In Nicaragua, Haydee Rodriguez Rides door to door to secure women's access to land
October 14, 2011
October 2nd was Haydee Rodríguez's birthday. For the president of the Union de Cooperativas Las Brumas in Nicaragua - an association of women's farming cooperatives working in six municipalities across Jinotega State, who provide credit to women farmers and collaborate to influence agricultural legislation - it was the best way to celebrate it. She woke up at 4 a.m. and she went to look for the plants that she needed for her organization's reforestation project. She is used to the hard work in the fields, waking up early mornings and wearing her plastic boots to go deep down the paths that not even vehicles can get through. Riding her horse down the hills to call on the women of the surrounding area for land-related meetings, to assist them in accessing their own plots and instill a sense of pride in producing their own resources is part of her daily routine. With two dogs barking on the background, she speaks with joy about her work that includes raising women's awareness of their legal claims to land.
Haydee Rodríguez' confidence about the relevance of her community work and dedication to each one of her projects gives her credibility within Jinotega. This is why on October 13th she represented women in the National Rural Women Encounter In honor of the upcoming International Day of Rural Women, held each year on October 15th. At 8:45 a.m., Rodriguez addressed attendees and organizations in the Cesar Jerez Auditorium at the Universidad Centroamericana in the capital Managua. Her goal: "I want to convey the essence of our work as rural women," she said in a phone interview the week leading up to the meeting, adding how securing land titles for women is central to women's position as agricultural producers. Her message was accompanied by a gift that women prepared for the event: a wicker basket woven by them, filled with the products they produce in the field.
It was a symbolic gift, which she hopes helped to seize the political opportunity that the event presented, as a platform to talk directly to representatives from UN Women and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) about women's contributions to food security. Speaking on behalf of Union de Cooperativas Las Brumas, she aimed to attract the attention of donor agencies, specifically, to the topic of women and land access, and to invite them to cooperate on the cause. "If the land was in the hands of women, developing countries would not suffer from hunger," is one of her statements to donors; "With the land titles we have, we are able to produce" was one of her main slogans. "We women are innovative, we are producers and growers of all kind of crops," she emphasized. Yet women are not recognized for their roles in global agricultural production - an awareness-raising process she hopes to contribute to by sharing her experiences as rural woman in Nicaragua at events like these. Las Brumas has planned additional advocacy activities in the capital on October 15th.
Currently, Rodriguez main advocacy goal is to lobby for the implementation of the recently passed Law 717, which guarantees the allocation of funds from the national budget to poor women for the purpose of purchasing land for agricultural production. As a woman landowner, Rodriguez understands the importance of land ownership for other women, which for many is the basis for creating sustainable livelihoods and advancing their personal empowerment.
It is the collective experiences of rural women in the cooperative that sparked Las Brumas to take the lead in a national advocacy initiative to pass the law in 2010, and it is keeping them on the ball to ensure the law will created concrete improvements at the local level. "To get the 5000 signatures needed to pass this law, we had to get 5000 signatures," Rodriguez recounts of their original target. For this purpose, the women created partnerships with 10 organizations across the country: rural women's cooperatives, cooperatives of women entrepreneurs, women's cooperatives producing bananas. "In the end, we got 10,630 signatures," she says proudly, demonstrating the power of women united for a common cause.
Gender Desk
In Nicaragua, Las Brumas has been a pioneer in mobilizing communities and facilitating local partnerships with cooperatives to expand the possibilities of the law. And while local governments themselves do not have the budget to buy land, they can support women’s agricultural production by providing training and technical support, and it is here that negotiations with the mayors are essential.
Proposals to local government don’t always result in projects with the desired continuity, says Rodriguez. To counteract this problem, Las Brumas has been facilitating the creation of a Gender Desk in the Municipal Government in Wiwili. This committee includes representatives of rural and urban women – three of each, and departmental officers, like members of the Land Registry Department. “It is a great achievement to have three rural women representatives at the tables,” stresses the grassroots leader.
Sponsored by the Huairou Commission MDG3 Initiative, Las Brumas has trained these women in the Millennium Development Goals as an advocacy tool and made them aware of the political power they can wield. Currently, Las Brumas has a representive on the Gender Desk, who is slated to participate in the upcoming Mayoral election. Rodriquez highlights the great enthusiasm among women generated through this process, while talking about her greater goal to transform Wiwili into a resilient city, with a large role for women in creating agricultural and environmental sustainability.
Having secured 5 percent of the national budget for women’s land purchases in the state of Jinotega, the women of Wiwili, through the Gender Desk are in the process of presenting an ordinance to the municipal government, which “includes all priorities identified by women," clarifies Rodriguez, in the area of health, agricultural production, improvement of infrastructure, and participation of women in the municipality council. Rodriguez herself is the focal point for the six cooperatives of Las Brumas, providing information and updates to women across the association. She is ready to defend the ordinance in any way possible, she says, while spearheading a campaign to get 1000 signatures for the approval of the ordinance. "We have to defend it, as we Nicaraguans say, at the cost of any sacrifice."
The best way to propose an ordinance, Rodriguez says, is to first engage government in other projects to improve the position of women. She credits community-mapping project funded by the Huairou Commission in 2010 for helping identify women’s concerns and priorities that formed the basis of a series of actions plans and proposals initiated by the cooperative. Currently, Las Brumas is also negotiating proposals for other municipalities across Jinotega.
As part of their work on community resilience, Las Brumas runs the Fondo de Demostración de Gran Escala, a fund that supports efforts for reforesting, protecting water sources, and diversifying their crops with a focus on food security. A look around the women’s plots currently shows bananas, squash, passion fruit and medicinal herbs. All of these products will be for sale at the fair that accompanies the meeting in Managua that Rodriguez will attend on October 14th. Their participation in this fair is another way of highlighting how much women are able to produce with the little land they have and support they have gotten so far, she says, and to get governmental and NGO partners to envision the change they could make if their access to land would be supported.
But the process of empowerment is not merely facilitated through grand external gestures like these but often starts on a small scale each time a woman gains access to her own means of production, as Rodriguez points out. “When a woman has a loan and buys a chicken or a pig with her own money,” she says, “she feels like the owner. She is a stronger woman with more self-esteem."
