Patrick Staib

Publication Date

7-1-2012

Abstract

Las Segovias de Nicaragua is a highland tropical region along the Río Coco and the Honduran border in the northern part of the country. Over the past decade and a half, efforts to introduce and establish organic coffee production methods and cooperative organization models have focused on the impoverished rural inhabitants of this region. This approach represents a significant shift in international development policies toward Third World producer nations. I engaged in this context to question the viability of organic coffee farming given the legacy of deceit, violence, and natural disasters that have plagued this region since the Spanish Conquest. The historical and cultural antecedents to this development mode inform the pace and direction in which presumably ‘sustainable’ innovations to this traditionally exploitative, century-old coffee industry take form. I conducted ethnographic research over two years with the small-scale coffee farmer community of Las Grietas within the municipality of San Juan del Río Coco to understand how these innovations are received and embraced by the inhabitants of this region. From 2004-2006, I lived and worked with the farmers of Las Grietas. I relied on community surveys, formal interviews, and casual conversation while involved in day-to-day farm tasks to obtain firsthand data on small farmers’ responses and receptivity to the current development paradigm. Most small-scale coffee farmers in this region were on opposite sides of the Contra War only two decades ago. Today they are members of the same farmer co-ops that work to access secure markets, pre-harvest financing, and development aid. I recount my experiences in cooperative development, marketing, and farm labors as way to present this particular region’s challenges and potentials for success in the realm of organic coffee production and cooperative organization. Ultimately, I argue that as long as development modes are designed far from the sites of their application, it will be difficult to obtain community-wide acceptance for these innovations. Instead, development agencies may find greater results should they incorporate local peoples’ perspectives based on their own realities into the implementation of development schemes. Lastly, I confirmed three dominant themes inform the execution of development agendas in Las Segovias: first, pre-existing structures will influence the application of development efforts; second, more affluent farmers benefit to a greater extent from partnering with poorer farmers to export to specialty markets, like Fair Trade and organic; third, there has been a shift in campesinos relations with the state and international entities in that the descendants of those who rose up in armed revolt against the expansion of the coffee industry into indigenous hinterlands are now championed for their potential stewardship of the remaining stretches of old-growth cloud forest in Nicaragua.

Document Type

Dissertation

Language

English

Degree Name

Anthropology

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Anthropology

First Committee Member (Chair)

Les W. Field

Second Committee Member

Carole Nagengast

Third Committee Member

Marta Weigle

Fourth Committee Member

David Henkel

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