“Weavers of Knowledge” Go Virtual to Provide Real Food Security
Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests
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n the mountains of Talamanca in Costa Rica, a family has cassava and banana crops; another, corn and yams. A “weaver of knowledge,” a woman in charge of maintaining the database and accompanying the producer families in their community, collects this information and sends it via WhatsApp to the central team of the Kábata Könana Women’s Association. In the central office, these women establish a route for the exchange of products. The result: the families in the Indigenous territory have all the food they need, harvested according to ancient methods, on their own land. This is how the Indigenous “Estanco” of Virtual Produce Exchange works, a solution that uses new technologies and ancestral farming practices to guarantee food security for the Bribri and Cabécar communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. In late June, two vehicle routes carried out the first exchange of products and seeds, in which 110 families from the Talamanca Cabécar territory participated. Sacks of cassava, yams, tiquisque, beans, rice, plantains, avocados, corn, chocolate, pinolillo, star fruit, mango, and ñampí entered and left the houses. “When we saw that the pandemic was approaching our territory, we knew that we had to organize ourselves so that no family would be short of food. Indigenous people have always planted and exchanged food, and this has been a time to further strengthen these traditions,” says Maricela Fernández (Bribri), president of Kábata Könana. The initiative operates under the Indigenous cultural principles and values of ñakimá (solidarity), julákimá (exchange), klabé (collectivity), and käpakö (dialogue). This food exchange is part of the Indigenous Plan for Attention to Recovery from the Pandemic that the Bribri Cabécar Indigenous Network prepared to address the A virtual food exchange organized by Indigenous women via WhatsApp is providing food to families in need.
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impact of COVID-19. The plan also includes rapid response and community containment; coordination committees with government institutions; an axis of cultural production; and an economic axis of post pandemic recovery. The cultural production is led by the women of Kábata Könana with the support of an Indigenous youth group. In addition to the Estanco, the team is creating a work guide for government institutions, a production inventory of families using Indigenous dialogue methodology (kápakö) combined with sé sërke, the cultural experience system; the implementation of their cultural production system and its five categories (witö, teitö, sä deli, sa chá, and chamukelö); and the startup of a Living Museum for the Protection of the Seed which, in the future, will become a tourist attraction and would give sustainability to the entire project. The Indigenous Estanco of Virtual Produce Exchange is a joint effort of the Kábata Könana Women’s Association and the Association for the Integral Development of the Talamanca Cabécar Indigenous Territory, in conjunction with the Bribri and Cabécar Indigenous Network. The project is developed in association with the Love for Life organization and the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests, and has the support of the German Agency for International Cooperation. — Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests is a platform of territorial authorities that administer or influence the main forest masses of Mesoamerica. Indigenous governments and community forest organizations in the Alliance seek to strengthen their own dialogue, focused on community management of their natural resources. They jointly seek to influence governments and international cooperation so that biodiversity conservation strategies appropriately integrate the rights and benefits of Indigenous Peoples and forest communities.
