The Audacity of hope. Part 1. ( Originally published in 2013 )
Yesterday we set off from Caranavi our base for the last couple of days at 4.30 am. As the water wasn’t switched on until 6.30am, bottled water becomes my friend in need!
The early start was to avoid the traffic as well as beating a road closure scheduled for later. We stopped off for breakfast after about 3 hours and had a local delicacy of Trouche. A whole fish flattened and fried over a bed of rice, tasty in the circumstances. We then carried on up to La Paz passing a now snow laden statue of Christ the Redeemer and a few startled Llamas. The view as you approach La Paz is incredible every hillside in site is washed with a light tan of buildings for as far as the eye can see. It’s fast becoming one of my favourite cities in the world. Having rested up for the day we now looked forward to our last day, a visit to the factory of Union Pro-Agro, the Co-op whose farms we have been visiting.
The factory is based in El Alto about an hour outside La Paz and amazingly even higher, well over 4,000 metres. We were taken there by Evaristo the President of the Co-op who also gave us a presentation in his small offices. Like so much that we’ve seen the factory was a work in progress. The stairwell has no hand rail and is open to the first floor. In the UK health and safety rules wouldn’t allow you to even operate in these conditions, but as I’ve said before this part of the world operates to a different set of rules.
The first site is of women hand sorting green coffee. I had experienced this in Peru, but not on this scale and a later tour of the whole factory was an eye opener.
Evaristo gave a presentation to our group in which he explained the extraordinary vision behind the Co-Operative. It’s why I’ve titled this blog the “audacity of hope”. The mission statement alone – “To help community production, education and find sustainable markets “ gives you some idea of the scale of the dream. I later interviewed him and asked why this major investment was taking place now? His answer was simple, they were selling more coffee. With the additional Fairtrade premium they have been able to build infrastructure in the form of roads and equipment, however tough choices needed to be made. For instance they’ve forgone a road upgrade to ensure that some producers get electricity. Emergency healthcare of up to 500 Bolivaris (around £50) is made available to Co-op members and an annual treat of milk, bread and coffee to all co-op members binds the community together.
He showed us an architectural drawing of how the factory was going to look, how they weren’t just stopping at coffee but looking to diversify into Bananas, Citrus fruit and other crops that grew on the producers land. He gave an example of the risk currently faced. There had been a drought in the lower farms whilst in the higher farms frost had been an issue. This had dramatically affected the coffee crop size which in turn had a detrimental effect on the income of the producers. He wanted to try and mitigate this risk.
Finally he spoke about building a Hotel on their collecting site at Caravani. It had proved to be a lucrative purchase a few years before and as it was only used 3 months a year during harvest it made sense to move this collecting operation to El Alto and use the asset more profitably. He also felt that there was an opportunity to use their training centre outside Caravani as a visitor centre. If only I could transplant this man to Jersey as an example of what might be done with so little.