Honey heals wounds of war in Colombian village
Published: 07:09 PM,Sep 25,2019 | EDITED : 06:04 AM,Apr 30,2024
‘The last widow’ - For Ortiz, apiculture is a way of “trying to heal the wounds” left over from the war, but it also represents a hope of survival for farmers whose mixed crops of tobacco, yam and cassava are gradually drying up because of global warming. Julia Merino, a 49-year old school teacher who manages the project, expects the first harvest at the end of the year to yield 13 tons of honey. For Merino it will be a sweet victory, a balm to salve the memories of the 2001 attack. Her uncles and cousins were mutilated and killed by the right wing paramilitaries. Two years later, her husband was abducted and murdered by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) as local families were once again caught in the middle of Colombia’s internecine conflict. Merino is known here as “the last widow of Chengue” because she was the only one who returned to the village where she lost her husband. In front of his whitewashed grave, in the abandoned cemetery of nearby Ovejas commune, she recalled the healing process that has taken her to this point. Workshops allowed her to “turn these sources of pain” into “spaces of goodness, to heal wounds and recover the social fabric that had fragmented,” she said. Merino says she shared her experience with other women, mounting the honey venture to spark “economic change” in the village.
Changing climate - Chengue has suffered more than most rural villages from Colombia’s brutal conflict, and remains far from the reach of state institutions. Roads here are little more than sandy tracks. There is no running water, no gas, and regular periods of drought are striking with greater intensity. Guillermo Marquez, 62, worries about the future amid his tobacco plants, once the economic engine of the region. Farmers here have seen their earnings plummet since tobacco giant Philip Morris announced in June that it was closing its factories in Colombia, citing tax increases and smuggling. “We are abandoned by both business and nature,” said Marquez, adding that he now regrets having burned trees to plant corn as the land dries up. After 50 years of tobacco growing, he is reluctant to venture into apiculture. Pesticides used by some farmers pose a challenge to the nascent industry. But the beekeepers of Chengue are determined to revive the village and brave what nature and climate change throws at them. They have little choice. “I am in the process of returning to the land, to love and to earn my independence,” said Merino, convinced that the women and their bees will yet become “the masters of the territory.” — AFP