Advertisement
Published: June 24th 2008
Today I arrived at
Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza, an organic coffee plantation owned by Marcos and Silvia Croce. The Croces converted the farm to organic nearly six years ago after they retained ownership of the property from Silvia’s family. Today, the farm welcomes visitors from all over Brasil and abroad, serves as a teaching site for organic and natural (definitions forthcoming!) agriculture and sells fantastic coffee through the Metropolis label in Chicago. www.fafbrasil.com (I think the site is in English too).
Already at the farm are Lisa and Maia, two students from the School of the Art Institute. They are spending a month here working with the women of
Café Igaraí, a cooperative of artisans ranging from early twenties to late sixties/early seventies. The women’s art - embroidery and painted porcelain - reflects the stories and history of coffee. It is very rustic and naïf but at the same time impeccable and highly refined. Lisa and Maia are going to do workshops with the women to learn new techniques, develop new products and paint their workspace.
Lisa and Maia welcomed me with open arms and we immediately got down to chatting. They are amazing - radical, introspective, creative, conscious, respectful, inquisitive. We tossed thoughts and ideas back and forth the whole afternoon stemming from our own experiences with social projects to theory and ideology learned in school (and challenged in the real world). Maia began working with youth radio as an early teenager in Maine and eventually became station manager at the student radio station for SAIC. Lisa has also worked with youth in art and is focused on visual representation and criticism.
One of our conversations focused on their visits to other projects that involve designers (native or foreign) and artisans. One big issue is the question of design imposed from without, and the artisans acting as recreators, versus the artisans becoming creators and producers of their own art. Lisa said that she is “coming to realize that people are equipped with different facilities and have different roles. So the important thing is not creating hierarchies within those roles and allowing mobility and providing opportunity to have real choice.” Earlier she likened it to her own choice to go to art school and not be an artist: she explicitly chose not to pursue art as a career, whereas some of the artisans in the social projects are never given the opportunity to choose to simply reproduce others’ designs.
I asked Lisa and Maia how they felt about coming from the outside to do workshops with the women of Café Igaraí. They both agreed that one has to be comfortable starting from a point of internal conflict: ideal models versus realistic concept and practice. Once beyond the fact that the conflict will never be resolved, one looks at the process not as a teacher-student dichotomy but as an exchange, a cooperative education, a la Paulo Freire. While Lisa and Maia are facilitators, they are equal participants in a back-and-forth that allows everyone to recognize each others’ talents. And they are both very conscious of the “exporting experts” mentality, a problematic situation for those with a postcolonial mindset (read: Gringo go home!), but they are honest with themselves about why they are here and what they bring to the table. So they are not coming in with a mindset of expertise or imposition of knowledge. If this whole conversation seems a little erudite, consider that we are all products of the liberal (in the best way possible) university system and that, in our opinion, it is better to become radicalized and then deal with problems (i.e., people need food) than consider feeding a hungry family the solution to all world problems.
We also talked about the language barrier. Neither Lisa nor Maia speak any Portuguese, or any romance language, although Maia knows American Sign Language and Lisa knows Korean. They are both learning quickly but agree that they would have benefited from learning ahead of time. I felt the same way upon arriving for study abroad - but the three of us, in our own ways, have picked it up really quickly. It is definitely helpful that I speak Portuguese, though, and I’m helping them to learn a few more words and explain stuff without interrupting whoever is speaking. Yet they both welcome the language barrier as a challenge to develop relationships using means other than the spoken word - it forces creativity.
Oh my, there is so much more. Read at your own risk.
So during dinner Silvia asked about the rest of my trip (and why I can only stay until Thursday). I explained that my Dad and I are heading up to the drought-ridden Northeast to visit a guy who works with communities to implement hydroponic gardening programs. I swear Silvia almost went through the roof - but she is incredibly passionate in a wonderful way about everything like that. She explained that if organic is one end of the spectrum - in harmony with nature, respecting the microorganisms in the soil, understanding the relationship between man, nature, and the unkown - that hydroponics is the other - scientific, sterile, relying on chemicals and water, removed from all natural influences, uncertainties and mystery. So that has made me think a lot: why is Instituto Eco-Engenho doing hydroponics? Do they see it as a solution or as a means to an end? Is there another solution to bring water and hydration to the
sertão using more organic means of production? What kind of chemicals do they put in the water? On the one hand, I am going up there with an open mind to listen and observe first, problematize and question later. On the other hand, I am glad to have had these conversations and hear many sides of the story. Silvia did tell me about a guy who brought irrigation to the
cerrado, which is like the
sertão, in the sense that it is desert-y and prone to drought. So it can be done, organically, with little water. I’m going to try and hunt down this guy but apparently he is a bit of a recluse on a farm in Goiás. That would be a feat!
Speaking of hunting things down, everything we eat except the rice and beans and bread is grown on the farm. We have had the freshest salads, cheese, milk, coffee, jellies, cake, vegetables…oh, fantastic. I saw dirty carrots and daikon, green coffee beans that were picked and roasted here on the farm, cheese from cows that were hanging out in the pasture down the hill…pretty soon the sugar to sweeten the coffee will also be produced here. There is a few acre patch that is being prepped now to grow organic sugar in a few months. And there is a small sugar processing plant in Igaraí, or one of the nearby towns, so that will support the local economy and offer both a practical and educational alternative to conventional sugar cultivation.
Finally we played cards with Henrique, the 9 year old son of Roseangela, the housekeeper and a member of Café Igaraí. He laughed at the girls’ Portuguese and tried to beat us at “bullshit”, which we called “liar”/”mentiroso” - but I won! Haha! I am horrible at real card games but rock at Bullshit and “steal the stack” / “robar o monte”, a Brasilian game in which you steal other people’s cards through sheer luck.
Tomorrow we will do a workshop with Café Igaraí: stay tuned (although these will probably all be published together!).
Advertisement
Tot: 0.107s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 8; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0474s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Vittoria
non-member comment
Hey Titia!
Mamma and Babbo think you should teach the nine-year-old to play scopa. We miss you!! ;-)