In June, I visited the community of Copal AA La Esperanza to participate in the 12th annual Festival de la Madre Tierra. I wrote about that experience in Works In Progress’ June issue. In brief, Copal AA La Esperanza (the hope) is a community of returned, indigenous folks who had fled from Guatemala to Mexico during the internal armed conflict. Once they felt safe returning, the founders of Copal AA purchased what was at the time a rural Cardamom farm in the northwest of the department Alta Verapaz. Today, some 200 families live in the community and continue to rely on Cardamom farming for a large portion of their livelihood. I want to look at the infrastructure the community has built, the state of Cardamom farming, and the impact climate change is having on both.
The built environment of Copal AA is a product of its remoteness and the local climate. For the first 16 years of Copal AA’s existence, accessing the community required a six-hour walk from the nearest road. Hence, most of the houses are simple timber-framed structures enclosed with wooden boards, much of which is processed in the community’s own mill. Most structures have imported sheet metal roofs. Nothing is enclosed; most doorways are just frames without doors, with the main consideration being keeping out the heavy summer rains. The village is high up in the hills, and as such, historically, the temperatures have always been quite moderate throughout the year. At the hottest times of year, the ample forests and nearby rivers have been able to provide shade and cooling.
A typical street in Copal AA; rocky streets, buildings made from concrete blocks, locally-milled wood and sheet metal roofs. Electrical lines provide intermittent power.
Alta Verapaz is very mountainous and remote, and as such remains largely underdeveloped; of the rural communities in the department, only about half are connected to the electrical grid. While Copal AA is among them, the power that they do receive is inconsistent and, at best, capable of running lights and charging small electronics. Nowadays, many households have small solar set-ups that can do about the same: a couple small panels, a lead-acid battery, and the infrastructure to run lights or charge a phone via USB. When we visited for the conference, all of the power to run the audio equipment was run by a small diesel generator. On two occasions, non-profit organizations have installed hydroelectric turbines to generate power from the river flow, but both times the generators have failed after a month, during periods of heavy flow. No support has been provided to fix the generators or address the technical problems that lead to their failure, and so they’ve been reluctantly abandoned for the time being. Currently, the community is installing a larger solar array that should provide more consistent power for the community. There’s currently no air-conditioning or cooling centers in the community.
As mentioned, the whole of Copal AA is built is built on what was previously a sprawling cardamom plantation. Cardamom is native to the jungles of southeast Asia. It grows well on the shaded forest floor of tropical jungles. For reference, it can be grown in USDA zones ~10-12, although it may take longer to reach maturity on the cooler end. In Copal AA, it takes two years from planting to harvest, and a given plant can continue to produce at commercial levels for some 4-5 years. In Copal AA, the cardamom is reliant on rainwater, and is sensitive to prolonged drought or loss of tree canopy. Being so remote and lacking electrical infrastructure, they must rely on middle-men who purchase the cardamom at unfavorable prices. If they had the electrical infrastructure to dry it themselves, they could get a higher price for it. As it is, recent disruptions to the weather are forcing them to look into other sources of communal income.
Being near the equator, Copal AA doesn’t experience temperature swings like we do in the United States; average monthly temperatures only vary some 10°F throughout the year. While temperatures begin to climb in the summer, that effect has historically been moderated by a pattern of heavy daily rainfall beginning in May and persisting into the fall. In the last two years, however, that pattern has been utterly disrupted: the rains have been a month late, not beginning until June, leaving an extra month for temperatures to rise and the land to dry. Last year, temperatures soared to a point that some 90% of their cardamom plantings died or were seriously impacted. Given the two-year turnaround from planting to first harvest, this year’s harvest was similarly diminished. This year, temperatures did not reach quite the same extremes, providing hopes for the immediate future. Nonetheless, the writing is on the wall: Last year’s heat was extreme enough to dry up nearby rivers, and was reaching towards wet-bulb temperatures that make it dangerous to work outside, or to exert oneself at all. In addition to drought, when the water does come, it causes its own problems: a recent report on climate change impacts in the department of Alta Verapaz projects flooding as the single greatest regional risk.
The residents of Copal AA have been aware for decades of the future that climate change has in store for them, and have been working to mitigate and adapt to the potential effects over that time. Perhaps the most impactful project they have taken up is re-forestation. When the community was founded, a large portion of the land had been de-forested in support of the previous plantation. Nowadays, each household is expected to reforest 25% of their land, and there are annual work-parties to reforest acres of communal land at a time. Forested land provides shade for cardamom crops, increases rainwater retention and drought resilience, lowers temperatures, and provides future resources in terms of wood, fruits, and medicines. Following last year’s devastating heat, Copal AA has begun actively researching and diversifying their communal crops beyond cardamom, but it’s been a difficult process. Already, the community is at the hotter end of growing zones for most feasible commercial crops. Furthermore, the most feasible alternative, coffee, another shade-growing perennial with high commercial value, is facing its own raft of issues associated with increasing temperatures: diseases and pests are increasingly impacting coffee harvests in Guatemala and worldwide, with no practical solutions in sight. In addition to communal commercial agriculture, the community has a series of ‘green areas’ with easily maintained perennials, such as limes, that anyone in the community can use as they please. Interdependence and mutual aid will remain key tenets of resiliency within the community, with events such as the Festival de Madre Tierra acting to promote discussion and knowledge-sharing between generations in the community.
Residents of Copal AA worked together during the festival to plant about 700 trees on this acre of land. Before it was cleared in preparation, it looked like the area to the right there, with low shrubs and the occasional tree. In a few years it will look like the area on the hilltop.
While the people of Copal AA understand what is in store for them in the future, they are limited in the resources they can bring to bear to the challenge. If future heat waves, droughts, and flooding push their already marginal climate beyond limits that commercial crops can survive, it’s unclear what they will do. As it is, they are working within their means to mitigate these effects and maintain a community that has provided a refuge and a sense of belonging that had been taken from them during the internal armed conflict.
Nicholas Kohnen is a member of WIP Staff
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