‘Solidarity economy’: Indigenous women run WhatsApp food swap in Costa Rica

Indigenous community uses WhatsApp food swap to stay resilient under pandemic pressure. 

A new online food exchange scheme led by indigenous women near the Carribean side of Costa Rica is strengthening traditional practices in the face of the pandemic.

The programme, which launched with its first money-free food exchange in June, aims to tackle the impacts of COVID-19 on local people’s food security. 

But it also hopes to build a longer term resilience against the threats of climate change and encroaching industrial farming.

“Our new generation are losing these practices and now is a good time to take them up again,” says Gina Haylen Sanchez, a member of the women’s association leading the project. “Now that we are faced with this situation, we have to bring out what we really are saying that we are as indigenous people.”

Exchange

The first local product swap, organised by the Kábata Könana Women’s Association from the mountainous Cabécar Talamanca indigenous territory, took place in late June.

The exchange revolves around “tejedoras”, or “knowledge weavers”,women from ten communities inside the territory who collect information about the food needed by families in their area, and what they have to spare.

This information is sent by WhatsApp to a central office of the association, which works out the exchange, or “estanco”. Produce is harvested and collected together in white plastic sacks outside people’s houses, where the women collect it, bring it to their central office, unload everything and sort it afresh into delivery packages.

The use of WhatsApp to collect the information fits in with a wider trend in Costa Rica – the social media platform has been used extensively during the pandemic by producers and small businesses to connect and deliver directly to customers.

But the initiative also aims to strengthen the traditional agroforestry farming techniques of the Cabécar, whereby crops are planted among native trees and plants – allowing farming without the need to raze whole forests.

“We saw that at some point this pandemic is going to affect us economically,” says Edith Villanueva Reyes, secretary of the board of directors of the Association for the Integral Development of the Talamanca Cabécar Indigenous Territory (Aditica). But instead of looking outside the territory for support, the woman decided to focus on working internally, she says.

Reinforcing tradition

The process is a modern, scaled-up version of the Cabécar’s traditional custom of exchanging food. “You always brought something to the person you were going to visit, and you have something back to the person who visited you,” says Levi Sucre Romero, an indigenous Costa Rican from the neighbouring Bribrí de Talamanca territory and a coordinator of the recovery plan in Talamanca Cabécar. ”This was common within the territory and was very strong before, but is less so now.”

However, the system is not a strict barter where “I have to give you and you have to give me”, says Villanueva Reyes.

The new exchange combines these traditional methods with the concept of “estancos” – local bartering systems organised by the Costa Rican government several decades ago to boost production in different areas of the country. 

Each part of Cabécar has a different balance of food production, Haylen Sanchez Rayes, another member of the Kábata Könana association, tells me as she takes a break from unpacking the white plastic sacks, each with the name of the family that contributed it. 

In the lower region, varieties of plantain and banana are grown along with cassava, cacao and avocado, she says, while higher up rice, different varieties of beans and maize are more common.

A “solidarity” economy

With a series of precautions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I’m able to visit the woman in their central office the day they are collecting the food. Costa Rica has seen a large number of cases over the past few months, despite its initial success in containing the virus, and the indigenous territories have implemented strong measures to try to prevent the spread of the virus. 

This forms part of a wider pandemic care and recovery plan for the Talamanca Cabécar territory, which has also included ensuring local people are informed about the pandemic in their own language and restricting access to the territory.

The second estanco taking place when I visit in late August is different from the first. The 5000 kilos of food –  collected from some 300 local families – is being distributed not among the indigenous community, but in San José, Costa Rica’s capital, via a network of young indigenous women who play for female football teams.

The women say they have arranged this in a sign of gratitude for support they have received from the capital during natural disasters such as floods. They also want to show solidarity with those struggling in the city during times of pandemic. “We can walk onto our patios for a banana, cassava, a hen or eggs,” says Marisela Fernández Fernández, president of the Kábata Könana Women’s Association. “But in the city people do not have that same luck.”

The two exchanges may appear different, but are both part of a “solidarity economy”, says Bernard Aguilar, executive director of environmental NGO Fundación Neotrópica – who argues they exemplify the important role played by elements not counted as economic growth. “Nothing that is going to be transacted in the estanco project is going to appear in the GDP,” he notes.

A third virtual exchange, which will again distribute food back among the community, will take place in a few weeks time. Ultimately, the women want to expand the exchange to include other indigenous territories, including poorer areas such as Alto Telire – an extremely remote Cabécar community in the neighbouring Telire territory where the growth of marijuana crops has led to the arrival of international drug traffickers – and cocaine along with them.

“We have thought of carrying out initiatives there, but we have to set goals to see how we can get in, how we can go and talk to these families,” says Sanchez Rayes. 

The women also hope to begin connecting online with people outside the territories to sell produce directly to them. This would be a change to how much of their produce is currently sold, to larger companies which have cut their orders since the pandemic began.

The estanco is also tied to a wider effort to increase resilience in the region. Another initiative aims to set up a “Living Museum for the Protection of the Seed” – whereby different families would preserve the seeds and informacion of a particular variety of indigenous plant in their homes.

Climate impacts

The Talamanca region is already seeing some impacts of climate change. Several people I speak to highlight a fall in the production of pejibaye – a dry, savoury fruit from the native peach palm trees (or “pejibaye”) popular throughout Costa Rica. 

“I remember that my mother had so many pejibayes that she threw them to the pigs,” Villanueva Reyes tells me. “But from around five years ago, the pejibaye harvests have not occurred. People say it’s because an insect eats them there before they bloom. We don’t know […], but the harvest of pejibayes is no longer the same as before.”

The Talamanca forest mountain range is highly vulnerable to climate change. Already high yearly rainfall could rise by 30% by the end of the century, while the minimum temperature rise is likely to be 3.5C, according to a 2016 report by Costa Rica’s Tropical Agronomic Research and Teaching Center (CATIE). The region’s biodiversity is especially vulnerable due to its high number of endemic species. Humid ecosystems such as that in Talamanca need everything to align, says Sucre Romero.

Fernández Fernández says the community has already been seeing changes in the local climate, with rain and sunny weather coming at unexpected times of year and impacting harvests.

Practices focussing on local varieties and farming methods, such as the estanco, could help to face these climate impacts, she says. “Our elders always say we must work, that we should not sow monoculture that it is only one product,” she adds, referring to the huge banana plantations in Costa Rica which use vast amounts of pesticides. “We have to plant varieties of products to guarantee food, because we do not know when the time of drought, the time of hunger, the time of crisis could occur.”

The pandemic has hit Costa Rica hard, but these women are seeing a way to use this experience to create more resilience in the long term. “By practicing our own culture, as our ancestors taught us, we can continue living and we can face the pandemic,” says Villanueva Reyes.