Yucca, corn, coffee… Gardens emerge in Venezuela’s shantytowns to supplement diet

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – It all began when Luis Díaz retired from public service, a 63-year-old former boxer who also works as a blacksmith. Money was not enough to cover his household needs at the time. He joined three friends to start planting corn and pumpkin.

Helped by his large frame, this farmer with 3 children and 6 grandchildren tills the land on a mountain from where he can see a good part of Caracas. Dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and with an old machete hanging from his waist, he climbs at least three times a week to tend the crops.

In two months he expects to harvest corn and yucca – a tuber also known as cassava and manioc – which will be ready much sooner.

“Three friends and I embraced the idea that we could plant here to complete the government’s food basket,” he says after clearing weeds from his plantation where tranquility has returned since security forces evicted armed gangs who had been in hiding there for months.

He was left with no water in the wake of violent clashes last July, when police broke the pipe and the plastic tank he used to store it. “They broke it thinking it was theirs,” he says, referring to armed men who set up a trench with sandbags in his vegetable garden, from where they shot at the uniformed officers.

Now he relies on rain to irrigate. He does it by filling 5-liter jerry cans with his friend, but it is not enough to cover the 800 meters of land. “I wish it would always rain so I could plant all year round,” he says.

“Life has improved somewhat”

When Luis speaks of the “basket,” he is referring to the government CLAP plan implemented by President Nicolás Maduro in 2016 to supply food at subsidized prices to poor families, which the opposition has denounced as a form of social control.

The president himself, who assures that oil profit-taking has come to an end in Venezuela, has called for encouraging production at all levels, including urban agriculture.

Although battered by the crisis that is leading Venezuela through its 8th consecutive year of recession and 4th of hyperinflation, Luis has found in his farm a distraction arising from the need to harvest as quickly as possible in order to feed himself.

“Life has improved somewhat because whatever we don’t get there (down there) with the money, we take from here, like yucca, bananas and some mango, we come without lunch and eat about four mangos and at least settle our stomachs,” he says.

On the way to his land, Luis, cheerful and friendly, greets his neighbors who say good morning with a smile on their faces. “How do I go about planting corn? My son wants to plant it,” says Gladys, who has avocado, several fruit trees and three coffee plants in her backyard.

“My son has already learned to roast and grind it… it’s excellent coffee,” she says while listening to Luis’ recommendations to ward off the pest that has settled on a guava tree.

“Put salt water on it,” the man advises, who arrived in Caracas at the age of 17 from Cariaco, a town located in the northeastern state of Sucre. “You can also add fish water because it lacks phosphorus.”

Gladys shares what she harvests with her siblings and neighbors. Her son Ismael, 33, is a salesman and his love for the land also has an emotional component. “I have a car parts business, this is my hobby. When I plant, I remember my grandfather a lot,” he says.

Luis, who longs for financial support to buy new tools and upgrade his plantation, feels gratitude for the land. “The land is the most important thing for me, we eat from it and we go there, it keeps us forever, it brings us and then keeps us, it feeds us, all the food comes from the land,” he says.

Source: afp