Escudo de Colombia y texto de la Unidad para las Víctimas

Mistrató, serve me a coffee!

“Devastated landscapes and displaced men, far from beyond the cities, were depopulating coffee tables”, Juan Manuel Roca, Bible of poors. The association of coffee farmers Asojardín, which brings together 150 families of the municipality and their villages, of which 70 percent are victims of conflict, has become that candle in which they have deposited the faith not only the peasant, but also the women and young people, who feel that with the coffee of the region the future has a good aroma.

Por Erick González G.

When it is arriving at Mistrató, in Risaralda, it causes to steal that landscape that flows before the look. With a painting is insufficient, with a polaroid, too. The most advisable thing is to thread in the soul something of its environment. Raja Yoga, Taichi or Qi Gong would be advisable. However, a coffee on the edge of a balcony in one of its paths is an enduring snapshot. Nobody would believe that this town that resembles the sketch of a cross in the middle of a succession of mountains and crops would have been tainted by the raids of  Farc-Ep and the paramilitary groups. But 7,672 people in the Unified Victims Registry, out of a total of 16,595 inhabitants, suggest the bitter coffee that had to be taken in the region for several years.

Enforced disappearances (63 victims), threats (263), homicides (498 victims) and forced displacement (1,902), were some of victimizing facts in the twilight of the twentieth century and in the dawn of the XXI, which show the kingdom, almost unfading , of the terror in Mistrató and in the neighboring paths, namely, El Caucho, Pinar del Río, Genoa, Dosquebradas, La Estrella, El Progreso, Bellavista, Miraflores, El Vergel, La Villada, La María, Rio Arriba, Bajo, Mampay, Playa Bonita, Nacederos, San Isidro, Barcinal, Argentina, Quebrada Arriba, La Linda, Alto de Pueblo Rico, El Naranjo, El Terrero, Saquias, Garden, Jardincito, La Esmeralda and La Aldea.

For 2011, according to National Planning Department (DNP), the urban area had 4,133 inhabitants and the rural area, 11,569. That is, almost triple. It could well be assumed that this difference is reproduced in terms of the number of victims of armed conflict. And as in many places of the national geography, the designation as collaborator of the enemy faction fed many figures and stigmas.

“My mom worked with the hospital, and as a health promoter she had more room to act, so anyone who came to the house had to be attended peasants, the Army or guerrillas, but the people did not understand, then the accusations came from both sides; That is why we found ourselves in need of moving, “says Wilton Mejía, a coffee farmer victim in the hamlet of Mampay, from whom he was away for nine years.

The law of retaliation was also executed: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or rather, with the retributive justice of guerrilla and its own law of the mountain: man for man, side by side: “I was a victim of displacement for having served military service, and if I had been with the Army for two years I also had to spend two years with the guerrillas, so I was scared and left with my family on the sides of Medellin”, says Edilson de Jesús Medina, a coffee farmer who actually  fulfilled his military service in the program Soldiers Peasants, whose state purpose, he says, was to recruit peasants from the same town to recognize the subversives.

With the requirement to Edilson was fulfilled half of that law: the side by side, but the other fraction, man by man, is perhaps more sinister: if a son was in military service, it was mandatory that another son of the same family was will incorporate its clandestine hosts. But some had the audacity to face this rule. “My uncle stayed at his farm despite the fact that he had some children who were threatened to incorporate them into the ranks of guerrilla who operated there, but they considered it better to risk than to move, because he will understand that moving from one place to another, to build a new life and the sustenance of the family is not easy”, confesses Wilton.

The grievances inflicted by these hordes, in Mistrato and its paths, were of journalistic knowledge: the front Cacique Calarcá, of ELN, harassed the Police Station of the municipality, in 1999; the following year, the Farc copied the same action; in 2001, the Farc and the Eln used invitations to play soccer to recruit children and adolescents; in 2002, they put a bomb in Banco Agrario; between 2002 and 2004, according to figures from the Human Rights Observatory of the Presidency, rates were higher than the national average; In 2004, the FARC massacred four civilians and a year later killed five soldiers in an attack on a platoon; in 2006, the ELN burned a bus in the path Nacederos; in 2007, twelve people were deprived of their freedom p or the ELN, accused of rebellion, but the community prefers to bet that they were false positives and in 2014, the police commander was wounded by an explosive device.

Banished from the owners were the collective effects that this action brought about: the interruption of economic and agricultural activities due to the massive displacement resulted in the deterioration of family income and the food security of population, that is, the absence of crops spoiled the marketing of food that was required at the tables.

And what can we say about the impossibility of freely traveling through the territory, of the homicides and threats of political leaders, of the breaking of social fabric, of the loss of customs and changes in daily practices.

To sow, it was said

However, when violence and its traumas diminished, the coffee farmer did not hesitate to resuscitate his land. He quickly understood that the best way was in company, and that is why in Mistrató, in 2011, nine peasants decided to create Asojardín, a partnership whose purpose was to improve the commercialization of the coffee produced in the region. “We are now 150 farmers, which means that we are 150 families, of which 70 percent are victims of conflict, who meet under a single brand”, says Edilson.

Due to the violations to the political, social and cultural rights of  population they were recognized by the Victims Unit as Collective Reparation Subjects (SRC), reason why thanks to an agreement between the Unit and the United Nations for Food and Agriculture (FAO) were given to the community of Mistrató, in 2018, the complete equipment of a laboratory, a storage center for roasting and packing of coffee, the adaptation of  Peasant´s house was carried out, at the head of municipal office, and the delivery of computer equipment and office for its proper functioning.

This measure not only directly benefits the victims of conflict, its benefits extend to the entire municipality, and strengthened Asojardín, which produces the brand Arrayanes, whose name means village of parrots, which they already market with the support of the Fund for the Reparation Victims of the Unit and the National Federation of Coffee Growers. “The project has had a social impact with the possibility that the people who are there have a sense of belonging and a hope to invest their future there”, says Milton.

To committee!

That feeling in the morning was not just the heritage of the ordinary peasant, it was perceived by young people and women, who with their uplifted spirits have become the foundations on which this future is forged.

“The women’s committee emerged, with which we wanted to empower ourselves more than anything to be able to feel useful, not depend on anyone, because the husband, although he helps a lot, does not have enough to sustain us in everything; instead, with our work we can help support our family, and also with the intention of taking the roasted coffee to other countries”, says Omaira Cardona, whose husband was murdered by in 1991, when he was on a tour At night taking peasants to their farms, a death they never sensed because they had not received any threat of mourning.

For young people the issue presents another look, although some have preferred to leave for the city, others do not support the city crowd, and the future, as uncertain as the present, has been cleared thanks to the work of Rodrigo Antonio Muñoz, 26 years old, displaced boy from El Dovio municipality, in the north of Valle del Cauca, because of the threats his father received, a shopkeeper whose sin was to sell well without looking at who.

In a national youth congress, an adult representative of a coffee union revealed that there were economic incentives to invest in projects with youth, but unfortunately this was not organized. So, with this announcement he persuaded several contemporaries to be part of the youth committee of Asojardín. “I told them that there was the opportunity to carry out the projects with these aids. And the idea is to have our farms technified, and that is the opportunity”.

Although the generational relief worries, the youth committee gives part of tranquility. To list here the training, learning and efforts of Asojardín would be very extensive. The highlight in your coffee production and marketing process is perhaps the value that is being given to women, who have shown that their skirts are well placed. “A farmer without their support in the work of field has less productivity, and there are farms managed only by women or in which they are at the forefront”, says Wilton. And if that association thinks and works in this way, its future has a good flavor and, unlike the verse of the Colombian poet Juan Manuel Roca, those displaced men and women will populate the coffee tables.

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