December 1999

From the Dunsmores

We have much to be thankful for this Holiday season. Just today we received word that the closed Colima sugar mill will be firing up its boilers the first days of the new millennium. Colima is celebrating today! Forty workers will get their jobs back. And here is the sweetest part: This is happening because the members of the Union of Organic Sugar Cane Growers of El Salvador (UCCOES), organized here at this hacienda, have collectively offered enough semi-organic cane to make feasible a milling run of three or four weeks (about 5,000 tons of cane) and will also sell to the mill their non-organic cane for the rest of the season.

We hope to sell the semi-organic sugar cane, which will be milled first, since all the equipment is clean and free of agricultural chemicals, as "transitional sugar." It will take another year or two to get organic certification, and certification is expensive.

We have a dream of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) passing a resolution in its General Assembly to facilitate the purchase and distribution to its presbyteries of transitional sugar in solidarity with these growers efforts to create a healthier environment for their children. The kids around here often chew on sugar cane newly sprayed with deadly chemicals. One particular nasty pesticide, Counter, requires sixty days after application to be reduced to a level safe for consumption of the sugar cane, but the kids and adults ignore this, or don't believe it, since the effects of eating it are not immediate but cumulative and long-term. Another chemical is sprayed from planes to artificially "ripen" the cane for easier and less expensive harvest with the leaves withered. This is also not good for human beings, yet the houses of the people of Colima lie within 10 feet of the cane fields. Every year, just in El Salvador, there are hundreds rushed to hospitals due to overexposure to a variety of agrochemicals.

We all recall the 9,000 cane fires in Central America last year, the smoke reaching Texas, the closure of international airports. . . and I can actually see a sugar cane field in flames as I write. But organic cane is not burned to rid it of its leaves. Instead workers use machetes to trim them off. We have a dream that the skies will become clear again, that regional organic agricultural supply industries will prosper, and that the soils will come back to life. Mills will no longer use sixteen chemicals to produce our lily white sugar, but turn out a darker, richer sugar that uses no harmful substances in its production. We believe this will motivate farmers to grow vegetables organically also.

In our dream our cooking fuel made from cane residue will also be free of residual chemicals, and we will be able to market it as organic fuel logs!

It is a win-win vision that depends on you, the people of the United States, to request and buy organic sugar from Central America. We believe that together we can do it. It is our Creator's mandate to cease this dead-end cycle of ruin.

More good news: We had our first church retreat here in the hacienda over the last two days. There were 27 young people and four adults here from a Baptist church in San Martin, near San Salvador. They hiked in the forest reserve, rode horses, watched us making fuel logs from bagasse, cooked with bagasse logs and took some logs to show off in San Martin, played soccer on the beautiful fields in the park, splished and splashed for many hours in the newly activated swimming pool, paid for food and lodging here, listened to stories of the war (lest we forget), and sang songs and hymns late into the night.

It was a great "first" for the co-op that owns the hacienda to realize all Colima has to offer. The experience generated both good feelings and income. Last week an older gentleman demonstrated for me the posturing that was expected when one greeted Don Francisco, the last patron of the hacienda. He put one arm across his chest and with the other lowered his hat over his heart. He dropped his head forward. In those days, when Don Francisco's cooks handed out big, fat tortillas to the workers lined up outside the hacienda's walls, it did seem that Don Francisco had everything and they had nothing. We remember when we first arrived here, the people all told us there was nothing here in Colima. "We are poor and ignorant and have nothing to offer,"echoing the legacy of feudalism. But we believe all that is changing. We feel more and more at home here and as 1999 draws to a close, very grateful for the privilege of working in partnership with God and God's people here in El Salvador.

Robert & Julie Dunsmore