El Espíritu del Agricultor
(The Spirit of the Farmer)

Gary A. T. Guthrie

Six years ago I attended my first PFI annual meeting. I was living in Des Moines, working for an ecumenical peace organization but was feeling like I wanted to get back in touch with agriculture. Two people on separate occasions suggested I attend the meeting. I knew few people there, but what I experienced has left an indelible mark on my being. For the first time since my family’s return from El Salvador in 1990, I experienced a sense, a spirit if you will, of community. I had spoken in countless churches all across Iowa, yet here with this group of strangers was a tangible sense of connectedness, relatedness that had been lacking in my life since our return from Latin America.

Last March my family returned to El Salvador to visit our friends, who we had worked with during difficult times during the war. Working with the Mennonite Central Committee we administered fertilizer loans to displaced farmers. Now 10 years later there is no war with guns, yet there is an economic war that is crushing the farmers, because like here in the states commodity prices for basic grains are very low and they can ill afford to take out loans for fertilizers and other inputs.

My recent trip to Cuba was a stark contrast to the El Salvador situation. In Cuba they are trying to become self-sufficient in agricultural production because of the blockade, have broken up many of the large state farms into small farms, and have given financial incentives for the farmers to produce more food. I immediately connected with the Cuban farmers as we talked about our production systems, seed varieties, soils, composts and many other topics.

I have been asking myself what attracts me to these campesino farmers? What is it about their lives that I feel an affinity to. I farm the way I do, mostly by hand labor, in part because that is the way my friends do it. All by hand. It may be crazy and it is not easy work, yet I believe in the end it is more sustainable and will certainly keep me from getting too big.

I noticed at that first PFI meeting and many since that this was the first group of people I had met in the states who could critically think. They could analyze their problems and were trying to do something about them. It is easy to complain and get down in the mouth about how bad it is, yet here was a group that was, and is, moving forward looking for solutions, not giving up – and on top of it they talked about not just the business of farming but the quality of life and family life. There was a sense of hope that I had also felt in El Salvador and more recently in Cuba. There was a tangible spirit of the group that attracted me in somewhat the same way that I am attracted to my friends in El Salvador, Cuba and previously in Bolivia.

At our last farm visit in Cuba, we were fed in a farmers’ home located amidst a reclaimed mango grove. It is a cooperative with about six families now, and they were just starting the mango harvest. We drank fresh mango juice, ate pineapple, watermelon and another tropical fruit called zapote. The woman hosting us talked about when they first arrived at the site six years ago. They arrived with their two hands and “el espíritu del agricultor,” the spirit of the farmer. They lived in a shipping container for the first while, until they could build a small wood home. Now they live in a two story cement block home with tile floors. I asked her to describe for me what that spirit meant.

She replied, “It is the love for the land. It is the desire to feed the people in Havana. It is the joy of growing food.”

This was the common thread I had been looking for. For many in PFI, my friends in El Salvador, Bolivia and now in Cuba, when it comes to growing food there is something very sacred about our relationship to the land, its fruits and the essential need all people have to eat the fruits of the land.

Right after our lunch one of the other farmers recited a poem for us. It is fairly common to do this in Cuba, but it is not just recited – it is shared so deeply that the poem is lived out. I was moved by this experience and the sincere hospitality and warmth of our Cuban hosts all week long. I had been trying to synthesize in words what my own farmer’s spirit would mean to me. What I realized was that the words would not come in English but in Spanish. So I wrote this poem dedicated to all Cuban farmers but also to all farmers who love the land. The English version is a very rough translation of the original Spanish.