back to the escuela, where we will staytonight, and where I mean to actually go to sleep, very soon.

Check out some previous posts for newphotos, and here's a few to go with today.

Going places

2012-02-07T11:14:00.000-08:00

Hello again friends!

At the beginning of our second week at Cecosesola, things are starting to find a rhythm. Not every moment is new anymore, though of course I am still learning a great deal. I think I am finally starting to get accustomed to the schedule, which very closely follows daylight hours. So this morning, for example, I actually found myself rising early enough (read: 5:45! people who know me well will get what a big deal this is) to go for a jog alongside the Bolivarian university near Ricardo and Michel´s house, where I´ll be staying for the coming week. Last night I played several rousing games of cards, including a princess themed memory game with Wlanchel, Richardo & Michel´s daughter. Michel and Ricardo´s house is small and lovely, with cement floors, brightly colored walls, and a kitchen under construction. I am staying in the newly built room that will be Wlanchel´s when her younger sister is born. I had heard, before going to stay with them, that Michel was eight months pregnant, but this morning, Ricardo told me that they think she´s in the last week of her pregnancy! What amazing generosity to invite a visitor into your home at such a time!

Speaking of generosity, we have received so much of it since arriving here at Cecosesola, from the farmer who brought us an armful of piñas after the feria closed on Sunday, to the oatmeal hamburgers Ricardo and I had for breakfast this morning, to the incredible amount of time several compañeros have spent showing us around, teaching us how to work in the ferias, inviting us into their families, etc. What a sad contrast it was yesterday as we sat down with Ricardo and Sneida to talk the problems they and their compañeros, Javier and Jesus, are having as they try to obtain visas for their upcoming exchange with OFC. Sneida has already been to the U.S. Embassy in Caracas once, and was immediately turned down for a visa...that is, immediately after waiting around the embassy for nearly ten hours. The reasons: she hadn´t demostrated sufficient ties to her country, and her financial resources didn´t pan out on paper. In other words, in the U.S. government´s way of thinking, she might arrive in Olympia and try to stay in the country instead of returning to Venezuela.

And here´s where it gets infuriating. In order to prove to the embassy that Sneida and her compañeros have ¨sufficient ties¨ to their country, they need testimonials from Cecosesola to prove that they are dedicated workers who make a decent salary and that their jobs will be waiting for them when they return. They need a history of previous exchanges Cecosesola has undertaken and proof that those who were sent abroad did return. They need to open and provide information about bank accounts. They need to present titles to their houses, if they have them (as Venezuela works its way through land reform, residents of the barrios often don´t have house titles to despite often having built them from the ground up). They have to provide detailed information about their familial relationships: whether they have children to raise, good relationships with their spouses, etc. They need need to submit detailed itineraries with exact dates for entering and leaving the country, and they are NOT allowed to purchase plane tickets before their interviews. They need detailed letters of invittation from the Olympia Food Coop and other community organizations. They need the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the people they will be staying with, and they need a guarantee from an organization that any unexpected expenses related to their stay will be covered.

And after all of this, the staff at the embassy may or may read only a minimum amount of the information gathered. They may decide to reject any of these companeños based on a divorce in progress, or whether or not they´ve ever traveled outside the country before. And it costs more than $140 U.S., a serious amount of money, to apply for a visa each time, no matter whether or not you get turned down.

In the next week, we will be working to collect letters and signatures, and to do everything we can to make sure these visas get through. We will be looking forward to providing as much hospitality as we can when these friends finally arrive in Olympia. But right now, it´s hard. Here we are: incredibly fortunate to be spending our time with these brilliant, competent, generous people for whom solidarity is such a central value, having to confront the fact, together, that our government sees them as reason for suspicion, and often worse.

Feria: day two

2012-02-04T20:04:00.000-08:00

This morning, we make it in time. When the feria opens at 5:45, we are inside, standing in front of the frozen juice pulp cooperative's stand, watching as the warehouse doors open and people come rushing in. They are, indeed, running, a river of people coming toward us which then veers sharply left and right into the viveres and mini-feria sections. Once inside, there is a great yanking of carts and snatching of baskets, and people careening down the aisles. By 6 o'clock, when we head over to the comedor with Conchi to check for some coffee, the checkout lines are already 15 people deep. By the time we return, they are nearly twice as long, and this is with something like 30 cash registers in action.

I know I've talked a lot about the ideas we've encountered so far at Cecosesola. And there is much more to tell...like about the creativity that brought them to show their strength in numbers by passing a carrot through a human chain from one of their ferias all the way to the city transportation office during a showdown over the city's repossession of their buses when they were in the public transit business in the 90s. (Whew, there: I got that in). But today, after my first long day of work in the feria--I returned to the escuela around 3:30--I feel more inclined to share a bit of technical grocer-type information. My apologies ahead of time to those I might bore.

Alejandra, Jacob and I started the day la feria grande, in the section named el monte, which resembles OFC's wet rack in terms of what is sold: 5 types of lettuce (iceberg, criollo, romano, genovesa, y escarola) green onions (cebollin), leeks (ajo porro) spinach (espinaca), italian parsley (perejin), minature celery (apio de españa), chard (acelga) and of course, cilantro. El monte is not refrigerated, much like the rest of the feria, with the exception of a few cases for prepared meat and cheese, and a carniceria and charcuteria in the larger warehouse. The greens are not bound, but rather stacked in displays that are a long line of steel mesh tables. Shoppers search for their favorite head or bunch and snap off any leaves or roots they don't want to pay for (all produce in the feria grande costs the same amount and is weighed by the pound).

At any one time there can be 5-20 people shopping a particular display, which results in piles of broken and rejected greens scattered throughout. A worker's job is to sort through and remove the vegetable shards, which are then weighed by type and counted against what was ordered and received. This step is especially useful because workers at Cecosesola do inventory every week, so they are able to keep a very exacting eye on their sales and shrink, and track them on a weekly basis. If waste is particularly high one week, they know to check in with the farmer or the workers to find out why the vegetables weren't holding up the way they should. Once the waste is sorted into reused onion sacks, it is then brought to the granja, where it is mixed with the manure and coffee husks that make up Cecosesola's signature compost blend.

Working el monte is fast-paced and people-centered. The cilantro, and sometimes other fragile leafy greens like the perejin and apio de españa are given out by hand because they don't hold up well being left on a counter to be picked apart. As I am handing out cilantro, I feel like my head is on a swivel because of the incredible number of people crowding in front of the displays. There are shouts of ¡Mami! ¡Muchacha! ¡Senora! Dame un poquito de cilantro. ¿Hay mas del criollo? ¿Ajo porro mas fina? And so on. I learn the names of the vegetables I didn't know ahead of time, and fast. Beside me, Conchi's brusque and personable voice is saying ¡La mitad o todo! over and over again, everytime she catches someone trying to break a single stock of celery.

After breakfast we head over to viveres, where they are down several workers and where it is, officially, madness. Many of the huge, Cosco-style bins Cecosesola uses for their grocery products are nearly empty, their bottoms coated in milk powder, rice, or cereal on account of broken bags. The lines from the cash registers are two aisles deep, and it is hard for Ale and I to find space to stand as we begin to stock our first bin. Our hands and clothes are quickly covered with box dust. Soon, I am climbing on top of displays (Virginia, eat your heart out :) to hand down boxes of products that are nearly out below. In order to make it through the next few hours we a bin full of more Cronch Flakes than the the amount of cereal the Westside is likely to sell in a week.

We move from one decimated display to the next, and try to help people as they ask after their favorite brands, or about the limits placed on certain hard-to-come-by items. At one point, I'm asked which of two powdered milks is the most delicious, a question that, as with many others, I have no idea how to answer. As we continue through the aisles, however, I begin to get a sense of the names of products and where they are located. I learn the Venezuelan pronunciation of Cheez Whiz. I stock a large coffee in a small coffee's space and have to switch them all over. Poco a poco I begin to get some kind of sense of what I'm doing, and by the end of the day I'm able to answer more questions than not.

After the feria closes Conchi and Jeni come to hang out. We talk for a while on the patio outside the escuela, and then a farmer shows up with a surplus of pineapple, which we eat and eat. Tomorrow we'll take the day off, sleep in, clean the escuela, and in the afternoon head to the houses of our host families. Jacob with Conchi, who is a volunteer from Spain and who lives in an apartment not far from the feria del centro, Ale with Snaeda and her large family (her eldest son also works in the feria) and I with Ricardo and his partner, who is 8 months pregnant, and their and young child. There will be much to say about these dear people in the coming weeks, and about the fight to get visas for those who are set to come to Olympia to complete our exchange in May. But for now I will say goodnight, and let you know that I'm not sure what internet will be like after I leave the escuela, so stay tuned, and I'll update when I can.

The Work Begins

2012-02-03T13:39:00.000-08:00

Photo Credit: Alejandra Abreu

This morning, Conchi comes to retrieveAle, Jacob, and I from the escuela at 5:40 in the morning. This isthe first day since we've been here that the Feria del Centro hasbeen open, and since nearly 5 o'clock this morning, people have been amassing in the parking lot, jostling for the best spot in line.

Inside, the feria is beautifully stocked: huge bins of dried milk and bags of rice stacked nearly as high as the first story of a house. The frutieria, mini-feria, and feria grande are full of fresh yuca, cebolla, lechuga, granadillas, limon. The three of us spent much of yesterday helping to put products on the shelves in mass quantities. There was a lot to do, but the work was relaxed, laid-back. We spoke with each other and met some of our compañer@s. We enjoyed the satisfaction of breaking down boxes and facing everything just so.

All of that is about to change. We are told people run when the feria doors open on fridays, and that it can get ugly, with carts crashing into each other, etc. We don't see this part because we are a little bit late getting out the door; we only see the crowd of people funneling into the entrance, and when we are inside, people already crammed in the aisles.

It is a slower day than most, we are told, but still, we spend the morning frantically stocking lettuce, green onions, and especially cilantro, which we are out of by mid morning, and which we must give to each person by hand. Hence the reason for all the running: one of Cecosesola's attractions is that they tend to always have some of the items that can be in short supply here in Venezuela: milk, cooking oil, black beans (called caraotas) and others. While we built a display 15 bottles high and 60 bottles wide of cooking oil the day before, a compañero tells me that by Saturday afternoon, all of it will be gone. He explains that there are problems with private companies purposely holding some of their products back as a protest against the socialist government, and in this case, these bottles of soy oil, "hecho en socialismo" or made by government/ worker owned factories, aren't enough to fill the gap.

The feria doesn't close until 4:30 today, and many compañer@s stay the entire time rotating through the different jobs as they're needed. But by lunchtime we are all three exhausted. We come back to the school to write, to nap, to shower off the mud from the vegetables. Tomorrow we'll get up to do it all over again, and I'll post some pictures.

Hasta mañana, entonces.

Oh: and for those of you who are gluten-free, did you know it's possible to make flour from bananas? One of Cecosesola's affiliated cooperatives, Melbuen, has just started doing it. I'll bring a sample when I'm back in March!

Construyendo la Confianza (new pictures of the granja)

2012-02-03T13:20:00.000-08:00

The night before our first reunionde gestion at Cecosesola, Alejandra and I are nervous.

In many ways, los reunionesresemble collective meetings at OFC: they are gatherings of the wholecollective that happen in three different groups, during whichcollective members make decisions about everything from how to speedup the lines at the registers to whether or not to start a neweducation program to better fulfill their mission. In other ways, thereuniones are very different.Here at Cecosesola there is no agenda, for example, and no designatedfacilitator. Meetings last as long as they need to: sometimes 2hours, sometimes 7, and the ferias are closed while people meet. Inaddition, workers from Cecosesola's affiliated co-ops are invited toattend meetings, and can bring up any concerns they may have from thepoint of view of production, etc. Additional reuniones de gestion areheld weekly for new collective members, where they learn about thehistory and practices of Cecosesola as an organization and areinvited to do their own research about the history of the cooperativemovement, and later present what they've learned. Another wayCecosesola's reunionesare distinct from OFC's is simple: size. Dividing Cecosesola'sapproximately 580 workers into three groups still equals a heck of alot of people. This is the primary thing wreaking havoc with mine andAle's nerves.

Wepractice our short speech, Ale from notes, me from the miniature essayI've written with the help of the monstrous verb book and dictionaryI thank my lucky stars I lugged here every day. It's notincredibly late, but we are exhausted from two days straight ofabsorbing new information. We mumble through what we've planned andhead off to bed.

In themorning, people begin to arrive at the escuela,the site for the meeting and also the dormitoriowhere we've been staying, a little after 7. A particularity of thisco-op in comparison with every other I've ever experienced is thatpeople tend to arrive not only on time but early. By the time Ale andI head outside a few minutes before 8:00 (late, or so it it seems)there more than 150 people already gathered in a circleseveral rows deep on the shaded patio outside the escuela. Themeeting begins with news from one of the producer co-ops and moves toa discussion about the impact on the stores when many workers leavetogether for breakfast.Decision-making is discussed, and the effectboards of directors have on the collective process. Strong coffee ispassed around along with sugar buns and a hard pastry that looks likea horseshoe. At times the low murmur of a hundred people listeningand reacting to each other swells to a rumble, and the group iscalled back to attention by means of hand claps and piercingwhistles. By the time Ale and I and several students from Evergreen,most of whom are working in Cecosesola affilates are set to introduceourselves, some of my nerves have settled because I'm so interestedin what's being said.

Ourpresentation goes smoothly. The compañer@swelcome us warmly and ask thoughtful questions about ourinvolvement in the community and the relationship of the low-incomemembership to the economic crisis in the U.S. We talk together abouthow to build confianza,a term that denotes a combination of trust and mutual support that isa central value among compañer@s atCecosesola. And this is what sticks with me for the rest of the day.I think about the ways I see confianzaat OFC—like the fact that I know that if worst came to worst myco-workers and I would do anything for each other—and I think ofthe ways I think our confianzaneeds to grow.

One ofthe main themes Ale and I are here to investigate through ourexchange with Cecosesola is how consensus-based decision-making works on such a large scale. At times we feel so stretched to come toconsensus at OFC, and we often think it's because of our size. Andindeed, how could it not be difficult for 76 people to agree on thebest way forward in a given situation, when it can be exhausting just figure out with a group of friends where to have lunch?

What is obvious to us almost as soon as we arrive, and certainly by theend of this first meeting, is that confianzais a huge part of what makes consensus decision-making possible atCecosesola. With 580 people, it's crucial that each compañer@ be ableto trust the other, that each have a deep respect for the others'opinion, and that each have as a complete a picture as possible ofwhat it means to think in terms of the good of the whole.

OnceI'm thinking about confianza,I see examples of it everywhere. Here are a few.

The compañer@s at Cecosesola share food daily. Each feria has an attached comedor, or cafeteria, and a rotating equipo that cooks lunch on weekdays, as well as breakfast, lunch and sometimes dinner while the ferias are open at the end of the week. A midday snack of rice pudding or chicha makes its way around the different worksites in the afternoon. Eating together may not seem directly related to building trust, but as the coffee was passed around this morning during our meeting, it occurred to me what a big deal it is that the members of this collective have made it a priority to meet one of each others' most basic human needs by providing delicious, home-cooked quality food, and by pausing together to share it. In so doing, it seems to me, they are saying to each other “your nourishment and well-being are important to me.” And they are taking time together that is not specifically focused on work.

During the meeting, Gustavo, one of Cecosesola's long-time members, shares a engaging ten-minute documentary, Culto de Cerro, which analyzes the right to private property and its historical effect on the environment, women's rights, and society as a whole. Afterwards, there is a lively discussion--a reflection is the word they use, and the meaning is a little different--which incorporates the video's societal critique with various collective members' work and life experience. This seems to me a crucial point—that as a collective, workers at Cecosesola regularly take time to discuss issues not directly related to their daily work, even, and perhaps especially, when these issues are complex and likely to illicit strong opinions. An incredible amount of trust is built when people are vulnerable to reveal convictions that are of great importance to them, and when each person has a chance to be heard. Most importantly, workers at Cecosesola engage each other in such discussions when no immediate decisions need to be made. Over time, I think these regular conversations have helped Cecosesola's workers get to know each other in a truly multi-faceted way. They have helped pave the road for difficult discussions that eventually lead to decision-making, and they have helped the group as a whole evolve common values so that these decisions have a broad base of shared interest and language to draw upon.

And then, there's the granja. In the afternoon, after lunch, Ale and I ride with Jesus to Cecosesola's farm 45 minutes out of Barquisimeto. We enjoy every minute of our leisurely tour from the baby goats just born that morning, to the wild chickens, the 4 lagunas where tilapia and cachama are raised for sale in the ferias, the beautiful blond-coated free-ranging cows, and the compost system where cow, goat, and sheep manure are mixed with coffee husks and produce waste in the ferias to create rich growing mixture also to be sold. It is all so relaxing and beautiful, Alejandra asks Jesus if this is his favorite job in the co-op rotation. He says it is.

Thenhe takes us up a steep hill to a different section of Cecosesola'sland. The farm dog runs in front of the truck in the lateafternoon heat. Above the farm and the lagunas Cecosesola's workershave built unparque de recreo.Here there are swingsets and playground equipment. Spaces for bollacriolla,ping pong, billards, and dominos. There's a salt water pool to cooloff in, and in the center of the space a huge round building ofindigenous design with a palm roof for reuniones.Set up so high, the area has a breathtaking view of the farmland thatleads up to Barquisimeto and the mountains beyond. Workers atCecosesola come here on their days off to relax with their families,and several times a year fiestasare held for the whole collective to attend.

AndI realize this is another way to build confianza,a way for workers to enjoy time together without the pressure of workand deadlines, to see each other as whole people, to know eachothers' given and chosen families, and to deepen their respect andcare for each other, both of which are likely to prove crucial laterwhen difficult decisions need to be made.

Eachof the above examples could easily be seen as a waste of time andresources for an organization trying to survive on a budget, or to aworker who simply wants to put in their time and go home. And whilewe at OFC take seriously—as we should—the fiscal responsibilitywe have with the money members of our community entrust to us by wayof their purchases, I would like to argue that our money and timemight be well-spent investing in ways to build greater confianzaamong workers. That a stronger measure of confianza in OFC's workercollective might give us a stronger basis upon which to makeinformed, supportive, grounded and efficient decisions together, nomatter how big we grow, and even when the going gets tough.

(photo credit: Alejandra Abreu)

Las Ferias y El Centro de Salud (with pictures)

2012-02-01T20:16:00.000-08:00

(all photos credit: Alejandra Abreu)

By the morning of our second full day in Barquisimeto, we have visited two of Cecosesola's three ferias: La Feria del Centro, which is next door to the escuela and dormitorio where we are staying, and La Feria Ruiz Pineda, where we are today. Unlike the other two ferias, which are only open Friday, Saturday, and part of Sunday, La Feria Ruiz Pineda is also open on Tuesday mornings. Like OFC's Westside store, this one is close to a residential neighborhood and gets a lot of foot traffic, and was the first feria Cecosesola opened. Outside the store, a group of young men, los viajeros, wait astride a fleet of ingeniously-constructed tricycle-wagons, and Ricardo tells us that they are street kids, who Cecosesola helped organize into a cooperative, who now attend meetings, plan budgets, and share decision-making with the rest of the collective.

Also like the Westside, La Feria Ruiz Pineda is often too small for the number of people who want to shop there. When we visit the accounting team's office, they are running projections for a construction project in process: a new kitchen and dining room for the workers, along with an expansion of the feria space. Inside, we stock bags of sugar into displays up over my head. We fill bins with napkins and stack six-packs of Malatin, a malted soft drink that I'm told tastes like medicinal root beer. During el fin de semana, there will be three or four times the the number of people bustling through the aisles as there are today.

Like the other ferias, this one is a large warehouse space full of murals of dancing vegetables (especially carrots, which might be Cecosesola's mascot, if they had such a thing. On a side note, my favorite carrot mural is on the outside wall of the Feria del Centro, and features a family of carrots out grocery shopping, with the smallest sucking a pacifier). The sales floor is divided into several different areas, which work like their own stores, in that they have their own entrances, exists, and cash registers. The largest area is for viveres--the kind of items that make up OFC's grocery and taxable sections, like the aforementioned drinks and sugar bags. Next door there is a space for vegetables, a fruiteria, a carniceria, a mini-drugstore, a space where pet food is sold in bulk. Out front there is a cart for fororo, a thick, warm roasted corn drink, the sales of which have helped Cecosesola build and staff the health center we'll be visiting this afternoon.

Several shelves around the store are dedicated to products made by Cecosesola's affiliated co-ops. These include spices, coffee, a coffee alternative, whole grain flours, sauces, cleaning products, vanilla glycerin, and more. They tend to be natural and pesticide-free, so while many of the products Cecosesola sells are those you would find in any supermarket, the cooperative is bit-by-bit growing the market for natural foods in Barquisimeto while also assuring fair wages, cooperative process, and direct sales though their relationships with and support of co-ops within their network.

That afternoon we visit El Centro de Salud Integral, one of Cecosesola's newest projects, a truly gorgeous modernist building near the Feria de Ruiz Pineda. For several hours we talk with our hosts, Javier, Ricardo, Snaeda, and Conchi, and we meet other compañeros along the way. We walk up glass staircases and onto long balconies, and we stand in rooms with decorative concrete block walls that are open to the breeze. The hospital rooms, empty at the moment, have cheerful teal-painted walls and gauzy curtains.In Cecosesola's case, integral means that both allopathic and alternative medicines are offered at the health center, with an emphasis on preventative care. Radiology shares a floor with hydrotherapy, and you can get acupuncture a floor below. Cecosesola's workers pay a fee of 5 bolivares per week (around 50 cents U.S.) and receive free health care at El Centro de Salud. (They also sell certain products in the ferias to raise money for this fondo). People from the community are able to access the center's services, at prices much lower than a traditional private hospital's.

At the end of the day we say goodbye to our kind hosts, and Javier takes us back to our dormitorio. In the morning, our first meeting awaits!

Cooperative Musings

2012-01-29T22:02:00.000-08:00

Photo Credit: Alejandra Abreu

When is a cooperative not--well--cooperative? As a family farmer and community organizer, Javier Marcos, of Hacienda La Ceiba, has not always had the best experience with cooperatives. At a certain point, he says, some of the cooperatives he's worked with are no more democratic or community-minded than your average private business.

How so? Javier describes how decision-making and funds-allocations work for the organized cacao farmers in the high production states of Miranda and Sucre, in Venezuela. Each community has access to a communal council (consejo communal) through which government loans and other funds are allocated, and development projects are identified and prioritzed. Anybody from the community can attend these councils, and many decisions are made together in assembly. Other decisions are made by committees elected by the assembly and are responsible for particular community projects, for loans and money disbursement, for accountability of the overall process, etc. When several community councils have interests in common, they can form a larger organization, called a comun. In addition, state-owned processing plants have worker councils, which are connected in many ways to the communal councils of the areas where they are located. And so on. As I followed Javier's talk, I found I needed to draw what I was hearing in order to understand the relationships. Interestingly, the resulting page of circles and squares and the manic spiderweb of connecting lines between them turned out to look much like what happens when we try to map out the various committees, departments, action teams, and other bodies that make up the Olympia Food Co-op.

The difficulty that Javier has run into with some of the co-ops in his community is that they can feel like closed structures in which the members are only accountable to each other, and not to the good of the greater whole. For example, he says, if he has an opinion about something happening in his community or in another nearby, he can go to a meeting of the local community council, speak his piece, and have an effect on decision-making. However, if he has something to say about the actions of a co-operative in his community, he may not have any way to communicate it, unless he is already a member. And, Javier says, as a part of Venezuela's Afro-Venezuelan community, his ancestors' struggle to liberate themselves from slavery, to find their voice, has meant that he is not willing to allow his own voice to be quieted. Once your voice is found, he says, it cannot be taken away.

All of which left me and Alejandra abuzz with thoughts about our own dear Co-op, of course. Certainly ours is a Co-op that has a long history of involvement with and advocacy for our community through our mission statement, our donations, our classes, and other avenues. And our membership structure assures that there are no financial barriers to membership, though cultural and other barriers may remain for some. Members can make their voices heard in the policies of the co-op through Board of Directors elections, attendance at the annual meeting and other Board meetings, through ballot decisions, including those that can be initiated by any group of 300 who sign a petition to place a particular issue on an election ballot, and by writing suggestions in the stores. As a relatively new staff member, I am likely to be missing something here, perhaps other longer-term co-op folk could chime in in the comments section (which I haven't figured out how to respond to yet...please bear with me in my blogger-newbiness).

As for other decision-making at OFC, Staff make decisions by consensus, as does the Board. In general the two have different spheres of decision-making. Of course, throughout our history as an organization, we have not always found it easy to draw these lines.Hopefully both Board and Staff decisions take into account both the needs of our members and of the wider community. I'm sure there are times when both bodies do a better job of this than others, but the question of the day for me is: how fully do members and the wider community have the chance to participate in decision-making at the Co-op? How are we accountable to the communities that surround our stores? To what extent is what we do now sufficient? To what extend might we want to increase access to direct participation in decision making for those who are members of neither the Board nor the Staff?

Good questions to mull as we arrive in Barquisimeto, and spend our first night here at Cecosesola, where we are welcomed by a group of about 20 compener@s, and where we are looking forward to a good nights' sleep in their lovely office/ dormitories before heading out to stay with host families tomorrow. Already we have created and tried to address confusion about who makes which decisions at OFC in the course of trying to present our organization's structure (the workers at Cecosesola seem to be just as interested in this issue as all other collective workers I've ever met). Already we have found we have a lot in common, and also much to learn from each other. It is going to be a wonderful four weeks.

P.S. Here are a few pictures from Hacienda La Ceiba...we are working on beginning to post more extensive albums on the Co-op's facebook account.

P.P.S. We aren't yet sure how regularly we'll have access to computers and internet here while working here, so it may be that updates will be coming every few days instead of most. Keep checking back, or become a follower to get updates when I am able to post.

Vamos a Barlovento!

2012-01-27T20:33:00.000-08:00

The Evergreen students and I are back in the common room of the PROUT house in Caracas along with friends from here in Caracas, from Barquisimeto, from Cuba. The patio doors are open to the cool night air (by which I mean that we are no longer sweating in our sleeveless shirts and sandals). We have just returned from an overnight trip to Barlovento and there are guitars and a drum. We are singing and listening to each other sing songs from all over the Americas. Eres Tu has made an appearance, as have La Bamba and Bonnie Raitt.

It has been an incredibly full 48 hours. We have visited an organic farm run by a Swiss NGO in cooperation with a local communal council and 4 Cuban agronomists. We have visited a cacao plantation where four generations of the same family harvest, dry, shell, and grind some of the world's finest cacao by hand. We have spoken, just this afternoon, with Luis Pordomo, a leader of the Afro-Venezuelan movement. We have swum in the Carribean and have skimmed in boats over a laguna to see hundreds of scarlet ibis and brilliant white egrets and massive grey pelicans cloud home to roost.

At Centro Madre, a Cuban orchardist shows us how Guyaba trees are grafted onto rootstock, a process that very much resembles what I've seen in Washington apple orchards. In the henhouse, there are tobacco leaves hanging, a natural deterrent against mites and other bothersome insects. In the coming years, this place will become a cooperative, complete with a store for direct sale of food from the farm. Ale and I write down our email addresses and offer support in the coop's formation.
We share an amazing lunch, and the Cuban agronomists who are kind enough to explain the particulars of their collaboration with Venezuelan farmers also ask us to do what we can on behalf of the Cuban 5 in Miami. The U.S. news doesn't report much about these things, they've heard. If we could just spread the word to people we know back home.

The next day at Hacienda La Ceiba, his family's cacao plantation, Javier Marcos shows us how cacao is grown. He says you must space the trees 3 meters by 3 meters, between which you should place plantanos for the the first 3-5 years, both to shade the young plants, and to provide a crop by which a family can survive until.the cacao is old enough to produce. In addition, you need to plant mahogany, bulgare, y ceva trees for more permanent shade as the cacao matures. He cuts open a cacao pod and we taste the mucilago around the seeds.He explains that Venezuela grows and exports the finest cacao in the world, and that it is all grown on small family farms using traditional organic methods.Until recently, this cacao has been exported entirely through private companies, who keep prices low and have made it exceedingly difficult for the Afro-Venezuelan family farmers of Barlovento to survive using the traditional farming practices that protect the environment while assuring the highest quality cacao. Through Javier's work as a vocero for Afro-Venezuelan cacao farmers, and the work of community members with various consejos communales in cacao-growing areas, this is beginning to change. The state has been increasing its capacity to buy cacao directly from farmers, at a much higher price than the private companies, and is additionally planning to construct two large cacao processing plants in the next year, so that more cacao can be turned into chocolate rather than being exported.

And we ended today with Luis Perdoma, who welcomed us to the cultural center for Afro-Venezuelans in Barlovento, a place with a long history of cumbes, communities of escaped and liberated slaves who came together to resist Spanish Colonialism. Here, and throughout Venezuela, the Afro-Venezuelan community continues to struggle--to luchar--against racism both with the aid of the government and by confronting those within it who wish to deny that it exists. Of the desire to deny racism--something that may sound familiar to those of us living in the so-called "post-racial" U.S.--Luis says that it is as possible using your finger to block out the sun. He describes the need for greater representation of Afro-Venezuelans in educational materials and historical texts. He recounts recent successes: a law forbidding racial discrimination in Venezuela, the inclusion of a question in the census asking people to identify ancestry. And he says there is much more that needs to be done.

Now the music is waning. It is getting late, and some of the group, whose stomachs have been bothering them since last night's pizza dinner, are already in bed. Tomorrow is our last full day in Caracas before we leave for Barquisimeto. There, Ale and I will be immersed in cooperative process, will observe and participate in meetings, will visit farms and health centers, and, we hope, will help stock vegetables, some of the work we know best.

*Hopefully tomorrow we will have an in-depth discussion of the difficulties and potentials of the Co-operative model, in light of information shared during Javier Marcos' (from Hacienda La Ceiba cacao plantation). And photos, too!

Catching Up

2012-01-25T20:28:00.000-08:00

Tonight it's already late and we are leaving tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. for Barlovento, where we will visit a cacao cooperative and processing plant, but I want to get down at least a little bit about the people and places we visited in the last two days before putting in my earplugs and slipping on my eyeshade (excellent tools for sleeping in a room with 11 other people) and falling fast asleep, as I have every night since we arrived.

I'll try bullet points:

* the first night we arrived, we traveled to a building near the capitol, and listened to a group of queer youth talk about their experiences organizing and giving workshops in and around Caracas. Of note was a process they have entered to sue a popular T.V. show for defamation of queer characters. Under the constitution, any citizen group of 20 or more has the right to bring such a suit, and the corporation responsible for the programming has to respond within a period of days. If there is no response, or if the suit is found in case of the plaintiffs, then the offending show loses its airtime, and the plaintiffs then get to name what they would like to see shown instead.

* yesterday we visited La Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela, a state-sponsored university that is free for all students. We ate home-cooked quality food in el comedor, also free. Several students spent the day with us, showing us around the building and giving us a history of the struggle for public education in Venezuela. We learned that the curriculum is interdisciplinary and that each year students are required to undertake a proyecto, meaning that they work within their communities to find out what services are needed, and then work with community members to find solutions and get a necessary project off the ground, such that it can be run by the community when the students finish the school year. Some examples include community T.V. and radio stations and accessible drinking water.

photos by Alejandra Abreu

today we spent most of the day at a farm outside of Caracas, talking with recipients of microloans and with administrators from the Red de Mujeres, a project of the government's ministry of women. The farm was beautiful, the women passionate and well informed about their history and the need for a global women's movement. It was a day of connection and serious inspiration. Above, you'll find some pictures from today: Ale holding the tea that was shared with us, a picture of the amazing soup we had for lunch, pictures of the women from the Red de Mujeres, and the farm itself.

If I wasn't so tired, I would include the text of article 88 of the Venezuelan Constitution, something the Red is working hard to get instituted. But for now, I'll let you look it up yourselves.

Goodnight for now...

Welcome to Caracas

2012-01-24T17:40:00.001-08:00

Our first day in Caracas: Ale and Iarrive from the airport by taxi through 2 hours of traffic. We aregiven lunch and shown our room at PROUT, the hospitality house wherewe'll be staying for the next several days. Outside it is sunny anddamp. Green vines and explosive red flowers ornament iron gates.Birds chirp, guard dogs lose their minds whenever anyone passes onthe sidewalk. The traffic horns are incessant and motorcycles dartbetween the cars like schools of fish.

Inside, Ale and I sit with severaldozen Evergreen students, professors, and Dada, the proprietor ofthis place, a Northamerican Buddist monk in orange robes. We arelistening to a presentation by Roland Denis, a longtime member of therevolution here in Venezuela. We are terribly tired after 24 hours oftravel, but he is both fascinating and well spoken. When someone askshow life has changed for the poor now that Chavez has come to power,Denis responds that it is far more important what the poor havecreated for themselves. He highlights several successes of therevolution so far: the availability of higher education, the neareradication of illiteracy, the beginnings of land reform, betterhousing in the barrios. He talks about what needs further change: thehealth system, which he hopes will move in the direction of naturaland traditional medicines and the ongoing displacement andassassinations of campesinos on behalf of multinational landinterests. In the struggle for greater justice, he says, thegovernment has been both a help and a hindrance. Denis has beenorganizing in Venezuela's poorest communities for decades, and it isclear his enthusiasm for the work hasn't waned. At the end of histalk, one of the Evergreen students asks what inspires Roland to workfor revolution. And this is what he says:

As a young man, Denis was in Nicaraguawhen the Sandanistas took the capital. After the the basicnecessities had been dealt with and food and water had returned toManagua, neighborhood meetings began. One form these meetings tookwas poetry circles, and Denis went to one, with the goal of relaxingand meeting some of his neighbors. He read something he'd written.Others read what they'd brought. And then an elderly woman stood up.She didn't know how to read, so instead she picked up a mirror, andbegan to undress. Part by part she told the story of her body, thepoem of her skin. Roland was in awe. He decided that if this was whatrevolution looked like, he was ready to make the commitment.Thirty-some years later, he'sstill at it. And even if we are bone tired, we know how lucky we areto be here, fighting sleep, learning about some of the ways arevolution can look.

The Robot Canceled your Reservation and Other Adventures

2012-01-23T19:19:00.000-08:00

I begin this post somewhere betweenSeattle and Houston, rather miraculously airborne after the second orthird most eventful travel experience of my life (the other twoinvolved multiple avalanches and a very pleasant historical tour ofthe city given by the Prague police, respectively).

This voyage began, of course, with 17inches of snow, layers of ice and rain, and hundreds of downedbranches and powerlines, all of which changed life as we know it inthe South Sound the week before Alejandra and I were due to leave. Asof this writing, many are still without power, including the WestsideCo-op, and neighborhoods are in threat of losing access to theirwells. Like most houses on the Eastside, ours lost power Thursdayafternoon; our phones, being cordless, went out at the same time. Itwas only by walking to a friends' house nearby that had kept powerthrough the whole storm because of its proximity to certain statebuildings that I found out our flight had been canceled. We had beenre-booked, it seemed, and though the details of the new flight werestrange—there was an isolated leg from Mexico City to Caracas onSaturday, while the rest of the ticket didn't have us flying out fromSeattle until Sunday, we had a super-tight 35 minute connection inHouston, and the departure and return flights were all mixed in witheach other on the itinerary list, it felt good to know that we hadsomething, as I closed downmy friend's computer and walked back home to my darkened house. Thenext day, my partner and I took the bus to Lacey and purchased acorded phone which had the added unexpected benefit of picking up alocal radio station and playing it in your ear while you placed aphone call (we got storm updates this way for a while). However,after an hour and a half on hold with the airline trying to clarifywhat I'd seen online, I decided to trust that the flight would workitself out. There was plenty else to pay attention to.

That night and the coming days, wehosted friends who didn't have heat, learned to cook eggs on our woodfireplace insert, and witnessed our community come together toprovide for each other in ways we had rarely experienced. Friendswould show up at each others' houses, needing or offering a warmplace to stay, phones to use & warm meals, bus drivers stoppedanywhere on the street you needed a ride, the night sky seemedbrighter without streetlights and everyone was out walking, headingsomewhere warm to eat or spend some time with neighbors they may nothave seen otherwise.

Saturday afternoon and evening, mypartner and I helped workers at the Westside Co-op unload the coolersand freezers of hundreds of pounds of meat, dairy, and frozen fruitsand vegetables still at temp but not likely to be for long with thepower still out and no clear prediction of when it would be back on.Twice, we filled the Food Bank's van with the kind of natural andorganic high-protein food people in our community have had a strongneed for this winter, and which will be especially welcome after anentire week with the Food Bank closed.

Even as the power outages continue, andthere are predictions of flooding in the rural areas south of town, Ihave some hope, based on the cooperative principles I saw in actionthis past week, that the community will come together to provide.

How strange, after all we experiencedthis past week, to arrive at the airport today, having caught a ridewith Alejandra's friend over clear roads. How strange to lug our bagsup to well-lit counters, and to expect that within 24 hours we wouldbe in a land of sun and seasonal fruit and thunderstorms, and thejackets we're wearing would seem unnecessary in the extreme. When wearrive at the ticket counter, it appears there's a problem. My ticketcannot be located. Ale's, though it does seem to exist, cannot beaccessed; only a summary can be printed. In addition, all flights toSan Francisco have been delayed 2-3 hours, again for weather. Theagent searches diligently and in the end says that Aeromexico hasAle's —we'll have to call them to have it “unlocked.” As formine: “the robot has canceled your reservation. It's as if younever paid.”

We decide to try the ticket counter ofthe airline that issued our original tickets. It's still an hour anda half before our flight is due to board. When we arrive, the agentwho pulls up what she can of our information says, simply, “what amess.” It quickly becomes obvious that with the delays in SanFrancisco, our only chance of making Caracas by morning is to get ona flight that leaves in half an hour. The women at the counter clickinto go mode. They call our gate, sort through the jumble of ourreservation, check our baggage (without entering it into thecomputer, a trick we hope won't prevent our bags from joining us inCaracas). Ale and I watch, interjecting what we hope are helpfulclarifications (yes, we are going to the same place, no, we aren'tspending any time in Mexico City, yes, our return dates are slightlydifferent). Hearts thumping, hands shaking, we pull out whateverinformation the women ask for. We demonstrate that our carry-ons fitin the sizer. It's as if we've been named contestants in a game showfor which we don't know the rules.

Finally, we are given tickets, told toturn right after security, and to run. We cut in line, thoroughlyannoying our fellow travelers. At the scanner machine, my deck ofcards in a plastic case momentarily holds us up. Shoes back on, wesprint for the shuttle. Catch our breath while the train runs. Run upthe escalator. We make the gate, where they allow us to board, buttell us we must check our carry-ons. Unsure if we'll see our bagsbefore Caracas first thing in the morning, we repack like lighteningin the jetway.

Into my purse I stuff a book of fictionand one of poetry, my toothbrush, and an unfilled travel mug. Iforget all the food I packed, including a heavenly chunk of Mopsy'sBest cheese from Black Sheep Creamery. I also forget the guide bookand Spanish verb reference I had been planning to study on the plane.Ale forgets her camera. We say goodbye to the changes of clothes we'dpacked in case our other bags get held up. We arrive at our seats,panting, thirsty, having been spoken to sharply by the flightattendant who took our boarding passes, and who had no way of knowingthat we hadn't been drinking lattes in the concourse until the lastminute. We're a mess, but we make the flight.

Several hours later, we are about toarrive at the outrageously named George Bush IntercontinentalAirport. I close my eyes and dream a little. I see flight attendantswheeling carts of baby yogurts and goat kefir for hungry passengers.From one cooperative experience to another. The trip has begun.

Map of our Trip!

2012-01-17T13:12:00.000-08:00

Hi again, friends!

Here is a look at what our route will be while in Venezuela. As I mentioned in the previous post, we will be starting with a few orientation days in Caracas along with students from Evergreen's program: Venezuela: Building Economic and Social Justice. Then, there will be a short trip to the coast where we'll visit a cacao cooperative & cooperatively managed processing plant in nearby Barlovento, (Miranda State).

Here's what Anne Fischel, one of the professors of the Evergreen program has to say about Barlovento. Barlovento "is a region, not a town, northeast of Caracas. It is where escaped and freed slaves settled, so today it is known as a center of Afro-Venezuelan life and culture.

We are going to an organic cacao plantation that is a family-owned cooperative. We will also be visiting either a cacao processing plant or the most recent addition, a plant that actually produces and packages chocolate. They are also starting to market their products to the nation. Both plants, as I understand it, are cooperatives, and both are co-owned by the local communal council, a new organ of participatory democracy in Venezuela."

More about Caracas and Barlovento when we actually arrive in Venezuela (today's flight was canceled for snow and ice and we've been rebooked for Sunday as of this posting). For now, here's a map of the region we'll be visiting–whenever we get there. Wish us luck!

View Larger Map

A Co-operative Exchange!

2012-01-05T16:25:00.000-08:00

This is an invitation to all Co-op members, fans, and supporters, to follow the blog I'll be writing while serving as a delegate from the Olympia Food Co-op to Cecosesola, (Central de Cooperativas de Servicios Sociales de Lara) a worker-owned, consensus-run cooperative with around fifty linked cooperatives in Barquisimeto, Venezuela this January & February!

Starting on the 20th of this month, my co-worker Alejandra and I will be traveling on behalf of OFC to Venezuela for 5 weeks, the first of which will be spent in Caracas and on the coast, along with students from an Evergreen program, gaining an orientation to Venezuelan government and culture, and visiting a successful cacao cooperative. The following four weeks Ale and I will spend at Cecosesola, participating in meetings, working in their food markets, and visiting affiliated cooperatives in the area. We will be reporting back to our co-workers and members at OFC through meetings, and presentations, and will be involved in planning a conference and helping to host 2-4 members of Cecosesola, when they visit Olympia in May 2012 to complete this exchange. Ale and I are both honored and elated to be have been chosen to represent OFC, and we hope that our organization will benefit concretely from the ideas and new understanding we bring back as a result of our experiences.

What is Cecosesola?
Though Cecosesola first began as a cooperative aiming to offer more affordable funeral services to members of its community (a function it continues to serve to this day) its largest project is a retail food cooperative, which includes the operation of 3 ferias––large markets for food and other goods––which supply 1/4 to 1/3 of the families in Barquisimeto with affordable, sustainably-grown food. Other services provided through Cecosesola to its community include: health care, discounts on appliances and other services, savings and loan services, farming, food-processing, transportation, and more.

As OFC continues to grow as one of the very few consensus-based, collectively run food cooperatives in the United States, we are very fortunate to have this opportunity to create a partnership, and share valuable skills and learning with a cooperative like Cecosesola. This trip is a way to put into practice our goal of solidarity with the cooperative movement worldwide. Cecosesola and OFC have many qualities in common, including:

* consensus-based decision-making
* collective, non-hierarchical management
* longevity: Cecocesola was founded in 1967, OFC in 1977
* mission goals to support the cooperative movement
* responsibility for multiple locations
* goals of linking sustainability to economic and social justice

At the same time, Cecosesola, a much larger and vertically-integrated organization, has a great deal to teach us here at OFC. Following our commitment to consensus-based decision-making, as OFC's staff has grown to nearly 80 members, we have been in a continual process of evaluating, shifting, and creating new staff structures to accomodate the scale at which these decisions need to be made. As you may imagine, it can at times be challenging for 80 people to find shared ground on issues as varied as staff wages, expansion, accountability policies, and building improvements, especially as we seek to keep the many desires of our members central. Some decisions can take a very long time to develop and be implemented, and experiences such as the ongoing conversation and lawsuit around the Co-op's boycott of Israeli products show that there can be disagreement about which bodies should have decision-making power in which circumstances.

At Cecosesola, building consensus among a large and diverse group of workers is also an important part of ongoing work, but at a scale it is hard for us at OFC to even imagine. For example, there are over 400 workers involved in the running of their three ferias alone! Though Cecosesola is functioning in a cultural, societal, and political climate that is very different from what we experience in Olympia, there is likely much that we can learn from a process that brings such a number of workers together in decision-making. And this is just one of the many areas we hope to study while at Cecosesola. Others include the integration of producer and community-based cooperatives (such as OFC's relationship with Tulip Low-Income Credit Union), the focus on local and international cooperative education, and notions of expansion, among others.

Follow this blog to get regular updates on mine and Alejandra's travels, and to gain an in-depth look at one staff person's experience of learning and working in solidarity with one of our international partners in the cooperative movement.

For More Information
* An in-depth look at Cecosesola's history and current projects as of 2006. (This source also has a more recent interview with a founding member of Cecosesola).
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/1793

* A very recent article commissioned by an NGO we will be working with while in Caracas.
http://priven.org/262/

* For Spanish speakers, Cecosesola's excellent and in-depth website.
http://cecosesola.blogspot.com/