Las Hermanas of Jinotega, Nicaragua
For the first time, each of María Elia Castillo's daughters sleeps in her own bed. The youngest daughter plays in a band and works part-time as a barista at the local coffee cooperative's café. The opportunities available to these sisters would have been unthinkable only ten years ago: for most of her life, their mother María was a landless laborer; today, she owns her own farm that produces some of the best coffee in the region.
María has been able to achieve such success because of the support of her own "sisters," the one hundred and eighty women from the Soppexcca Union of Farm Cooperatives in Jinotega, Nicaragua who contribute coffee to Las Hermanas specialty lots. Only women are allowed to participate, and they feel pride not only in earning a special premium for producing some of the highest-quality coffee in the region, but also for the model of economic success and social strength that they set for their neighbors and daughters.
Soppexcca and its seventeen member cooperatives pursue policies to ensure that outstanding women farmers and leaders like María are allowed to shine, reversing long-standing cultural trends of exclusion from public, economic, and decision-making spheres. In 2005 Soppexcca wrote and adopted a policy to guide their promotion of gender equality, and in 2007 the cooperative decided to offer special credit to women and young farmers to enable them to increase their land holdings. More than twenty women farmers have now received loans to purchase land and to invest in their farms. Maria Elia was one of these women. Soppexcca also conducts educational, health, and organizational programs to support women members in their families, at school, and in the local community.
María Elia Castillo has benefitted enormously from Soppexcca’s services, participating in women’s exchanges with other co-ops and training in coffee production, animal husbandry, and accounting skills. With her increased earnings from higher-quality coffee, she was able to pay off her family’s mountain of debt, access low-interest credit from Soppexcca for farm improvements, and purchase sheep and chickens.
Flora Montenegro, another of the Las Hermanas producers, recently started an ecotourism business on her farm and formed her own small co-op with family members. When asked how the Fair Trade social premiums will be invested, she spoke of resurfacing the road to her community and improving the reliability of electricity so that the processing of coffee cherries can continue after dark. She then picked up her youngest child and said, “My ten-month-old daughter here, she is my other ‘social project!'" Through her dedication and work, Flora's coffee farm has also flourished. Her coffee has won the Nicaraguan Cup of Excellence multiple times.
Soppexcca and the Las Hermanas women provide an incredible example for their communities, supporting women in their progress toward economic and political equality. As one woman from Soppexcca said, since she joined the cooperative, “Every time I knock on the door here, it opens to opportunity.”