DE CAMPESINO A CAMPESINO (Farmer to Farmer)
2019
Farmer’s meetings
XIII Bienal de La Habana, Cuba ‘Constructing the possible’.
With the support of Acción Cultural Española and Embassy of Spain in Havana.
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The project consisted in facilitating a series of encounters between Spanish and Cuban farmers, under the pedagogical approach of De Campesino A Campesino, from where the project also borrows its title.
This methodology is mainly used to produce and share knowledge on Agroecology. It was conceived by the Nicaraguan peasantry and was widely spread by the Cuban farmers during the special period.
Its most remarkable and ground-breaking characteristic is that it inverts the conventional top-down, expert-driven approach to agriculture, where the technician or engineer comes down into the fields to teach the “ignorant farmer”; instead, it places the farmer in the position of the connoisseur, bringing their knowledge to the same level of importance and consideration.
Methodologically, it emphasizes the learning by doing approach, prioritizes experience over theory, and the trainings take place in the lands of the farmers themselves, stressing mutual aid for the development of sustainable agriculture.
From the 1st to 16th of April 2019, the farmers Diego Cabrito, Josué Molinos and David Tirso de la Cal travelled to Cuba. They all come from Guzmán, a small village in the province of Burgos (60 dwellers at present time).
The region they come from is strongly affected by the rural exodus and the implementation of intensive industrial agriculture, which has led to the depletion of the land’s natural nutrients.
These three young men, between the ages of 30 and 40 years old, are the last generation of farmers in the village, and the future of this part of the territory depends essentially on the way in which they decide to continue farming it. The agricultural models currently in place are highly dependent on chemical inputs, subsidies and banks loans, but these three farmers have decided to stay and look for other viable production models that can take them out of the never-ending cycle of environmental degradation and debt.
Agro market with portrait of Camilo Cienfuegos in the back, Havana 2019.
During those fifteen days, they visited and learned about the farming work of José Casimiro and Mileidy Rodríguez, Cira Neiva, Elesey Rodríguez, Elena Castellanos and Libaldo Diaz, Enrique Gonzalez and Miriam Borroto, Reina Herrera and the “Infinite Journey” estate with Yoel Pérez, located in the rural areas of Sancti Spiritus, Santa Clara, Regla, Guanabo and Havana.
These families and individuals overcame the consequences of the economic blockade and the special period due to which they stopped getting the inputs they depended on: chemical fertilizers, pesticides, machinery, fuel, hybrid seeds. They were left on their own, with their fields and their labour power.
Twenty years later, they are leaders in the Cuban agro-ecological movement, they have outburst their production by implementing agricultural techniques, using traditional seeds, and they are able to supply what’s needed for the national food demand.
The situations constructed collectively in a spontaneous manner through the farmer’s meetings, favored the creation of new forms of community life across nations, strengthened peasant collective memory and validated the knowledge produced by rural cultures.
This project does not have a direct translation to a specific art medium (photography, video, painting, sculpture...) instead it is framed within the logic of late Situationists, where living events or ongoing experience were proposed as a form of creation, as an artistic praxis per sé. In this manner, this project puts all its emphasis on the personal experiences of the participating farmers, who leaded the process and were at the same time protagonists and audience.
The contacts with these farmers were facilitated by Eva Fernández (MUNDUBAT), Aurelia Castellanos Quintero (ACPA), Wilfredo Prieto and Yoel Pérez, Gustavo Duch (Soberanía Alimentaria), Peter Rosset (ECOSUR), Tomas Uhnak and Feliz Dorian, Huilen Medina Senn, Alejandro Juna Cárdenas, Adolfo Aguila Guevara, Annia Martinez Massip and Lázaro Julio Leiva University “Marta Abreu” Central University of the Villas and Mileidy.
The synthesis of the project was shared with the Biennial audience on April 16th in the Natural History Museum of Havana.
The session run from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and was led by guest speakers Leidy Casimiro, Reina Herrera, Josué Molinos, David de la Cal, Diego Cabrito and Asunción Molinos.
