VOLUME 36 

2015

Stories of Sustainability
2 Grassroots Development 2015 36

The Inter-American Foundation

Robert N. Kaplan, President

Board of Directors

Eddy Arriola, Chair

Thomas Dodd, Acting Vice Chair

J. Kelly Ryan

John P. Salazar

Jack Vaughn 

Roger Wallace

Grassroots Development

Journal of the Inter-American Foundation

Managing Editor: Paula Durbin

Contributing Editor: Eduardo Rodríguez-Frías

Photo Editor: Mark Caicedo

Foreign Language Editions: João Bezerra, 

Darío Elías, Aura Triana-Pacheco, 

Design and Printing: U.S. Government 

Publishing Office

The Inter-American Foundation (IAF), an independent foreign assistance 

agency of the United States government, was created in 1969 to promote 

citizen-led development by awarding grants directly to organizations in Latin 

America and the Caribbean. Its operating budget consists of congressional 

appropriations as well as resources derived through the Social Progress Trust 

Fund, channeled through inter-agency agreements and contributed by 

external donors. 

The IAF prints Grassroots Development in English and Spanish and posts 

English, Spanish and Portuguese versions on www.iaf.gov. The views 

expressed are not necessarily those of the IAF. Original material produced by 

the IAF and published in Grassroots Development is in the public domain and 

may be freely reproduced. Certain material in this journal, however, has been 

provided by other sources and might be copyrighted. Reproduction of such 

material may require prior permission from the copyright holder. IAF requests 

notification of any reproduction and acknowledgement of the source. Back 

issues are available online. To receive the journal, e-mail publications@iaf.gov 

or write to the following address:

Grassroots Development

Inter-American Foundation

1331 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Suite 1200 North

Washington, D.C. 20004

Cover and opposite page: An IAF grant enabled Reef Check Dominican 

Republic to help fishers protect the diversity of the marine ecosystem from 

the predatory lion fish. Photo: Courtesy Reef Check. 

Printed on recycled paper using soy-based ink.

The purpose of this journal is to share grassroots experiences in development with a variety of readers. The editor encourages submissions on 

relevant topics including, but not limited to, the following: 

• how the poor in Latin America and the Caribbean organize to 

improve their lives; 

• issues and trends in the development community; 

• how institutions cooperate to further the development of the region.

Please direct query letters to Paula Durbin at the above address or 

e-mail pdurbin@iaf.gov. 
Grassroots Development 2015 36 3

www.iaf.gov
Contents

Stories of Sustainability 

Módulos Lecheros: An Idea that Survived the Shining Path 

By Martin Scurrah and Custodio Bojorquez ....................................................... 1

The Weavers of San Isidro 

By Patrick Breslin ............................................................................................. 6

Challenging the King of the Reef

By Jenny Petrow, Ana Carmona, Azucena Díaz and Gabriela Boyer................. 14

A Forum for Fellows Findings

Poets, Clowns and Paperwork: Negotiating a Culture 

of Bureaucracy in Brazil 

By Anne Gillman............................................................................................ 23

Seeds of Struggle in Colombia

By Laura Gutiérrez Escobar............................................................................. 30

At the IAF

Rede Ecovida and Beyond

By Juliana Menucci......................................................................................... 36

In Memoriam

Bill Dyal: Gracious Goodness and a Life Well Lived

By Steve Vetter................................................................................................ 39

VOLUME 36 

2015

José Alejandro Alvarez
That statement, from a poem by Muriel 

Rukeyser, is inscribed on a plaque in the 

sidewalk outside the New York Public Library 

and has found its way into discourse ranging from 

sermons to science lectures. It certainly applies to the 

universe as the Inter-American Foundation knows it. 

For more than four decades, the IAF has invested in 

the ideas and hard work of the organized poor, and 

they have reciprocated with a profusion of stories 

that have validated grassroots development and animated the pages of this journal. Their stories must 

be told, so that the accomplishments of real people 

prevailing against the odds are on record as proof of 

what is possible. 

In recent years, the IAF has received capsule 

stories via email from organizations funded in the 

1970s and early 1980s that had fallen off our radar—

understandably perhaps, given our 5,000-plus former 

grantee partners throughout the hemisphere. Martin 

Scurrah’s was among the extraordinary messages that 

inspired this edition of Grassroots Development, and 

the story he tells here has a back story. 

Nearly 30 years ago, this journal included a 

feature by Scurrah and others about a cluster of IAFfunded communal dairy enterprises in the Peruvian 

Andes. The piece ended with a “cautionary note” 

on the danger of the Sendero Luminoso, or Shining 

Path, in fact foreshadowing the devastation wreaked 

by the Maoist insurgency. End of story, it seemed. 

But not long ago Scurrah inadvertently discovered a 

remarkable comeback. While the grantee institution 

had fled and the infrastructure was gone, the idea 

had become rooted in a community whose residents 

never forgot how well it had worked. Scurrah and coauthor Custodio Bojórquez’s narrative of 2015 tells of 

the determined farmers who had embraced the successful approach and taught the concepts and lessons 

to their children.

Stories like this one give us perspectives on sustainability, a word in dire need of definition. Exactly 

what does it mean? One connotation, I would say, 

would be continuity. The articles here color the 

notion of sustainable development by looking at just 

what continues when circumstances change. How 

do people work together to confront new challenges 

or exploit new opportunities? A Colombian community thrives even though the special weaving 

tradition that had taken it through hard times is less 

practiced and the museum that supported the weavers has closed. Livelihoods survive if fishers protect 

the ecosystems, so that the sea yields benefits into 

the future. Farmers gain independence by recovering seeds from their patrimony. And, as the IAF well 

knows, imaginative government programs endure 

when dedicated public employees believe in the mission, go the extra mile, think outside the box and 

help people learn. 

Stories are sometimes dismissed as atypical, 

lacking in rigor or susceptible to bias. They simply 

don’t “add up.” But the power of stories to illustrate 

complex truths is undeniable. Those shared here are 

drawn from the IAF’s trove from the field, and they 

are testament to the ingenuity, resilience and commitment found in communities across Latin America 

and the Caribbean. We expect to bring you many 

more.

Robert N. Kaplan

President and CEO

Inter-American Foundation

Stories of Sustainability

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”
Grassroots Development 2015 36 1

Módulos Lecheros:

An Idea that Survived the 

Shining Path 

By Martin Scurrah and Custodio Bojórquez

IVITA veterinarians tending to an injured cow in 1986.

Agricultural programs often fail when the 

technology, machinery and inputs don’t mesh 

with the context. In the 1970s, the Instituto 

Veterinario de Investigaciones Tropicales y de Altura 

(IVITA), a center for veterinary research allied with 

the Universidad San Marcos, the oldest institution 

of higher learning in the America’s and Peru’s most 

prestigious, set out to design Módulos Lecheros, an 

approach to milk production suited to rural Andean 

communities. It involved converting irrigated land 

into pasture for grazing pedigreed cows. The IAF 

awarded IVITA a grant in 1983 toward the delivery 

and refinement of this “package” to five communities 

in the Mantaro Valley, two located on its floor and 

three on its slopes some 4,000 meters above sea level. 

According to the description in the IAF’s annual 

report for 1983, the award to IVITA was to be disbursed over three years. The final disbursement, 

however, was not made until 1991. The IAF’s records 

through 1991 reflect adjustments over the eight years 

the project remained active, some clearly addressing Peru’s hyperinflation that had begun spiraling 

upward in the 1980s and reached 2,000,000 percent in 1990. In addition to a national economic 

crisis, IVITA’s promising initiative faced off against 

the Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, the violent 

Maoist insurgency that terrorized Peru between 1980 

and 1992, determined to impose an extreme vision 

of social engineering. In its report issued in 2003, 

Peru’s Commission for Truth and Reconciliation put 

the death toll at 70,000 Peruvians, making the insurrection one the bloodiest in the history of South 

America. Infrastructure valued at more than $10 billion was destroyed in a relentless campaign to create 

chaos and instability aimed at bringing the government to its knees.

The Shining Path would claim as “liberated 

zones” the highland communities participating in 

IVITA’s project and would disrupt their very means 

to earn a livelihood by demanding that campesinos 

cease their milk production and sever their ties to 

the markets in the valley. Those who questioned or 

opposed the demands were threatened with death 

as were community leaders and professionals working with IVITA if they did not withdraw, including 

Dr. Horacio Acuña, the team coordinator. Although 

nobody associated with IVITA’s project was killed, a 

U.S. citizen and a Peruvian agronomist working with 

a USAID project were assassinated. The intimidation 

worked. IVITA’s technicians ceased activity, closing 

the project. This made all efforts seem to have been 

for naught. 

In 2014, I returned to several of the communities in the Mantaro Valley, where, under contract to a 

Peruvian nongovernmental organization, I had monitored IVITA’s progress in the 1980s. To my surprise, 

I found the landscape transformed. Highland areas 

Courtesy IVITA
2 Grassroots Development 2015 36

previously covered with course yellow grass were 

green with improved pastures rich in the nutrients 

essential to milk; fields once planted with potatoes 

and corn had made way for alfalfa and forage grains; 

farms where only creole cattle had grazed now had 

herds of Brown Swiss cows adapted to high altitudes. In fields, communities, small towns and in 

Huancayo, the capital of the Junín region some 3,200 

meters above sea level, a palpable level of prosperity 

contrasted sharply with the situation that had existed 

when IVITA and the IAF were forced out. Over the 25 

years since the insurrection had ended, residents had 

worked to revive milk production and it is flourishing today despite the political violence and economic 

instability that had hindered it. 

An approach introduced, then endangered

During the 1970s and 1980s, IVITA’s team of professionals, as a result of experimentation with the 

traditional European model promoted by the German 

aid agency in Peru, developed a simpler approach to 

milk production for small and medium-sized farms. 

This variation was tailored to Andean farming communities that had the requisite parcel measuring at 

least five hectares with access to irrigation once a 

week and planted with three varieties of grass and 

two legumes sufficient for grazing for 15 cows and 

one bull. Holsteins were to be introduced in communities up to 3,500 meters above sea level and Brown 

Swiss at 3,500 meters and above. Electric fencing 

would be installed to help rotate the animals through 

sections of the field. The expected daily yield per 

cow was between three and 10 liters, which would 

go on for more than 249 days after delivery of a calf. 

(Farmers had been averaging five liters.) The bulls 

provided by IVITA would also be available to nonparticipating farmers. 

IAF support allowed IVITA to introduce this 

approach in five campesino communities across 

the Mantaro Valley. The farmers were highly receptive and many began to adapt the new methods to 

their own farms, developing pastures and using the 

communal bull to improve their own herds. The 

initial results of the application of the new techniques to milk production were promising, in spite 

of limited access to water and low temperatures in 

the highlands. But by 1990, hyperinflation and lack 

of security spelled the end of the project. Arsenio 

Damián, the current president of Chaquicocha, had 

also been its president when the community was a 

participant in IVITA’s project. He recently recalled 

Chaquicocha’s experience with the Shining Path:

In March of 1988, [the Shining Path] destroyed the 

Sociedad Agrícola de Interés Social “Heroinas de Toledo,” 

with which the community of Chaquicocha was affiliated. Because residents were unfamiliar with this level of 

violence they didn’t consider it important. On May 1, the 

first “paintings” occurred. Overnight the plaza was covered 

with Sendero slogans, but we didn’t think much of it. The 

suffering began with threats at night. Everything happened at night, not during the day. The terrorists started 

pulling people from their homes and forcing them into the 

plaza. They started shouting: “Who are the authorities? 

Where do you think the money from this milk production goes? Where do you think the money from fattening 

animals goes? Where do you think the money from your 

labor, your crops and everything else goes?” When I went 

to IVITA, one of the offices had been blown up with dynamite and the faculty told me that they were all receiving 

death threats. Dr. Horacio Acuña told me the Shining Path 

was looking for the team leader and that his house in 

Huancayo was being watched. 

They began the destruction after what they called 

“consciousness raising.” Then, after two or three months 
Grassroots Development 2015 36 3

of destruction, they continued demanding: “Get rid 

of this! Get rid of that!” They set things on fire and 

demanded that the dairy animals be distributed; everything had to be gone. Many residents asked why we had 

to destroy our tractors, our cattle. That’s our livelihood. 

“What is it that you want? Do you intend for us to regress 

to another era? How will we work our fields?” we asked. 

“Everything must go,” we were told. Those who complained were marked men.

When the IAF grant ended, we thought that 

all was lost or soon would be. Most of the purebred 

cattle were slaughtered. Some campesinos managed 

save a few cows by hiding them when the terrorists appeared near their farms, bringing the animals 

into their homes, an act of defiance that endangered 

the entire family. Because of the threats, the community’s president Arsenio Damián had to leave 

the country; he went to the United States to work as 

a shepherd in the Midwest where he suffered from 

homesickness. After Abimael Guzmán, the leader of 

the Shining Path, was captured, Damián returned 

to Valle del Mantaro to begin the arduous process of 

cultivating the trust that would allow him regain his 

position in the community. 

Recovery 

During the 1990s, the Peruvian government focused 

on stabilizing the economy and normalizing the 

political situation. The effects were not felt in the 

Mantaro Valley until the new century, when economic growth of between 4 percent and 6 percent 

over two decades created the conditions needed to 

spur productivity, including for dairies. The increased 

demand in urban areas due to the emergence of a 

bourgeoning middle class attracted Gloria, Peru’s 

largest dairy, to the Valley in 2005, a benchmark for 

local producers. Gloria used incentives to encourage 

Solar panels enabled the operation of electrified fences. 

Kathryn Shaw
4 Grassroots Development 2015 36

improvements in milk quality; it guaranteed a steady 

price and prompt payment and brought about a boost 

in the price paid by its competitors on whom producers had previously depended. This helped develop a 

reliable and expanding market for milk. Farmers on 

any scale could sell to Gloria at a stable price or to less 

established buyers who might offer a higher price but 

did not always honor their commitments. 

By the second half of the 1990s, social programs 

such as Programa Nacional de Apoyo Alimentario 

(PRONAA), which offered school breakfasts, encouraged production of fresh pasteurized milk and later 

drinkable yogurt. When PRONAA closed in 2011, 

some plants vanished but others, like CONCELAC 

and Dolce Latte, for example, had diversified to 

supply ice cream, yogurt and cheese to the thriving 

shopping malls of Lima and the provincial capitals, 

including Huancayo. Like Gloria, these enterprises 

paid competitive prices for high quality. The milk 

producers of the Huanchar community, on the valley 

floor, were CONCELAC’s first supplier. 

With a stable market, individual farmers and 

producer associations became more willing to risk 

investing in breeding better cattle, in boosting the 

area and quality of their grasslands, in planting 

forage and in building silos and milking sheds. More 

funding for municipal governments, a result of Peru’s 

move to decentralize official functions and devolve 

public resources, allowed local authorities to invest in 

infrastructure that benefited farmers, such as irrigation channels, storage areas and milking facilities. A 

new irrigation channel running along the right bank 

of the Mantaro River, for example, helped increase 

alfalfa production for markets on the outskirts of 

Lima, and was a boon to farmers developing pastures, 

later encouraging an increase in cattle. Grasses in 

the valley and forage cereals displaced some traditional crops, such as potatoes. Thanks to highways 

that have improved access, other regions of Peru now 

supply corn and potatoes to markets in Lima, while 

the valley, once considered Lima’s pantry, benefits 

from the capital’s lucrative market for dairy products. Milk not only yields more revenue for farmers 

than corn and potatoes but offers a steadier and more 

dependable flow of cash all year round, as opposed to 

seasonal payment for harvests. And in the context of 

climate change, agriculture is riskier than milk production, which can better withstand frost and hail. 

Under conditions that favor their enterprise, producers often benefit from displacing competitors who 

are not as well situated, but this doesn’t seem to be 

the case in the Mantaro Valley. Of the large cooperative associations created as a result of the agrarian 

reform undertaken by the military government of 

the 1970s, only two have survived and the Valley has 

only a small number of medium-sized commercial 

dairy farms. A significant volume of the milk still 

comes from farmers in communities producing on a 

small scale who have continued to improve the size 

and quality of their herds, pastures and forage. 

The five communities where IVITA had introduced its experimental approach continue this work 

under the management of the children of those 

who were in charge back in the 1980s. They slowly 

rebuilt what Shining Path had destroyed and they 

did it without resources from IVITA or the IAF. “The 

farmers have invested very slowly, according to the 

resources they have on hand, because banks are dangerous,” said Damián, whose experience has made 

him loan-shy. “These campesinos are very careful 

and go little by little, slowly making improvements to 

their milk production.” 

Most farmers lament that had they benefited 

from external support or just not been forced to start 

over, their cattle, their grassland and their cheese 

production would be better. But they are proud 

of the skills that their parents had learned from 

IVITA’s professionals and passed on to them and 

of what they have accomplished. Those skills have 

endured and spread from one community to another, 

resulting in better milk production and at least 

somewhat improved cattle. “Of course the production is not what it used to be back before the project 

ended, because those were good cows,” said Miguel 

Paguiyouri, a farmer from Iscos, another community 

that had participated in IVITA’s project. “I remember 

one we named Poronguita. She produced some 20 

liters per day. Twenty liters!” 
Grassroots Development 2015 36 5

Conclusion

In the 1980s, the economist Albert Hirschman published Getting Ahead Collectively, a book based on 

his analysis of a series of IAF grantees. Among the 

ideas he presented was his notion of the conservation and mutation of social energy. He observed that 

when collective efforts for change become frustrated 

or repressed at a particular moment, the energy from 

what was learned didn’t disappear but was preserved 

to emerge and flourish once again when conditions 

were appropriate. 

IVITA’s milk production program exemplifies this 

theory. At the end of the 1990s, political violence and 

economic crisis seemed to have wiped out the milk 

producers in the Mantaro Valley. But even though 

the terrorists of the Shining Path forced the farmers 

to destroy everything they had, the farmers stayed 

in the valley and, without any external assistance, 

revived their previous way of life when the economic 

and political context improved. Today these campesinos continue adapting the approach introduced by 

IVITA in the 1980s without any loss of its distinguishing features. Furthermore, they have adjusted to 

the new market and changing climate, so that fruit 

emerges from a seed planted in what once seemed to 

be arid soil. 

Martin Scurrah is an independent researcher who provided 

support services to IAF-funded projects in Peru in the 

1980s. Custodio Bojórquez, a specialist in pastures with an 

M.S. from Massey University in New Zealand, teaches in 

the School of Veterinary Science of San Marcos University 

in Lima. He was on the team that developed the approach 

introduced in communities in the Mantaro Valley. The 

authors thank everyone who contributed to this article, 

especially Edgar Olivera for his help with interviews.

All in a Day’s Work

IAF staff, contractors and grantees have had to negotiate precarious situations perpetrated by regimes, insurgencies and, 

recently, criminals. Carlos Lingan, a certified public accountant and the dean of the IAF’s corps of auditors, has been on 

the job for more than 30 years and conducted audits during the days of the Shining Path.

In the early 1990s, I was auditing an IAF-funded revolving seed bank housed in a convent in Humachuco, 

in the highlands near Trujillo, some 550 kilometers from Lima. From the Trujillo airport I boarded a bus for 

Humachuco, and in the sierra, it had a flat tire. According to other passengers, the area was controlled by 

the Shining Path, the Maoist insurgency that terrorized Peru from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s. Oddly 

enough, the situation struck me as normal; I had traveled through such places before. The tire was replaced 

and I reached the convent at nightfall. The grantee’s staff handed me all the documents I needed to begin my 

audit.

We left early the next morning to visit farmers to verify they had received seeds and finished close to 

nightfall. On the way back to Humachuco, at 5,000 meters above sea level, we had a flat tire, only this vehicle 

didn’t have a spare. We hiked some four hours in the dark to get help. I think the project manager was navigating by the stars. At almost 9:00 p.m. we reached the main road, hungry, thirsty and cold. At that hour, 

there was no public transportation, given the constant threat of terrorism, but we sat down and waited. About 

an hour later, we heard the roar of a 10-ton truck. The project manager approached the driver. “We are saved,” 

I thought, and I introduced myself. Two police officers with automatic weapons interrogated me, military 

style, then said we could ride in the back with the cargo. Having no alternative, we climbed up over the back 

tire and jumped inside, where we found a third armed officer. The cargo we were riding with was boxes and 

boxes of dynamite en route to nearby mining operations, escorted by the military for fear that terrorists might 

hijack the explosives. A single spark in that truck, and I wouldn’t be around to tell this story.
6 Grassroots Development 2015 36

By Patrick Breslin

The Weavers of San Isidro

All photos by Patrick Breslin San Isidro.

I

n 1982, Deborah Szekely made her first trip to 

Colombia as the Inter-American Foundation’s 

third president, shortly after assuming the position. In Bogotá, she discovered the Museum of Folk 

Arts and Traditions, an IAF grantee that advised 

artisans and helped them get better prices by improving their crafts and marketing. On display was a 

collection of woolen weavings from San Isidro, a community tucked into the mountains that flank Bogotá 

on the east. Szekely, the owner of two high-end 

health spas that showcased art and handicrafts, the 

Golden Door in California and Rancho la Puerta in 

Tecate, Mexico, announced her intention to buy all 15 

weavings. To the staff at the Museum and at the IAF 

the gesture seemed an impulsive whim typical of a 

wealthy North American. But Szekely had her reason. 

“I realized the weavings were the history of the community,” she explained. “If they were sold separately, 

the narrative would be lost. So I decided to buy them 

all, to keep them together.” 

Since then, most of those weavings have been 

stored in her home. Last year, she decided to exhibit 

them at the reopening of the New Americans 

Museum she had founded in San Diego. She thought 

the story the weavings told was relevant to the 

museum’s celebration of Latin American and Asian 

immigrants and of their contributions to the diversity of the United States and its culture. But with 

the passage of 32 years, the details of the story 

had faded and the few labels attached to the weav-
Grassroots Development 2015 36 7

Carmen Samper, Cecilia Duque Duque, Sara Cerón and Marina Cerón in Samper’s home. 

ings said little about their creators. Szekely recalled 

some mention of an IAF grant awarded to a former 

Peace Corps Volunteer to teach weaving to women 

in the community. Given its bottom-up approach 

to development—funding the ideas of people at the 

grassroots rather than deciding what they needed to 

learn—that didn’t sound like the way IAF operated. 

So who did teach them? What were the weavings 

about? Some, for example, depicted trucks and soldiers in uniform. San Isidro resembled the thousands 

of squatter settlements in Latin America, where the 

poor threw up flimsy shelters on government or 

private property and resisted eviction. It was easy to 

guess that the soldiers were removing people from 

the land. So how had the barrio survived? And what 

had become of the weavers? 

Last August, Szekely asked me to trace the 

San Isidro weavers and pin down their story. New 

Americans Museum had opened in 2008, but two 

years later, a legal dispute shuttered it. It took Szekely 

four years to get the keys back. To attract people to 

the reopening in January she planned to exhibit the 

weavings’ depiction of a community built by refugees and also paintings and mixed-media displays 

by Colombian-American Carolyn Castaño. The Los 

Angeles-based artist’s work had grown out of her own 

experience with a more recent group of Colombian 

women forced from their homes by political violence, 

who were learning to weave in shelters in the city of 

Medellín. 

Former colleagues pointed me to Colombians 

who had been involved with handicrafts and with 

San Isidro in the 1960s and 1970s. No one remembered a Peace Corps Volunteer, but another name 

emerged: Olga de Amaral, an internationally-known 

Colombian artist famed for her shimmering, often 

monumental, hangings that combine wool yarn 

with diverse fabrics and precious metals such as gold. 

Armed with color photos of Szekely’s collection, I 

flew to Bogotá to see Cecilia Duque, the founder and 

director of the Museum of Folk Arts and Traditions, 

where Szekely had first seen the weavings. An internationally-known authority on handicrafts, Duque 

has published large format books documenting folk 

traditions throughout Colombia. In 1990, President 

César Gaviria appointed her director of Artesanías de 

Colombia, an agency within the development ministry charged with aiding artisans. She would hold 

the position under five successive presidents. (See 

Grassroots Development 2009.)

By the time I arrived in Bogotá, Duque had traced 

some of the weavers still in the barrio and arranged 

a meeting. I was surprised to learn that the character of San Isidro had been undisturbed by Bogota’s 

relentless growth to a population surpassing 7 million. Over the last 60 years, the Colombian capital 
8 Grassroots Development 2015 36

1. The jungle landscape imagined 

by Ricardo and Jesús Chipo. 

2. Ana Irene de Hernández’

depiction of a dinosaur.

3. A day in the life of San Isidro.

4. San Isidro’s school.

5. “The textures of life are woven 

into these tranquil scenes.” 

1.

2.
Grassroots Development 2015 36 9

3.

5.

4.
10 Grassroots Development 2015 36

the training. Sara Cerón remembers up to 61 people 

learning to weave at one time.

 A few weavers quickly moved beyond Amaral’s 

advice. A close look at some of the weavings reveals 

fantastical creatures. In one, a fierce looking beast 

with taloned feet shares the scene with birds, packhorses and people. “It’s a dinosaur,” weaver Ana 

Irene de Hernández told me matter-of-factly when 

I visited her home in San Isidro. “I just liked to put 

dinosaurs in.” Some weavers employed perspective 

in their works; houses farther up the mountains are 

smaller than the ones along the road. Other weavings 

are flatter, more like art naïf, but the figures seem 

to move on diagonals or zigzag, lending dynamism. 

A scene of the Nativity shows the three wise men 

approaching from the distance. Another complex 

weaving full of tension, with masses of figures confronting one another, is not a representation of the 

community at all, but of the way two teenaged brothhas spread across the surrounding flat savannah like 

a river in flood, but the eastern mountain range, 

a crease of which shelters San Isidro, is a dike that 

channels new construction along a north-south axis. 

Duque and I met in the spacious apartment of 

Carmen Samper in a high-rise a few blocks from the 

foot of the mountains. With Samper was Sara Cerón, 

one of the original weavers, dressed in a skirt and 

sweater, only a few hints of gray in her dark hair, 

and Marina Cerón, her daughter, trim and casual in 

jeans, shoulder-length chestnut hair brushing her 

fitted leather jacket. Samper walks with difficulty 

and suffers from respiratory problems. Widowed, she 

moved to the apartment from her house in a neighborhood called El Refugio, on the edge of the city just 

below San Isidro. There, in the 1960s, she and Silvia 

de Liévano, both members of the local social action 

committee, wondered about the almost daily procession of women and children carrying berries and 

bunches of wildflowers from the high slopes down to 

Calle 85, a busy thoroughfare, where Bogotá residents 

came to buy. “We would see them coming past our 

houses,” Carmen recalled, more than 50 years later. 

“I wondered about their education. ‘No,’ they told 

me, ‘we don’t have a school.’ The building had collapsed. So Silvia and I started to organize a school 

in my home and to think about what else could be 

done. Some of the women were interested in learning 

to weave. We turned to our neighbors for help.” One 

of those neighbors was Olga de Amaral, already a successful artist. 

I contacted Diego Amaral, her son, and learned 

she was recovering from surgery and couldn’t receive 

visitors but would agree to a telephone interview. 

“When Carmen and Silvia approached me, I had just 

read a book that showed weavings of landscapes from 

Egypt done on a simple loom,” Amaral told me over 

the phone. “It inspired me to see if something like 

that could be done in Colombia.” In 1964, she took a 

couple of rustic looms up to San Isidro, and she also 

invited two women from the barrio to her studio to 

learn more about the craft. “We began teaching, and 

the women liked the work,” she said. “It’s a simple 

technique, easy to teach. I told them to just weave the 

scenes they saw around them, the scenes from their 

daily lives.” Later, she sent an assistant to continue 

Ricardo and Jesús Chipo as boys, and right, today.
Grassroots Development 2015 36 11

ers, Jesús and Ricardo Chipo, inspired by a popular 

radio adventure serial, imagined a jungle landscape 

populated by “natives” with spears and red headbands, a bestiary of wild animals and birds, and even 

fiery dragons.

For the most part, however, the weavers hewed 

to Amaral’s suggestion. Their creations depict daily 

life in San Isidro and key events in its history—tiny 

looms signifying the introduction of weaving, prefabricated housing that replaced makeshift shelters 

of tin and cardboard, and the opening of the school 

whose appearance testifies to its central role in the 

community and the residents’ aspirations. The looms 

were simple upright rectangular frames, without a 

shuttle. Fingers do all the work. The weaver stretches 

cotton cords vertically around the horizontal bars, 

then threads colored wool through the cords to make 

the figures, tapping down each line with the fingertips or a dinner fork to make the weave tight. “At 

first,” Samper said, “Olga provided wool from her 

workshop. Later, we arranged with another neighbor, whose family owned land where people raised 

sheep, to buy wool.” As the weavers began producing 

tapestries, attention shifted to them as a source of 

additional income for their families. When the first 

weavings were ready to be sold, they were displayed 

in Carmen de Samper’s house, but Samper became 

uncomfortable with so many unknown people pass-
12 Grassroots Development 2015 36

ing through her home. That’s when Samper and 

Liévano turned to Cecilia Duque for a more appropriate outlet and the weavings were marketed through 

the museum. 

The display that caught Szekely’s eye in 1982 had 

been produced in a burst of creativity that started in 

the late 1960s. The weavings depict a busy community: people tend animals; men work the quarries and 

load the rock in trucks or split firewood; women and 

children gather flowers and wild berries to sell. New 

houses go up and couples move furniture into them; 

children run and play games near the school. The 

textures of life are woven into these tranquil scenes. 

But San Isidro’s founders had been migrants, and 

migration in Colombia’s tragic history has usually 

been spurred by violence. To learn about the barrio’s 

origins, I arranged with Marina Cerón to visit her 

home. 

To get to San Isidro, you board a colectivo, or small 

bus, on Bogotá’s Séptima, or Seventh Avenue, to La 

Calera and ride for about 10 minutes, alighting when 

you see along the roadside rows of garden fountains 

shaped from white stone and layered like wedding 

cakes beside piles of paving stones and slates of varying hues. The barrio rises steeply from the highway, 

the main road into it passing by a school with a wide, 

fenced patio and winding up the hillside through a 

maze of brightly-painted, tin-roofed, one or two-story 

dwellings framed by thick pine forests on the higher 

slopes. Flowering trees and bushes dot the hillside 

and grace the houses. Recently, San Isidro was incorporated into the city of Bogotá and renamed Bosques 

de Bella Vista for the splendid view of the northern 

suburbs and the savannah beyond. Sixty-five years 

ago, these slopes were covered with a variety of 

trees and plants, especially wildflowers, and honeycombed with rock quarries. The land and the quarries 

belonged to the Colombian military, whose Cavalry 

School was on Bogotá’s edge, at the bottom of the 

mountains.

Marina led me on a tour of the barrio, including a visit to her aunt, Ana Irene de Hernández, also 

from the original group of weavers, and then to the 

compact compound where three generations of her 

immediate family live, beside the weaving workshop 

that houses MAKO, the family business. There I met 

her father, Ismael Cerón, a small, sturdy man in a 

gray poncho who clearly learned everything anyone 

needed to know about correct posture during his 

military service in the 1950s. 

In 1948, a political assassination in Bogotá 

touched off a conflagration throughout much of the 

country, sparking the longest guerrilla war in Latin 

America, one that continues today. (The government 

and the main guerrilla organization are currently 

meeting in Havana to try to negotiate peace.) By 

1950, as I learned from Ismael Cerón and Marina’s 

aunt, Ana Irene, who were children at the time, 

the violence swept through towns like Albán and 

Guaduas, near Bogotá, killing some of residents and 

sending survivors fleeing to the relative safety of the 

capital. (Ana Irene later composed and still sings a 

ballad about her memories, as a five-year-old, of the 

events.) Around the same time, the Cavalry School 

was expanding and needed stone from the nearby 

mountain quarries. Several of the male refugees 

found work in those quarries, and, with the Cavalry 

School’s acquiescence, settled with their families on 

a nearby slope in houses improvised from cardboard, 

wood scraps and tin. The Army provided some materials, as well as tents. 

In January 1964, Cerón, by then a community 

leader, ran into the new commander of the Cavalry 

School, who was making his initial inspection of its 

installations, including the quarries. The two men 

recognized one another from their service together 

a decade before, which gave Cerón an opening to 

discuss San Isidro’s needs, especially for a school. 

The colonel was not only sympathetic; he knew of a 

government program to build schools around Bogotá, 

and he helped get one started in San Isidro the same 

year. During the search for teachers to staff the 

school, he assigned some of his officers as instructors. 

Isabel Cerón, Marina’s sister, recalled with laughter 

an attempt to play hooky that ended when a soldier 

tucked her under his arm and jounced her down the 

rough path to the classroom. Education was interrupted a few years later when part of the school’s 

foundation gave way and half the building crumbled. 

Families in San Isidro set about raising the funds to 

rebuild it through bazaars, raffles and the eventual 

assistance from El Refugio that also led to the introduction of weaving.
Grassroots Development 2015 36 13

The rebuilt school was inaugurated in 1968, 

an event celebrated in one of the works on exhibit. 

Electricity finally reached the town in 1985. But the 

same year, the Army decided to reclaim the land on 

which the community stood. That kicked off a long 

struggle, with various cases set for trial in district 

courts around Bogotá. The community prevailed, 

thanks to Ismael Cerón’s personal contacts with 

high-ranking military officers, residents’ willingness 

to protest by blocking roads, a sympathetic press, pro 

bono legal services and El Refugio’s steady support. 

A law recognizing the property rights of people who 

had occupied the same land for 20 years resulted in 

a string of rulings against the Army and it gave up 

its battle in the courts. By 1994, the residents of San 

Isidro had clear title to their plots and their homes 

were secure. 

Weaving became a flourishing enterprise in San 

Isidro, providing families income for some 15 years. 

“When we began to sell weavings,” Virginia Martínez 

said, “we opened bank accounts. Our lives improved.” 

Households became more stable and cohesive. The 

community became known for skills. Surrounded by 

looms and colorful weavings, children grew up to 

follow in their parents’ footstep. “I learned to weave 

before I learned to read,” said Marina Cerón, who still 

actively practices her craft. Studying a photograph 

of one of Szekely’s weavings, she pointed to a small 

figure of a bird she remembered inserting as a schoolgirl. Recurring motifs and signature styles enabled 

her to identify the families that had produced specific 

works. We took the photos on a walk around the 

barrio to confirm her analysis, visiting Lucía Zorra;

the Chipo brothers, Ricardo and Jesús; and Virginia 

Hernández, one of the two women whose apprenticeship had taken place in Olga de Amaral’s studio. 

In each home, the photos evoked a receding but 

warmly remembered past and were welcomed like an 

unearthed time capsule. 

After 10 or 15 years, many families gradually 

stopped weaving as booming Bogotá, a short commute down the hill, offered employment with steady 

salaries and benefits, often a more attractive prospect 

than selling on consignment and waiting, sometimes 

months, for payment. Weaving was supplemented, 

then replaced, by other sources of income. But it had 

brought San Isidro education and connections to the 

nearby city, opening opportunities for the weavers, 

their children and their grandchildren, now in their 

20s and 30s, many of whom have graduated from 

universities and entered professions. Some residents 

commute to Bogotá for work, others stay home and 

fashion decorative items for house and garden from 

the abundant white rock. Carvings and building 

materials for sale along the road below the community confirm that stone working is still an important 

business in the barrio. 

Members of the Cerón and Chipo families continue to weave in the traditional style. MAKO, the 

Cerón family business, also supplies distinctive and 

colorful abstract designs for fashionable leather bags 

sold in Bogota’s shops and malls. Sara, the matriarch of the family, is MAKO’s manager as well as an 

environmental activist. In two hothouses that produce fruits and vegetables for her family, she teaches 

conservation practices to school-age children. “Our 

grandchildren are learning that what’s happening 

to us today,” she said, “the lack of water, the reforestation with Canadian pine whose needles smother 

other plants and flowers, is because of all we’ve 

destroyed.” Part of her hothouse space is a nursery for 

native plants and trees intended to restore the hillsides above the barrio.

After two days in the barrio, as I rode the colectivo back down to Bogotá, it occurred to me that what 

makes the story of the weavings significant is what’s 

left out of them: the violence and terror that gave 

birth to San Isidro. Full of the details of daily life, 

of little boys’ fantasies, of biblical scenes, the weavings vividly testify to a desire to leave behind a past 

of adversity, even mortal danger, to work toward a 

better future. In the process, these Colombians created a solid community that has kept its identity and 

progressed steadily over half a century, providing 

their children and grandchildren peace, stability and 

a better starting point. 

Patrick Breslin, former vice-president for external affairs, 

retired from the IAF after 22 years. He may be reached at 

patbreslin@yahoo.com.
14 Grassroots Development 2015 36

Challenging the 

King of the Reef

By Jenny Petrow, Ana Carmona, Gabriela Boyer and Azucena Díaz 

T he flamboyant lionfish, or pterois volitans, is a nocturnal hunter that 

seems to devour everything in its path. Native to the Indo-Pacific, 

the lionfish is fairly new to the Caribbean, where it has no natural 

predators, reproduces at the rate of 30,000 eggs every four days and gorges on up to 

30 fry and fingerling an hour. Snappers, lobsters and other local species hardly stand 

a chance against this ravenous horde, which puts the ecology of reefs at risk. Also 

endangered is the livelihood of fishers in Caribbean enclaves. IAF grantee partners 

in the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Mexico have been working to reduce 

the numbers of these invaders at the top of the local aquatic food chain, so that 

the diversity of Caribbean ecosystems is protected from their voracious appetite and 

the sea continues to sustain fishers. “It will take a concerted effort across territorial 

waters to control the lionfish,” said Marcy Kelley, the IAF’s managing director of 

grantmaking. “The IAF hopes to support grassroots initiatives in every country of the 

Caribbean Basin.”
The Nemo effect

In the Disney animated hit “Finding Nemo,” the title 

character, a little clown fish that inhabits Australia’s 

coral reefs, is scooped up by a diver eventually to live 

in an aquarium decorating the dental offices of “P. 

Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney.” Nemo’s father 

spends most of the movie trying to find his offspring 

and bring him home. In the end, Nemo is flushed 

down the toilet back into the ocean where he is 

reunited with his father. 

While the plumbing was the conduit to Nemo’s 

salvation on screen, in real life releasing tropical fish 

into the ocean, now known as “the Nemo effect,” 

can seriously endanger marine wildlife. Biologists 

believe the Nemo effect led to the introduction of 

the pez león, or lionfish, in the crystalline waters of 

the Caribbean. Unknown in the Atlantic before the 

1980s, the lionfish made its appearance en force in 

the coral reefs of the Dominican Republic’s marine 

protected area of La Caleta in 2011, “de la noche a 

la mañana,” according to local fisherman Gregorio 

“Kikito” Batista—“overnight.” La Caleta, just east 

of Santo Domingo, the capital city, is home to 

Cooperativa de Pescadores y Prestadores de Servicios 

Turísticos de La Caleta (COOPRESCA) that works with 

IAF grantee partner Reef Check Dominican Republic. 

Prompted by the desire to keep their economic 

options open for the long term, COOPRESCA’s members had themselves designated La Caleta a “no-take 

zone,” moving their fishing beyond its boundaries 

and offering services to tourists as an alternate source 

of income. Protecting native wildlife, they reasoned, 

would assure the catch for the future and would 

attract divers and snorkelers. 

But the lionfish put that plan at risk as it gobbled 

up tropical fish, larvae, crustaceans and other sea 

creatures at an alarming rate. According to Rubén 

Torres, Reef Check’s director, in addition to having no 

predators or diseases in its new habitat, the lionfish 

proliferates because native species haven’t evolved the 

mechanisms to detect it as an enemy. Devouring way 

more of these easy pickings than it requires to survive 

has made the lionfish, said Torres, “the only species 

of fish that is clinically obese.” 

Red lionfish have a voracious appetite and reproduce at an alarming rate.

Grassroots Development 2015 36 15
Gregorio “Kikito” Batista.

Jenny Petrow

16 Grassroots Development 2015 36
In check in the DR

That corpulence ended up being a boon for the 

fishers in COOPRESCA. “The first time we caught 

lionfish in our nets, we just gave them away,” said 

Rafael “Bronco” García. But then they discovered 

that the fish was delicious. In 2012, Reef Check and 

COOPRESCA, in collaboration with the International 

Coral Reef Initiative’s Regional Lionfish Committee 

and Pagés BBDO, a public relations firm, embarked 

on a plan to generate a demand for this seafood that 

would give fishers an incentive to catch lionfish for a 

most efficient predator: homo sapien.

As COOPRESCA’s fishers were among the first 

in the Dominican Republic to market lionfish, they 

had to convince Dominicans to eat it. Many people 

believe the lionfish is poisonous, and its protective 

dorsal spines do contain venom, but the flesh is perfectly safe for human consumption. To change the 

perception, Reef Check and COOPRESCA launched 

“Cómete un león” [Eat a lion], targeting supermarkets, 

restaurants and consumers. Soon the lionfish provided grist for news stories, a photo for the cover of 

Gastroteca magazine and a new item on the menu 

for Santo Domingo’s finest restaurants—the vaunted 

Vesuvio Malecón, Mitre, Travesías, Asia Mía and El 

Agave, among others. Some of the capital’s best chefs 

were showcasing it in original recipes. Reef Check 

expanded its campaign to the rest of the island. 

The lionfish resulted in an unexpected benefit 

for COOPRESCA: its first successful effort to sell a 

product as a cooperative. By mid-2012 the fishers of 

COOPRESCA were supplying 100 pounds a month 

to restaurants and supermarkets, a reason the catch 

plummeted from between 70 and 80 fish a day to just 

two or three. Essentially the species is under contro—

for now, at least within La Caleta. Meanwhile, the 

work of Reef Check and COOPRESCA has inspired 

other Dominican communities, producing a similar decline in the lionfish population. The fishers 

of COOPRESCA regret the corresponding loss of 

income, but, said Kikito, “The future is in tourism.” 

The decrease in lionfish means an increase in other 

species and that diversity draws visitors, ultimately 

a more reliable source of income. For more about 

COOPRESCA’s campaign and the attractions of La 

Caleta, visit http://reefcheckdr.org/ and view “videos 

RCDR online.” 

Grassroots Development 2015 36 17

COOPRESCA 

is counting on 

the diversity of 

underwater life 

in the Caribbean 

to draw tourists.

José Alejandro Alvarez
Tico fishers in the fray

In August 2104, the IAF officially committed 

$135,000 to Asociación de Pescadores Artesanales 

del Caribe Sur (ASOPACS), a new organization on 

the southern coast of Costa Rica, for its three-year 

effort to improve the quality of life for its fishers and 

preserve the local marine ecosystem. That meant controlling the lionfish, which the fishers were already 

trying to do via their association with the University 

of Costa Rica and a small grant from the United 

Nations Development Programme. 

To combat the invader, ASOPACS uses nasas, the 

traditional traps that its fishers build from wood and 

wire. To date, they estimate having placed nearly 300 

nasas over some 30 square kilometers, which they 

check every three days one by one, a process that 

takes seven hours. Like their Dominican counterparts, ASOPACS’ fishers had no idea that the lionfish 

18 Grassroots Development 2015 36

La Esquina, a 

restaurant in 

Puerto Viejo, 

offers lionfish 

on the menú.
ASOPACS uses nasas to trap 

lionfish off Puerto Viejo, 

Costa Rica. Baited with fish 

scraps and coconut, nasas are 

taken six kilometers offshore 

and lowered to depths of 50 

to 100 meters.

was edible and initially tossed them as trash. Today 

they are weighed, measured and packed for delivery 

to local restaurants, a market that has motivated fishers who were not using nasas to build them and has 

prompted ASOPACS to study the feasibility of selling 

in San José. 

ASOPACS has harvested thousands of fish since 

entering the fray and the fishers take advantage 

of every opportunity to call attention to the campaign. Its visibility got a boost when Luis Guillermo 

Solís, president of Costa Rica, visited and was photographed pulling lionfish from a nasa. The Costa 

Rican Ministry of Environment has been recruited 

to the cause, which spearheaded the creation of the 

Ministry’s National Commission for the Management 

and Control of Lionfish in Costa Rica. The fishers themselves have traveled to strategy sessions 

in Cuba, Panama and the United States and have 

contributed to efforts conducted by the National 

Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 

of the U.S. Department of Commerce. “We can only 

address this problem together,” said José Ugalde, 

who manages the project. “We thank all the collaborators.” These include community residents who 

compete in ASOPACS’ annual fishing tournament 

and its monthly five-hour dives to hunt lionfish with 

harpoons. To learn more, email the fishers at asopescadores@gmail.com or visit http://www.facebook.

com/AsociacionDePescadoresDelCaribeSur. 

Grassroots Development 2015 36 19 Mark Caicedo

Costa Rican plato típico includes lionfish, patacones,

or fried plantains, and salad. 

Mark Caicedo
Predators—from lenders to lionfish

“We have to recognize that [when it comes to the 

lionfish] the fishers of this cooperative were pioneers 

in taking responsibility,” said Eduardo Pérez Catzin, 

president of Sociedad Cooperativa de Producción 

Pesquera Cozumel (SCPPC) located on the island 

off Mexico’s Yucutan Peninsula. Pérez Catzim is no 

stranger to challenges. When he was first elected to 

head it in 1995, the cooperative was in the thrall of 

predatory lenders. His austere approach to leadership 

had the cooperative debt-free within three years, but 

at the cost of a reduction in membership from which 

SCPPC is now recovering. 

SCPPC has benefited from concessions granted 

by the Mexican government to fish in Sian Ka’an 

Biosphere Reserve and the National Reef Park of 

Cozumel—areas rich in coral reefs and other aquatic 

life. The use of scuba equipment is generally prohibited in the concession and the fishers dive to depths 

of some 10 to 15 meters without it to harvest most 

of their annual catch of some 25 tons of lobsters, 

retrieving them one by one from concrete structures 

built to mimic the crevices where the crustaceans 

burrow. To assure the sustainability of stocks, they 

release any specimen measuring under 13.5 centimeters and refrain from fishing during the breeding 

season that extends from March to July. They also 

have a long-standing ban on nets that, if they used 

them, would ensnare dolphins, sea turtles and manta 

rays as bycatch. SCPPC’s environmental stewardship 

has been recognized with an award from Mexico’s 

Secretariat for Environment and Natural Resources.

In 2007, SCPPC was among the six cooperatives that joined forces with IAF grantee partner 

Comunidad y Biodiversidad (COBI) to develop the 

skills necessary to track and measure fish and lobster stocks and recover marine populations via the 

designation of a no-take zone. The participants were 

also worried about illegal fishing and the pressures of 

tourism on an industrial scale. To those concerns has 

been added the need to control the lionfish, whose 

presence in the concession the fishers and COBI staff 

had witnessed as early as 2005. By 2009, when the 

Mexican government warned of the threat to fish 

stocks, the lionfish was already voraciously consuming juvenile lobsters in SCPPC’s structures. But, 

commented Pérez Catzin, “Where the government 

perceived a risk, we sensed an opportunity.” 

Like other fishing communities struggling to 

control the lionfish, SCPPC decided to make a meal 

out of it. “At first there was not a lot of demand,” 

Pérez Catzin and sales fell short of expenses. With 

COBI’s support, SCPPC launched tastings in Cancún 

and Playa del Carmen and slowly the public came to 

accept it. Lionfish is on the menu in SCPPC’s restaurant and other facilities on the island, in Mexico 

City and the United States, which has raised the 

price, benefiting other cooperatives on the Yucután 

Peninsula as well as SCPPC. 

Jenny Petrow and Gabriela Boyer are IAF representatives; 

Ana Carmona and Azucena Díaz provide IAF liaison services in Costa Rica and Mexico. 

20 Grassroots Development 2015 36

Martín Froilán of SCPP with a lionfish 

harpooned in the Biosphere Reserve Sian Ka’an. 

Citlali García

SCPP technician Liz Tamayo and Citlali García of 

COBI measure lionfish captured during a tournament 

sponsored by SCPP. Such tracking provides valuable 

information on breeding rates and population size.
Grassroots Development 2015 36 21

Jacobo Caamal
At the IAF Fellows’ Forum

22 Grassroots Development 2015 35

Forum for Fellows’ Findings

The IAF complements its grants furthering bottom-up, citizenled development with a Fellowship Program funding academic 

research into the context and trends that affect the efforts of 

the organized poor and the groups that support them in Latin America and the Caribbean. This commitment to scholarship at the grassroots dates almost as far back as launch of the IAF’s grant program in 

the early 1970s. To date, IAF Fellowships have reached 1,145 Ph.D. 

and master’s candidates as well as social entrepreneurs pursing independent study. Since 2007, the IAF has offered support for doctoral 

dissertation research by students from throughout the hemisphere 

who are enrolled in universities in the United States. 

For the past four years, the IAF has issued an annual invitation 

to all alumni of recent Fellowship cycles to submit manuscripts for 

publication in Grassroots Development pending a rigorous review by 

an anonymous subcommittee of the scholars who scrutinize application for the IAF’s Grassroots Development Fellowships. This year’s 

jury selected the manuscript by Laura Guitiérrez Escobar for this 

issue. Grassroots Development thanks everyone who contributed to 

the success of this competition, which has value even for those whose 

manuscripts were not selected because of the thoughtful feedback that 

the reviewers communicate, through the IAF, to each contestant. 

The section leads off with the manuscript of Anne Gillman, of the 

2014-2015 cycle of Fellows, which she adapted for publication here 

from her paper that had been accepted for presentation at the 2015 

Congress of the Latin American Studies Association.

We remain excited about this feature of our journal. Most obviously, 

it brings some of the benefit of the Fellowship Program to a broader 

audience and it represents another credential for the authors whose 

work appears here. For more information on the IAF’s Fellowships, 

visit www.iie.org/iaf.— P.D. 
Grassroots Development 2015 36 23

Poets, Clowns and Paperwork:

Negotiating a Culture of 

Bureaucracy in Brazil

By Anne Gillman

All photos courtesy Anne Gillman

Pontos de Cultura (PdC) is a program of the Brazilian 

government that funds grassroots-generated cultural 

initiatives in poor communities throughout the country. Upon learning of it, I can attest to being caught 

up in the same encantamento, or enchantment, that 

PdC participants frequently described to me in interviews. In the spring of 2004, musician Gilberto Gil, a 

cultural icon and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s 

new minister of culture, was touring the United 

States to discuss his cultural agenda. During a visit to 

my university, Gil eloquently outlined a new policy 

that would allocate Ministry resources to the diverse 

creative endeavors bubbling up from the grassroots in 

underserved areas. Gil’s proposal sounded as poetic 

as the lyrics of his songs; the PdC program would 

descesconder, literally “unhide,” or bring to light, cultural expressions of excluded populations by funding 

and officially recognizing previously undervalued, 

sometimes even persecuted, practices and embracing 

them as part of Brazil’s rich patrimony. “Culture is 

life, and life is flux,” he explained. I nodded vigorously, clasping the guitar that I had brought in the 

Anne Gillman, her son and Brazilian musicians.
At the IAF Fellows’ Forum

24 Grassroots Development 2015 35

hopes that I would get a chance to ask my question, 

which, by the way, I eventually did: “How about a 

song, Minister Gil?” He graciously complied. 

Culture may be life, and life may be flux, but the 

instruments for transferring state funding to marginalized cultural groups in Brazil are not so flexible, 

it turns out. Although Gil and his fellow visionaries in the Ministry may have intended that the PdC 

policy “unhide” the creative activities of subaltern groups, states have particular ways of “seeing” 

their populations, as political scientist James Scott 

famously observed, that tend to miss, obscure and 

distort precisely the kinds of practices upon which 

popular culture is built. The tools of documentation that states use in efforts to render “legible” their 

citizenry—for example, census or employment data—

generate “abridged maps” of social reality that often 

fail to represent its complexity and the ways things 

actually get done. When states intervene in people’s lives through official policies, the gap between 

de facto social practices and these representative 

abstractions can lead to disastrous results. By the 

time I began visiting the PdC program’s state-funded 

community projects, or “Pontos,” as part of my predissertation research, these tensions were apparent. 

The PdC program aims to encourage cultural production, however what the Brazilian state ultimately 

counts are receipts. In the words of one ponteiro, as 

the Brazilians who comprise the Pontos are called, 

the state cares about fiscal notes, not musical notes. 

Upon being selected as a Ponto, cultural groups 

submit detailed work plans outlining the activities 

they will undertake and expenses they will incur. At 

the end of each year, Pontos must send hard copies 

of valid receipts for each good purchased or service 

contracted as evidence that public resources were 

used according to the plan. An entire half floor of 

the Ministry houses a staff of technocrats tasked 

with sorting through the stacks of paper that tower 

on their desks and determining whether Pontos have 

sufficiently accounted for funds disbursed. In contrast, a small storeroom holds a random array of CDs, 

videos, paintings, sculptures, writings and other cultural paraphernalia that ponteiros inevitably include 

with the boxes of paperwork they submit in earnest 

efforts to demonstrate the fruits of their labors.

If meticulous planning of popular and folkloric 

initiatives three years in advance seems problematic, even more difficult is accurately mapping 

out how such projects will unfold in communities 

where daily life is unpredictable and precarious. 

Gun fights, floods, lack of electricity, and military 

occupations ranked among the reasons Pontos that 

I visited diverged from their work plans. Even if 

a plan is rigorously followed, in most of the rural 

townships, urban squatter settlements, indigenous 

villages and other marginalized communities that 

the program reaches, financial documentation is 

simply unobtainable. Commerce operates via faceto-face exchanges—I tell you the price, you hand 

me the cash, I give you the drum. At best a monetary figure might be scrawled on a piece of paper. 

Sculptor from a Ponto de Cultura in Santa 

Catarina.
Grassroots Development 2015 36 25

Government workers and ponteiros alike affirmed to 

me that the vast majority of Pontos are generating 

innovative outputs, but this is rarely corroborated 

by what the state “sees” through its rigid processes 

of financial documentation. The stakes for complying with the program’s accounting requirements are 

high, since funds are disbursed as advances that must 

be returned with interest if not “properly” used. On 

a few occasions, ponteiros referred to “the clown who 

went to jail” for noncompliance—a likely apocryphal, 

but nonetheless revealing tale that conveys both the 

perceived danger and the absurdity of the program’s 

bureaucratic hurdles. 

Yet the PdC program has flourished and 

expanded over the past decade. Pontos throughout Brazil continue to engage in cultural activities 

through the program, and new Pontos are selected 

and funded each year. Few, if any, clowns have actually been prosecuted. In fact, in spite of the profound 

incompatibility between the program’s innovative 

mission and its ridiculously complex administrative 

requirements, many ponteiros relate that the policy 

has produced positive transformations in relations 

between poor communities and the Brazilian state. 

How could this be the case? 

I spent a year trying to answer this question, 

hanging out with ponteiros and with government 

workers, primarily in the states of Rio de Janeiro 

in the southwest and Alagoas in the northeast. I 

interviewed poets, clowns, cellists, rappers, ballerinas and minstrels, as well as bureaucrats, elected 

officials, accountants and government contractors. 

I sat through seemingly interminable meetings in 

Brasilia in which ponteiros and technocrats debated 

the minute details of proposed modifications to PdC 

accounting processes, and I danced to a traditional 

Northeastern forro played by a band of octogenarian 

accordionists in a small town three hours down a 

road lined with endless sugar cane fields. I also spent 

three months giving piano lessons at a Ponto located 

in the favela of Santa Marta in Rio de Janeiro. An 

upright piano had somehow miraculously made its 

Folkloric dance troupe, another Ponto in Santa Catarina.
26 Grassroots Development 2015 36

At the IAF Fellows’ Forum

way up the favela’s steep narrow pathways and, even 

more improbably, remained in tune. 

Here is what I found. The key to the puzzling 

outcome emerging from the clash between the PdC 

program’s divinely creative mission and its arduously bureaucratic form lies in the close relationships 

between ponteiros and bureaucrats. Early in my 

research, it became clear that the paperwork requirements of the PdC program serve as a main point of 

contact. During the three weeks I spent hanging out 

in the Alagoas Secretariat of Culture, for example, I 

observed an almost constant flow of ponteiros dropping in to ask questions and seek advice. Almost all 

of these solicitations related to some form to be filled 

out or the details of some administrative procedure. 

Many individuals who passed through had never had 

any contact with a state official or entered a government office before their group was selected as a Ponto 

de Cultura. I asked one ponteiro how many times she 

had visited the Secretariat after her theatrical troupe 

was selected as a Ponto. “I lost count,” she replied 

with a chuckle. 

Repeated encounters do not necessarily produce positive relationships. The four trips I made to 

the Federal Police to try to extend my visa did not 

endear me to the Brazilian state, though I did become 

intimately acquainted with the sterile waiting area 

and stale snack options. Familiarity can just as easily 

breed contempt, not to mention extreme frustration, 

as it can collaboration. The critical ingredient in the 

Favela Santa Marta, where the author gave piano lessons. 
Grassroots Development 2015 36 27

PdC program is a cadre of committed managers who 

defy stereotypes of the typical bureaucrat. Of the 

more than 30 government employees whom I interviewed, almost all had a personal connection to the 

arts and were passionately committed to the program. Fernanda, coordinator of the program in Rio 

de Janeiro, is related to Chico Buarque, one of Brazil’s 

most heralded cultural figures, a brilliant composer 

and dramatist known for his resistance during the 

dictatorship. Alexandre, a mid-level bureaucrat and 

lifelong Carnaval enthusiast, spent his youth running 

errands for samba groups to earn a chance to parade 

with them. Such individuals do not “see” like a state.

PdC managers serve as critical intermediaries between Pontos and a rigid, rule-bound state 

apparatus. They respond to and are constrained 

by legislation that governs the transfer of public 

resources and by the less formal institutions and routines of bureaucracies. But they also understand the 

complex social realities within which Pontos operate, and they genuinely appreciate and admire their 

cultural initiatives. They go out of their way to assist 

ponteiros with navigating administrative hurdles. 

“The Pontos call for help, and we do everything we 

can,” explained a PdC manager in the Secretariat 

of Culture of Rio de Janeiro. “We go there, we converse with them. We have our reality here, which 

is our day-to-day bureaucracy, and our work, yes, is 

bureaucratic. But the relationship with the Pontos 

is really different. It is about trying to understand, 

about putting ourselves in their shoes. We are the 

bridge between the bureaucratic side and the human 

side.” PdC bureaucrats give ponteiros the number of 

their personal cell phone, make home visits, work late 

into the night and generally over-extend themselves 

to help Pontos produce the necessary documentation. Their dedication is fed by Pontos’ cultural 

outputs. A state worker and I visited a new Ponto in 

Rio de Janeiro, where a young black man performed 

a dramatic representation of a poem he had written 

reflecting, ironically, on his instruction as a child to 

always smile. We spent the entire trip home marveling at his talent that the simplicity of the context 

had accentuated—one man on an empty stage in 

a church, his audience in folding chairs. Rio’s poor 

urban communities have served as archetypical cases 

of the ways state-society interactions produce marginality, but also of the special places marginalized 

communities occupy within Brazil’s cultural landscape. Observing the warm exchanges between the 

bureaucrat and the artists in this context, I felt I was 

witnessing firsthand how initiatives to cultivate the 

cultural resources of excluded populations can help 

these margins shift.

Part of the managers’ bridging role involves mediating between Pontos’ inspiring cultural expressions 

and what gets reflected on paper. Alexandre described 

a rural organization that had purchased a cow, since 

the work plan included a line item for participants’ 

food. Legally, however, a cow is personal property, 

not food. Therefore the group’s initial accounting was 

rejected, since, technically, the expenditure diverged 

from the plan. “How are you going to tell someone 

from the country that a cow isn’t food?” Alexandre 

exclaimed in exasperation. He advocated within the 

bureaucracy to resolve this misunderstanding and 

ensure the Ponto was not required to return spent 

funds. Such intervention is common. “We really put 

ourselves out there with other sectors,” another PdC 

worker commented. “Maybe by their training they 

[accounting sectors] see the guy [ponteiro] as a stack 

of papers, but we know he has an amazing project. So 

we say, ‘Hey, let’s try some flexibility, let’s see what 

we can do.’” 

Exchanges between government representatives 

and ponteiros generate learning on both sides of the 

equation. The program is, said one ponteiro, “turning 

artists into bureaucrats.” Through the intense learning-by-doing process of managing public funds for 

the first time, often with hand-holding by dedicated 

bureaucrats, ponteiros acquire the technical skills and 

knowledge needed to navigate dense administrative processes. In many cases, ponteiros then apply 

these skills toward other goals, for example, accessing 

other sources of public funding. But state representatives and ponteiros alike recognize that something 

is lost if culture becomes too bureaucratized, so 

they collaborate to push for changes that enable the 

Brazilian state to “see” cultural practices and reach 

and respond to marginalized groups. Sometimes this 

involves informal modifications to regulations and 

practices, such as extending deadlines. Collaborations 

have also led to formal changes in rules and legislation (a subject meriting more discussion than is 
28 Grassroots Development 2015 36

At the IAF Fellows’ Forum

possible here). For example, when applying for status 

as a Ponto de Cultura, indigenous groups are now 

permitted to describe their activities orally rather 

than in writing.

The PdC program is in fact helping transform 

state-society relations in Brazil by the direct transfer 

of public resources to grassroots cultural groups in 

poor communities, although not exactly as Minister 

Gil might have envisioned. Certainly the artistic content of the policy plays a critical role in this 

process. Culture is an arena in which poor communities may be particularly rich; some of Brazil’s most 

valued musical styles, samba and forro, emerged from 

impoverished urban and rural areas. Recognizing 

these areas for their resources not their deficiencies, the PdC program encourages the creativity of 

excluded groups, laying the ground for distinctly 

different forms of interaction between marginalized populations and the Brazilian state. Ironically, 

paperwork is also a key driver in these transformations, serving as the primary motive for engagement 

between participants and government workers. 

These fruitful encounters often leave ponteiros better 

able to access and influence the Brazilian state, and 

the Brazilian state better able to accommodate the 

practices of marginalized cultural groups. In these 

processes, friction between paper-pushing and culture-making generates combustive energy. Ponteiros’ 

and state workers’ shared enchantment with the PdC 

program’s creative mission, nurtured by their ongoing engagement with its inspiring cultural outputs, 

provides the grease. 

Anne Gillman, an IAF Fellow in the 2014-2015 cycle, is a 

Ph.D. candidate in comparative politics at Johns Hopkins 

University as well as a trained pianist. She completed additional fieldwork in Brazil supported by the Social Science 

Research Council.

Musicians from “Meninos do Sitio,” 

a Ponto de Cultura in rural Alagoas. 
Grassroots Development 2015 36 29
30 Grassroots Development 2015 36

At the IAF Fellows’ Forum

Seeds of Struggle in Colombia

By Laura Gutiérrez Escobar

Who holds the right to use and reproduce seeds 

has pitted Colombian farmers against the biotechnology industry in a struggle that has intensified since 

2012. At issue for the farmers is “seed sovereignty,” 

or their right to decide which kinds of seeds to grow 

and how they circulate (Kloppenburg, 2010: 153). 

Seed sovereignty parallels the term “food sovereignty” coined by the transnational social movement 

La Vía Campesina. It refers to farming that responds 

adequately to the need for food while being culturally appropriate as well as compatible with social 

norms and the responsible use of the environment 

(La Vía Campesina, 2008; Desmerais, 2007; Gutiérrez 

Escobar, 2011).

The roots of conflict 

The escalation of this conflict is rooted in (1) the 

promotion of transgenic or genetically modified (GM) 

crops, especially corn destined for commodity markets as raw material for agrofuels and animal feed, 

and (2) claims that plants and their genetic material are increasingly subject to intellectual property 

rights. The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between 

Colombia and the United States, which became effecTraditional corn varieties preserved by a seed saver in Canamomo and Lomaprieta. All photos courtesy Laura Gutiérrez Escobar
Grassroots Development 2015 36 31

tive in 2012, six years after it was signed, requires 

Colombia to join the International Union for the 

Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) of 

1991, a system that restricts farmers’ rights to use the 

seeds they grow. UPOV91 does this by recognizing 

the property interest of breeders, usually industrial, 

in hybrid and GM seeds and in seeds considered 

“essentially derived” from the protected varieties. Its 

protections extend to seeds that might in their natural state share the characteristics of the engineered 

seeds and even to varieties involving no creative 

process but that were “discovered” and had not been 

previously registered anywhere as intellectual property. (Grupo Semillas, 2011; Gutiérrez Escobar and 

Fitting, 2015). Vandana Shiva, an activist in India, 

calls such corporate claims to ownership “biopiracy” 

and dismisses them as illegitimate. She emphasizes that the seeds claimed are really the product 

and patrimony of the farmers who have cared for 

and developed them over millennia (Shiva, 2001: 

49). Among the most vigorous activists working in 

Colombia for the right to save seeds and against the 

proliferation of GM crops are farmers in Cañamomo 

and Lomaprieta, a name that refers to a single resguardo, or indigenous territory near the town of 

Riosucio, department of Caldas. 

The resguardo

Cañamomo and Lomaprieta, located on Colombia’s 

coffee-growing axis, is one of four resguardos belonging to the indigenous Embera-Chamí people. The 

Colombian Constitution of 1991 recognizes the 

right of native peoples to recover territory and their 

identity and to political autonomy. In 2009, to protect agrobiodiversity and prevent the entry of GM 

crops and food, particularly maize, residents, claiming to exercise their constitutional rights, declared 

Cañamomo and Lomaprieta a “transgenic-free 

territory,” one of the few in Colombia. They also 

created a Red de Custodios de Semillas, a Network of 

Seed Custodians, and they built a community seed 

house—initiatives intended to control the kinds of 

seeds valued as well as their ownership, cultivation 

and circulation. The Network of Free Seeds (NFS) has 

actively supported Cañamomo and Lomaprieta. NFS 

comprises grassroots and nongovernmental organizations that campaign against GM seeds and legal 

protection for claims to plants as private property 

and in favor of initiatives toward seed sovereignty. 

The resguardo has worked closely with the Colombian 

nongovernmental organizations Corporación 

Custodios de Semillas and Grupo Semillas, and with 

SwissAid, all members of the NFS. A crucial ally is 

the municipal government of Riosucio, whose mayor 

became the first indigenous Colombian elected to the 

position—after three other indigenous candidates 

were assassinated while campaigning. 

The resguardo’s declaration holds that seeds constitute an indigenous people’s patrimony and belong 

only to Pachamama, mother earth. Therefore, it says, 

seeds can neither be “altered or contaminated in 

their natural condition nor privately owned.” The 

declaration prohibits “programs of food security and 

agricultural development that include GM seeds, 

food or packages of technology that put at risk our 

traditional seeds, ancestral knowledge and territory.” 

Finally, it declares the resguardo committed to growing and preserving traditional seeds, meaning native 

or creole varieties, to valuing relevant knowledge 

and to supporting seed savers or custodians—farmers 

steeped in agrobiodiversity and dedicated to propagating traditional seeds even when the investment 

in time is considerable and the return is low. “People 

admire the varieties but don’t sow them. It’s too 

demanding. They congratulate you for the effort, but 

that’s it” Said a seed saver whom I will call Pedro. (All 

farmers interviewed requested anonymity.) 

The autonomous government, or cabildo, of 

Cañamomo and Lomaprieta, has supported local networks of seed savers and seed fairs that connect them 

with savers throughout Colombia. It allows seed 

savers to plant on communal land and provides them 

seeds from other indigenous communities as well as 

inputs such as green manure. The cabildo built the 

Casa Comunitaria de Semillas, or Community Seed 

House, where seeds are sold at prices that the Seed 

House determines fair for both savers and buyers. A 

farmer who accepts seeds free of charge is considered 

to have incurred the moral obligation to return to the 

Seed House up to 50 percent of the amount received, 

“payable” in kind from his/her own production. 

The cabildo and the network have participated 

in a nation-wide Study of Creole Maize of Colombia, 

initiated by SwissAid and Grupo Semillas to identify 
32 Grassroots Development 2015 36

At the IAF Fellows’ Forum

which creole maize varieties are important to farming communities in terms of their cultural practices, 

their economy and sources of food and medicines. 

The study indicated the existence of 87 varieties, 

of which only a quarter are still abundant in the 

coffee-growing zone. The rest are considered endangered and some have been lost (Campaña Semillas de 

Identidad y Grupo Semillas, 2011: 13-15). The study 

helped the resguardo evaluate the dwindling diversity of maize, identify the causes and decide how 

mitigate the risk of further loss, assess the threat of 

contamination from GM varieties and prevent their 

introduction.

Threats and resistance

The active resistance of Embera-Chamí communities in Riosucio might seem premature because to 

date no GM variety of coffee has been developed and 

there are no large fields of other GM crops nearby. 

Of the three GM crops approved for cultivation in 

Colombia—cotton, maize and carnations—only 

maize is grown in the department of Caldas. In 2013, 

total cultivation amounted to 319 hectares (Agrobio, 

2013). GM maize is engineered to tolerate the herbicide manufactured by the respective biotechnology 

company. For example, Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” 

seeds are resistant to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, which was recently classified by the 

World Health Organization as “probably carcinogenic 

to humans.” Manufacturers also transfer genes from 

the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which makes 

the GM crop resistant to insects but also breaks down 

the evolutionary barriers to inter-species breeding 

and the long-term consequences for the plants and 

the environment might be insufficiently understood 

and unpredictable. Bt toxin may be harmful to bees 

and other insects key to pollination. Additionally, 

GM crops have caused the development of resistant 

“super” weeds and pests. This has prompted the 

industry to develop new varieties even more resistant 

to toxic chemicals such 2-4D, an ingredient in Agent 

Orange, the herbicide that continues to cause genetic 

defects, gene-linked illness and cancer in Vietnam 

as well as in their children and to affect veterans 

exposed to it during the war and their children (ETC 

Group, 2008).

The Colombian Institute of Agriculture (ICA) 

has prohibited GM crops in fields within a radius of 

300 meters, or some 1,000 feet, of indigenous territories. However, the seed savers in Cañamomo 

and Lomaprieta consider extremely worrisome any 

cultivation of GM crops, even the currently small 

quantity of maize, because of the threat of contamination of traditional and wild varieties. They argue 

that the ICA’s measures are ineffective against wind 

and insects, including bees—vectors that disperse 

pollen with no regard for the 300-meter radius set 

by law. In addition, ICA’s biosafety measures do not 

address the risk of contamination posed by imported 

GM maize and its potential use in government- and 

privately-sponsored programs intended to assure food 

Laura Gutiérrez Escobar at a seed fair in Riosucio, Caldas.
Grassroots Development 2015 36 33

security and advance agricultural development. As a 

result, seed saving is increasingly interpreted as resistance in defense of indigenous territories and a way 

of life. 

Seed systems, savers’ networks

Both cabildo and seed savers in the resguardo view 

GM seeds and the application of intellectual property rights to plants as central to the export-oriented, 

corporate-driven agriculture that they perceive 

as driving land grabs, seed commodification and 

competition from food imports along with contamination of traditional varieties. They defend “live 

seed systems” characterized by seeds developed on 

farms—or “in-situ conservation”—based on their 

shared heritage and hands-on experience. 

To consider seed systems “alive” is in stark contrast to the concept of “ex-situ conservation,” which 

occurs in germplasm banks, some managed by the 

Consultative Group for International Agricultural 

Research (CGIAR) that draws its funding from 

biotechnology companies, major philanthropic foundations and multilateral agencies. Seeds frozen and 

stored in germplasm banks are “beyond the reach of 

farmers and the earth as if they were dead,” in the 

words of seed saver Juan. “I have eagerly asked for 

new seeds to cultivate,” he said. “It’s not about keeping them in jars or shelves.” According to seed savers, 

live systems produce seeds that, unlike GM and 

hybrid seeds, are well adapted to local conditions, 

benefit the environment, confirm the value of farmers’ knowledge and further food sovereignty (RSL, 

2013; Gutiérrez Escobar, at press). “Seeds are power 

and sustenance for the farm and for you,” said seed 

saver Jorge. 

Seed savers like Jorge consider both hybrid and 

GM varieties harmful to the environment and to 

food sovereignty because they are intended for 

extensive monocropping with intensive chemical 

inputs—producing the equivalent of a second Green 

Revolution. Furthermore, double recessive genes 

that appear in subsequent generations result in the 

loss of the very characteristics engineered to make 

the original GM or hybrid seeds desirable, so that 

farmers must buy new seeds for each agricultural 

cycle. The cabildo and the seed savers in Cañamomo 

and Lomaprieta cite the hybrid, sun-grown varieties developed for monocropping by Colombia’s 

Federación Nacional de Cafeteros (Fedecafé), the 

National Coffee Growers Federation, and intended, 

they claim, to replace the biodiverse bosque cafetero, 

or “coffee forest,” an agro-ecosystem where coffee 

grows in the shade of native trees and is intercropped 

with plantains, corn, beans and medicinal and aromatic plants (Corrales, 2002). Seed savers resent that 

Fedecafé’s varieties work well only in conjunction 

with expensive technology packages that they claim 

jeopardize the soil, biodiversity and their own food 

sovereignty, especially when international prices 

for coffee plummet. Although Fedecafé distributes 

its colombia and castillo varieties to farmers free of 

charge, indigenous activists complain that credit and 

technical assistance are conditioned on their use. 

For seed savers, the coffee-forest model using 

traditional varieties is better for keeping soil fertile 

and their food supply reliable and it reduces dependence on chemical inputs. According to seed saver 

Carlos, “Pajarito [little bird] coffee, introduced here 

about 150 years ago, does not require fertilizers. Just 

keep it clean and adjust the shadow and it produces 

well. Pests may attack these plants but they can’t kill 

them or cause serious damage.” But some indigenous 

farmers in Riosucio, who do not belong to the seed 

savers’ network, say Fedecafé’s varieties often yield a 

bigger crop and more effectively resist the worst pests: 

the fungus roya, or coffee rust, and the coffee-borer 

beetle. However, they agreed with the seed savers 

that the performance of Fedecafe’s varieties depend 

on expensive inputs that they can ill afford in the 

current context of a poor economy and the plunging 

price of coffee. 

Solidarity toward sovereignty 

The Embera are literally “people of maize.” Maize is 

an element in their ritual meals; in their minga, the 

community work force that dates backs centuries; 

and in the inauguration of their governors (Campaña 

Semillas de Identidad y Grupo Semillas, 2011: 9-11). 

The recovery of traditional maize varieties is seen as 

linked to their recovery of political and economic 

autonomy, their indigenous identity and their traditional relationship with plants and the environment 

(Escobar, 1998). In addition to seed saving, assertions 

of seed sovereignty in Cañamomo and Lomaprieta 
34 Grassroots Development 2015 36

At the IAF Fellows’ Forum

include opposition to legislation that protects the 

claims of agribusiness to seeds as property. Seed 

savers in the resguardo refer to both hybrids and GM 

varieties as semillas desmejoradas or “degraded seeds,” 

a designation directly challenging the primacy of 

industrial scientific breeding. 

The Seed House rejects conventional schemes 

to certify hybrid and GM seeds according to criteria 

that turn on yield and homogeneity. The standards 

of safety and quality in its own Sistema Participativo 

de Garantías, or Participatory Guarantee System 

(PGS), consider the knowledge that gives farmers the 

ability to preserve and develop heterogeneous varieties on their plots and to incorporate only as they 

deem appropriate elements of what they consider 

“Western” science (RSL, 2014 Seed House staff judge 

seed quality as it relates to food sovereignty and local 

diets and might apply some conventional standards 

for germination, cleanliness and the desirable percentage of humidity. But the staff also requires savers 

to supply seeds adapted to local conditions and 

grown and reproduced without the use of chemicals. 

The staff applies a mix of preservation techniques. 

The purchase of refrigerators for storage is under 

consideration, but hot pepper and other traditional 

elements are used to repel weevils and seeds are kept 

by the stove to prevent infestation by other insects. 

Bags labeled with information on quality and origin, 

confirm seed saver Rosa’s observation that PGS is 

about “trust and solidarity among seed savers; about 

knowing how the seed was grown and in which 

community.”

The cabildo in Cañamomo and Lomaprieta, with 

support from the municipal government of Riosucio, 

is pursuing two other initiatives toward seed sovereignty. First, the cabildo has called upon its unarmed 

indigenous force charged with protecting the community to confiscate GM seeds so the territory stays 

free of transgenics, according to one guard on the 

force. The cabildo is also trying to regulate the use 

of seeds by the Colombian government and other 

donors to programs extending food and agricultural 

aid. The fear is that nongovernmental organizations 

and government agencies might distribute GM maize 

and soybeans from the United States and Argentina, 

which are increasingly available in local markets 

at prices lower than non-GM domestic varieties 

(Gutiérrez Escobar, at press). Both the cabildo and the 

municipal government rejected the Red de Seguridad 

Alimentaria (ReSa), or Food Security Network, an official program of the Colombian government, because 

it required farmers to use seeds certified by the ICA. 

“We told them [ReSa’s staff]: We’re sorry but here we 

have our own proposal, our own seeds, and we don’t 

want certified seeds, so you can turn around and 

take your program somewhere else,” Rosa recalled 

saying at a seed savers’ meeting in September 2014. 

“We decided that we are not going to be afraid,” she 

added. “If one day the ICA comes to the resguardo to 

Bags of seeds in the community seed house are labeled: 

“This seed is not a commercial product, its price reflects the 

care and dedication of the curator. Free Seeds.”
Grassroots Development 2015 36 35

seize our seeds, I believe we will be strong enough to 

prevent it.” 

Finally, seed savers consider seeds a sacred and 

collective good—a commons—the “heritage of farming communities for the benefit of humanity,” not a 

means to facilitate the accumulation of capital nor a 

collection of genes susceptible to private ownership. 

Accordingly, the Communitarian Seed House rejects 

intellectual property rights in favor of a distribution system that allows for reciprocity and does not 

commodify seeds. The label on the seed bags clarifies 

as much: “This seed is not a commercial product. Its price recognizes the seed saver’s effort and 

dedication.” 

Conclusion

In Cañamomo and Lomaprieta, seeds are considered a vehicle for maintaining political autonomy, 

traditional and agroecological knowledge systems, 

cultural identity and food sovereignty rather than 

commodities by which to accumulate capital. For 

savers, seeds should continue “to pass freely from 

farmer to farmer.” They respond to the call of the 

Network of Free Seeds for civil disobedience when 

laws restrict the free circulation of seeds and for the 

rejection of development that turns farmers into 

“entrepreneurs” offering to maintain biodiversity and 

use their knowledge as “environmental services” to 

be traded in financial markets (RSL, 2013; Escobar, 

1998). Seed savers in Cañamomo and Lomaprieta are 

aware that declaring their territory free of transgenics 

means clashing with powerful corporations that are 

prepared to defend their interests. Regardless, these 

Embera-Chamí communities continue to claim their 

right to use seeds from their heritage to grow food, 

without depending on industrial products. Their 

tenacity has set an example for like-minded communities throughout Colombia.

Laura Gutiérrez Escobar is a candidate for the Ph.D. in 

anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel 

Hill and was in the 2013-2014 cycle of IAF Fellows. Her 

research was subsequently funded by the Colombian government’s Francisco J. de Caldas Doctoral Fellowship. She 

wishes to acknowledge the guidance of Germán Vélez from 

Grupo Semillas and the anonymous jury drawn from the 

IAF’s Academic Review Committee.

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2013. Accessed April 10, 2015. http://www.agrobio.org/bfiles/

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Corrales, Elcy. “Sostenibilidad agropecuaria y sistemas de 

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Desmarais, Annette Aurélie. La Vía Campesina: Globalization 

and the Power of Peasants. Halifax and London: Fernwood 

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Escobar, Arturo. “Whose Knowledge, Whose Nature? 

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and Henry Montes, 135-156. Palmira: Universidad Nacional de 

Colombia y Fundación Karibia (at press

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category/letters/51604 
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Since the Inter-American Foundation began 

awarding grants in the 1970s, initiatives in agriculture and food production have consistently ranked as 

the major component of its portfolio. The contemporary twist is that increasingly farmers in IAF-funded 

organizations are turning to agroecology, a system 

of practices directed at benefiting production, the 

environment and the consumer. The Ninth Meeting 

of the Rede Ecovida de Agroecologia (Ecovida), held 

April 20-22 in Marechal Cândido Rondon, Brazil, 

brought together more than 100 farmers and staff 

from 60 of these IAF-funded organizations working 

at different points along the agroecology spectrum 

in Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa 

Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, 

Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, 

Paraguay and Peru.

Of the organizations comprising Ecovida’s membership, several have been with the agroecology 

movement since the late 1970’s, when they opposed 

the Green Revolution with its widespread use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers and its model of the 

large-scale agribusiness. Since 1998, Rede Ecovida has 

led the movement in Brazil toward a more responsible 

way of farming focused on family-based production. 

Today Ecovida counts more than 200 membergroups, representing 2,000 families, as well as over 

20 support organizations from 170 municipalities 

scattered throughout rural Rio Grande do Sul, Santa 

Catarina, Paraná and São Paulo, Brazil’s bread basket 

but also the site of farms supplying other foods—

beans, mate, fruit—produced on a smaller scale. 

Ecovida’s grassroots and nongovernmental members 

have included several IAF grantees: Centro de Estudos 

e Promoção da Agricultura de Grupo (CEPAGRO), 

Centro Vianei de Educação Popular (AVICITECS), 

Centro de Tecnologias Alternativas e Populares 

(CETAP), Centro Ecológico , Associação de Estudos, 

Orientação e Assistência Rural (ASSESOAR) and 

Associação dos Agricultores Agroflorestais de Barra do 

Turvo/SP e Adrianópolis/PR (COOPERAFLORESTA). 

 Ecovida has been a leader in the Brazilian 

debate on audits related to organic certification, 

which require an external inspector to assess crop 

quality—a service families farming on a small scale 

can ill afford. Among its accomplishments is the 

pioneering, peer-driven system that it developed 

for certifying produce, which was officially accredited by the Ministry of Agriculture in 2010 and is 

now a reference point for other networks throughout the hemisphere. These Sistemas Participativos 

de Garantia (SPGs) were the subject of one of the 

27 seminars and workshops available to the 1,500 

attending the April meeting. Other topics included 

the impact of pesticides and genetically modified 

organisms, the recovery and preservation of native 

seeds, beekeeping, building a consumer base for 

agroecological products, and strategies for reaching 

local markets. Rede Ecovida has played a key role in 

linking cooperatives from all three southern states 

and São Paulo. This concerted effort has been an 

enormous step toward tackling a major challenge: 

supplying clients a sufficient quantity of diverse and 

consistently high-quality produce throughout the 

year. The Ecovida event was also the site of Feira de 

Sabores e Saberes, a traditional-style showcase of the 

season’s produce, foods processed from it, native 

seeds, crafts and the stories behind the goods on 

display. 

Post-conference, the farmers from IAF grantees 

traveled some 250 kilometers south, past immense 

monocropped fields of soy, to Francisco Beltrão, 

where, over two days, ASSESOAR hosted more discussions and shared its members’ extensive experience 

with the system specifically adapted to their land. A 

highlight was a visit to small farms where ASSESOAR 

has helped develop technologies to respond to the 

challenge of diversification and to water scarcity. 

Rede Ecovida and Beyond

By Juliana Menucci
Grassroots Development 2015 36 37

After the Ecovida conference, Genaro Calán Patzán, Edgar 

Campbell and Juan Luna visited sites in Francisco Beltrão, 

where their Brazilian counterparts have revived traditional 

varieties of seeds.

Visitors witnessed agroforestry as an undertaking to 

which entire families contribute. They also saw cisterns, more common in the semiarid regions of the 

Brazilian Northeast but now a necessity in the South 

because of the alarming intensity of the water crisis 

there. ASSESOAR has helped farmers build cisterns as 

an alternative to drilling wells that reduce groundwater levels and endanger sources. By storing water 

channeled from roofs or protected springs during 

rainy seasons, cisterns are not only cheaper but more 

responsible. 

ASSESOAR’s work with native seeds also 

impressed. “I’m delighted to visit Isac Miola and his 

seed bank,” said Edgar Campbell of the Asociación 

de Organizaciones del Corredor Biológico Talamanca 

Caribe (ACBTC) in Costa Rica. ACBTC, whose farmers are of African descent, encourages agroecological 

principles toward organic certification of cacao and 

native fruit trees. “Isac showed us a type of ancestral 

corn recovered in the region, as well as other seed 

varieties. It’s amazing what they’ve done to preserve 

our source of food.” ASSESOAR’s commitment to 

increasing the production of seeds free of genetic 

modification and chemical contamination is a polar 

opposite of agro-industry’s emphasis on transgenic 

seeds and pesticides applied on a massive scale. In 

this context, ASSESOAR and other Ecovida members 

play a critical role in preserving and reproducing the 

genetic base for agroecological systems.

The visitors and technical staff also discussed 

marketing, management of groups producing coffee 

and cacao, advocacy in political forums, certification, 

education and communication, the role of young 

people, networking and land tenure, particularly 

as related to African descendants and indigenous peoples. “The opportunity to learn from each country’s 

cultural, social and environmental diversity, through 

the people that have come together here, makes us 

grow as human beings,” said Aluísio Marques of 

Centro de Educação Popular (CENEP), located in the 

semi-arid Brazilian Northeast.

Victor Hugo Morales, from Centro Campesino 

para el Desarrollo Sustentable (CAMPESINO) of 

Mexico, had attended Ecovida’s conference in 2012. 

His organization trains Mexican farmers in conservation and the development of community-based 

businesses. “The event helped us organize producers 

and consumers to respond to the Organic Products 

Law laying out rules and requirements for organic 

certification in Mexico,” Morales recalled. “We also 

learned the importance of each organization’s role 

on the political scene to assure that the voices of 

our communities were being heard.” Ecovida’s 2015 

conference bolstered by the exchanges, should have a 

ripple effect as participants share their experiences at 

home and maintain contact with like-minded organizations throughout the hemisphere.

Juliana Menucci, of IAF local and advisory services in Brazil, consulted Formação e consolidação da Rede Ecovida 

de agroecologia e a sua experiência de certificação 

participative by Luiz Carlos Rebelatto dos Santos as well 

as publications developed with IAF support: ASSESOAR’s 

Coleção Tecnologias Ecológicas, Vols. 1-4 (Francisco 

Beltrão, 2014); and CEPAGRO’s Coleção Saber na 

Prática, Vols. 1-4. (Florianópolis, 2013).

Jenny Petrow
38 Grassroots Development 2015 36

At the IAF

William M. Dyal

1928–2015

In Memoriam

As its founding president, William M. Dyal built the Inter-American Foundation 

from the ground up. More than three and a half decades later, the IAF continues 

to function as he insisted it should: committed to social justice, responsive to 

the ideas of the organized poor and cornered on the conviction that they, in fact, “know how.” 

The oldest of three sons born to a railroad worker and his wife, Dyal never forgot his origins 

or how parents sacrificed to enable him to be the first in his family to go to university. He 

came to the IAF from the United States Peace Corps and later headed the American Field 

Service and St. John’s University. Known to the staff as Bill, he will always be remembered at 

the IAF for his definitive presidency that lasted from 1969 to 1979. Dyal is survived by his 

wife, Edie; daughters Cathy, Debby and Lisa; and nine grandchildren as well as the many 

professionals inspired by the example he set. Among those present at the memorial service 

held Feb. 7 in Fredericksburg, Va., was IAF veteran Steve Vetter whose eulogy recalled Dyal’s 

leadership and lessons.
Grassroots Development 2015 36 39

suffering from a ruptured kidney and high fever, 

overlooked and forgotten until he came and sat with 

me assuring me that all would be well. I don’t think 

either of us ever imagined that our friendship would 

span a full half-century. I am deeply indebted to Bill. 

Many of the good things that have happened to me 

can be traced to him. I am honored to share the lessons that I hope to carry forward and also how he 

As we mourn the passing of Bill Dyal and the deep 

loss for all of us, we also celebrate his legacy. Each of 

us has grown immeasurably because of him. What 

explains the remarkable impact wherever Bill Dyal 

walked and worked?

I first met Bill in the mid-1960s, when I was a 

Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia and he was the 

new country director. I was in a hospital in Pasto 

Gracious Goodness 

and a Life Well Lived

By Steve Vetter

Dyal with Jamaican grantee Mathews Unified Youth Group. Steve Vetter
40 Grassroots Development 2015 36

At the At the IAF IAF

touched the lives of his many other friends. This is 

a challenge because there is simply too much about 

Bill Dyal for any one individual to capture. Not many 

men or women in leadership who have the qualities 

of a Bill Dyal. 

Community was the thread that ran through 

Bill’s work wherever he went: the Baptist missions, 

the Peace Corps, the IAF, American Field Service 

International and St. John’s University. He had that 

rare talent for bringing together diverse individuals with a common purpose and then providing 

the environment conducive to solving problems. I 

vividly recall when he arrived to become president of 

St. John’s University in Annapolis, Md., where I was 

living at the time. Through several neighbors who 

taught at St. John’s I had learned that the university 

was suffering from division, conflict and rivalries. 

“We have no sense of academic community,” someone commented. That would change with Bill Dyal. 

“He made an enormous and lasting impact on the 

college during his time here,” recalled Chris Nelson, 

who succeeded Bill as president of St. John’s. “Faculty 

loved and admired him; students looked up to him. 

He was accepting, wise, friendly and, particularly, 

courageous.” 

Bill remained remarkably self-effacing, notwithstanding his considerable influence on United States 

foreign policy toward the Western Hemisphere. 

Recall that up until the 1970s U.S. foreign assistance 

was channeled via government relationships. There 

was no role for nongovernmental organizations, let 

alone official recognition that the poor work together 

to solve the problems facing them. As the founding president of the Inter-American Foundation, Bill 

was able to demonstrate that the organized poor are 

capable of self-help toward improving their conditions themselves. One of the first publications that 

Bill brought forward was They Know How, which chalIn Memoriam

Bill Dyal and family after Dyal was sworn in as the president of the Inter-American Foundation in 1971.

IAF archives
Grassroots Development 2015 36 41

lenged the statist, top-down view of development. 

“Bill was able to actually change the direction of the 

wind when it came to the top-down policies of the 

U.S. government and demonstrate how bottom-up 

development could produce results,” said Tom Ramey, 

who served under Bill as vice president of the IAF and 

later headed Liberty Mutual International. 

Bill took great delight in finding individuals that 

he considered diamonds in the rough and supporting 

their talent and potential for leadership. His advice 

was to listen better and to develop the self-awareness 

and critical reflection that lets us recognize ideas 

that no longer work. “I want to you to know the difference between hearing and listening,” he used to 

say. “Unlearn everything you think you know. Get 

behind community leaders, not in front. And then 

we can figure out next steps.” That was Bill’s great gift 

to me and it is still paying dividends. 

I watched Bill go into some highly charged situations. He simply had no fear and always spoke truth 

to power and, for that matter, to everyone. At times I 

wondered if he had an allergy to fear. “Don’t let fear 

be your guide” was a favorite quote. He would listen 

impatiently to someone who was wrapped up in the 

fear of everything that could go wrong. “I don’t want 

you to worry anymore about this. Just let me handle 

it,” he would say, then push through the fear and 

move us forward. This ability to reach out beyond the 

normal boundaries and connect is powerful medicine in toxic, polarized situations. I often think that 

what Bill was all about was, as someone commented, 

“gracious goodness.” He believed in the power of 

kindness and in respect for each individual’s essential 

dignity. 

Bill took his guiding principle from the wellknown lines of a poem by Antonio Machado: “There 

are no paths; paths are made by walking.” To him, 

those words meant that solutions emerge from 

trying to solve problems. In January, I learned that 

Bill had been placed in a hospice and I traveled to 

Fredericksburg to sit with him. He was unable to 

open his eyes or talk and so I began telling him old 

IAF stories and mentioning the names of staff. That 

got a faint smile and a stronger grip. Then noted 

that I had created a Machado Award in his honor 

at Partners of the Americas and had recently used 

it to recognize six volunteers. This made his eyes 

open wide; a smile followed, then a stronger grip. 

On the wall facing him was the plaque from his IAF 

staff, inscribed Machado’s words: “Caminante, no hay 

camino.” Every time a new pathfinder receives the 

Machado Award, I share the lessons of Bill Dyal’s life. 

The many books that Bill kept on his shelf also 

included a volume of work by Robert Frost whose 

“Two Tramps in Mud Time” captures that sense of 

slogging through difficult times, always hoping for 

something better. “Only when love and need are one, 

is the deed ever done, for heaven and future’s sake,” 

it concludes. Bill brought love and need together in 

a meaningful way. His life’s work, the body of his 

many accomplishments, will stand the test of time. 

They are for “heaven and future’s sake.” May we carry 

his spirit and many lessons forward.

Steve Vetter is president of Partners for the Americas. His 

IAF career from 1975 to 1996 spanned positions ranging 

from representative to vice president for programs to acting 

president.

Dyal on the job at the IAF with his senior staff in 1972.

IAF archives
42 Grassroots Development 2015 36

At the IAF In Memoriam

Bill’s early leadership established the IAF as a different kind of U.S. foreign-assistance agency committed to 

supporting the poor as citizen-protagonists in their community and in their nation. While much has changed in 

Latin America and the Caribbean, this mission is just 

as important today as ever before, and the IAF remains 

committed to Bill’s vision. We, and the more than 5,000 

grassroots partners that the IAF has supported over the 

last 45 years, count ourselves as heirs to Bill’s legacy of 

respect and partnership with some of the poorest people 

in the region.”—Robert N. Kaplan, president, InterAmerican Foundation

[T]he poem by Antonio Machado encapsulates and animates Bill’s life. Your path in life is made by walking. 

Look back and you’ll see paths that’ll never be walked 

again. Go forth, go forward. And Bill did. That’s how 

I understood the breadth of things he did, the range of 

people he befriended, his openness to adventure and to the 

edges. He didn’t pretend that it was simple or easy. The 

poem is a wonderful play on the contradictions that made 

the whole man. Bill loved ephemera and was romantic and still and always had feet firmly planted on the 

ground, almost as if another person who was unsentimentally attached to unvarnished truth. That has never left 

me, right along with an openness to change, a clear-eyed 

insistence on dealing with things as they are, a wry sense 

of humor and a sucker for talent.—Alberto Ibarguén 

former president, the Knight Foundation; former 

editor, Miami Herald. 

Bill was a prophet of his times, a guru, a visionary, a 

game-changer, a man of the people, a free spirit. He 

displayed moral courage, integrity and imagination in 

driving the IAF mandate forward, leading the way on how 

to be responsible and responsive in Latin America. I think 

many were skeptical he could pull it off. Well he did. The 

IAF is going strong and the institutional culture and spirit 

that he shaped are still present. Bill and I shared only a 

few my 36 years at the IAF but the impact on my values, 

aspirations and perspectives was profound, for which I 

will always be grateful.—Kevin Benito Healy, adjunct 

professor, the George Washington University; former 

IAF representative

It was my enormous privilege to work under Bill’s leadership. Those years shaped my approach to development 

and to life. Key to Bill’s approach was his understanding that if you take risks, some ventures are going to fail. 

The important thing was to admit it, to recognize what 

went wrong and to learn from it. Whatever happened, 

Bill’s stock response was “Don’t over-react” One of the 

first phrases I remember hearing from Bill was “Style is 

our substance.” As I recall, the message was reinforced 

by a policy of no locked files, no classified documents.—

Marion Ritchey Vance, former IAF representative

 Bill was able to see things in me that I was unable to 

see. He would reveal his insight about how I could grow, 

stretch, to do more to make this a better world and then 

got out of the way and let me perform. In this cynical world, how do you say that someone like Bill is a 

great human being without someone being suspicious? 

How many other great people do we know who were in 

fact monsters in their own homes? Bill Dyal is the real 

thing.—Hal Levin, internationally recognized specialist in sustainable architecture

Bill was the most important influence in Doug’s and my 

professional lives, and we met no finer person in our four 

decades in D.C. As he did for so many others, he showed 

us how we could translate our personal values into support 

for the knowledge, vision and efforts of people organized 

on the ground around the world for change. In my view, 

the widely accepted belief today that people must participate in social and economic decision-making at all levels 

that affect them emanates from Bill’s own vision and the 

way he put it into action. We were so fortunate, weren’t 

we, to have met him and had the chance to work with 

him at such an impressionable age? That excitement and 

inspiration shaped our subsequent work and lives on. How 

can we not be eternally grateful for that gift that he gave 

us? —Steve Hellinger 

When you are going up against entrenched interests that 

are associated with very real political power, it is ultimately courage you need to effect change. Bill Dyal is 

one of those rare, courageous visionaries who also knows 

how to act and implement meaningful programs that 

affect the lives of real people.—Bill Moyers in The Other 

Caribbean, a PBS documentary on the IAF
Contents

Stories of Sustainability

Módulos Lecheros; An Idea that Survived the Shining Path 

By Martin Scurrah and Custodio Bojórquez

The Weavers of San Isidro 

Patrick Breslin

Challenging the King of the Reef

By Jenny Petrow, Ana Carmona, Azucena Díaz and Gabriela Boyer

Forum for Fellows’ Findings

Poets, Clowns and Paperwork:

Negotiating a Culture of Bureaucracy in Brazil

By Anne Gillman

Seeds of Struggle in Colombia

Laura Gutiérrez Escobar

At the IAF

Rede Ecovida and Beyond 

In Memoriam

Bill Dyal: Gracious Goodness and a Life Well Lived

By Steve Vetter